This teacher gave government primary school a makeover
KANPUR: Around 15 years back, this government primary school in Kanpur’s Ramkrishna Nagar was in a shabby condition. Running in a dilapidated building, the school had five teachers and around 100 students.
When many thought it could be shut down any time, Vijay Laxmi Tripathi, head of Sanskrit department at the AND Degree College, adopted the school.
In the beginning, she started off by teaching students of both primary and upper primary sections after the college hours and on holidays. After her retirement in 2007, she took up full-time teaching responsibility without any remuneration. She also constituted an association —Prathmik Shiksha Sudhar Parikalp — with an objective to give the school a modern makeover through help from public.
Her efforts started paying up and gradually the number of students increased. At present, the school has more than 180 students in both the sections. “The association has teachers, retired teachers, government officers and the members of the business community. We raise funds from our own resources and provide school dress, books and stationery to the children, majority of who are from the poor families,” Professor Tripathi said.
“My sole motto is to motivate the common citizens to come forward for providing better academic environment at the government run primary schools with their own resources. We also want to motivate the local self-government and the state government to take active part in upgrading the schools so that the children of the deprived classes could also get better education,” Prof Tripathi said.
“We had conducted a selection test in the academic session 2016-2017 and 20172018 for awarding scholarships to students. Students of 2,500 primary schools of the city and the rural areas had participated. About 425 students were selected and they were all given an annual scholarship of ₹600. Now we are planning to hold the third scholarship selection test,” she said. The association has five full time retired teachers, including professor Shanta Mukherji, professor Manju Misra, Vijaya Misra, Mridula Chaturvedi and Professor Vijay Laxmi Trivedi the founder member and the president of the association.
In order to train teachers of the primary schools an English workshop is organised regularly. The teachers of public schools teach English to primary teachers for seven days. “We also organise cultural shows and sports in order to develop the personality of the students,” she added. The school has two E-Classrooms in the primary and the upper primary section. The Rotary Club had provided all facilities for e-class at the primary section while the e class at the upper primary section was set up under the Rashtriya Avishkar Karyakram, Professor Tripathi said. “Besides, I along with Shobha Misra have revived ‘Arya Samaj Sanskrit Shiksha Institute near Arya Samaj Bhavan in Sisamau,” she said.