I was appointed as a teacher at the government school in Amkhera village in Uttar Pradesh’s Jalaun district in 2013. Within a few days of joining the school, I realised that my posting wasn’t going to be easy as there was no atmosphere of learning in the village. Parents used to consider it unnecessary to send their daughters to the school as a result of which, the classes were erratic and very few girls ever attended them.

I then decided to have a meeting with the school’s principal Vir Singh and towards the conclusion of the meeting, we both agreed that something had to be done to raise awareness about education in the village.

We held several programmes, rallies, and workshops to spread awareness about the importance of education in life. Gradually, people started getting involved and they got convinced of the importance of education.

Next to awareness, our biggest challenge was to make our school attractive for the students. That required capital and efforts to set up a playground, a modern library, projector room, sports equipment and other academic paraphernalia.

Vipin Upadhyay put in effort to raise awareness about girl child education upon getting appointed as a teacher in Amkhera village.

The gram pradhan of the village approved funds for the school which was a great help and ensured that children developed interest for the school.

The results were promising. The classes got regular and the number of students in the school rose drastically. Also, the students from the school began excelling at many inter-school competitions which brought laurels to our school.

I was getting popular as a teacher and started getting calls about the problems faced by other teachers. I then decided to contest the elections for the block level teachers’ union in 2017. I won the elections and it presented me with the opportunity to solve the bigger problems of the teaching community.

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I realised that my task at the primary school was complete and it could continue to function without me. So, I applied for a transfer to a different school in the village and began working to improve the education from scratch.

For my service, I was awarded with the state government’s highest awards for teachers — Rajya Adhyapak Puraskar in 2021.