In India, the teacher has always been given a supreme place in a person’s life, some even rank their guru above God. The job of a teacher is to guide children with a good education and to prepare them for a better future. Today we will talk about one such teacher “Ranjeet Singh Disale” who has set an example by winning the Global Teacher Prize recently. Before talking about Ranjeet, let me give you an overview of the Global Teacher Prize.
What is the Global Teacher Prize?
The award ceremony is organized every year by UNESCO and London’s Varkey Foundation. Its purpose is to give respect and money to a teacher who has made remarkable efforts for the betterment of education. Many teachers are nominated from all over the world, even teachers can also nominate themselves.
The jury consists of teachers, education experts, journalists, company directors, technical entrepreneurs, and scientists from around the world. It is a matter of pride for us that this time Ranjeet Singh Disale of India has won this prize. This time, the award ceremony was organized in a virtual form due to the Covid-19 epidemic. There was a total of 12,000 teacher entries from 140 countries all around the world. And it is a matter of pride for us that Mr. Ranjeet Singh won this prize for working in the field of advancing girls’ education.
How the journey of Ranjeet Singh Disale started?
Ranjeet Singh Disale left his engineering studies in between and decided to become a teacher in a government school. There is a small village in Maharashtra’s Solapur district, which faced problems of drought and poverty for many years. In 2009, when Ranjeet Singh stepped into the school as a teacher, he found the building in a very bad condition. Seeing the animals tied in the school, he understood the level of education there.
Parents did not want to send children to school because they did not consider the education necessary for them. But Ranjeet was not among those who easily gave up. He painted the school building, convinced parents by going to the children’s home, motivating girls to attend school for acquiring requisite education. Ranjeet’s path was not very easy, there were challenges at every step, but Ranjeet overcame all those challenges with courage and enthusiasm.
Why Ranjeet Singh Disale got this award?
Due to his experience in engineering and technology, he was always keen to learn and explore new things. He said that once scanning the QR code in the market, he was curious to know the working of this technology. After understanding the QR code, he added this technique to books so that children could read and understand poems and stories in their local language, and also take video lectures. To make education easier for children, all the English books were also translated into their mother tongue.
To make children aware of different cultures and to strengthen their hold on their language, Ranjeet also gets children to communicate with foreign students through the digital medium. The name of this project is “Let’s Cross the Border”. The technique of his QR codebooks is well known in Maharashtra, but now NCERT is also considering implementing it across the country. Due to these efforts taken by Ranjeet, there has been a big reduction in the Child Marriage of girls in Solapur and surrounding areas.
Ranjeet Singh Disale has received this Global Teacher Prize of $ 1 million, which is Rs 7 crore and 40 Lakh for improving the standard of girls’ education using innovative methods.
Shared Prize Money With Other Finalists
As soon as the award was announced, Ranjeet decided to keep only half the award money with him. Ranjeet promised to share the rest of the amount with the other top 9 finalists. He believes that the role of the teacher is to give and share with others. Every teacher is doing great work in his field and working hard, so this amount would also be useful to them. Together we can make education better for everyone.
To know more about Mr. Ranjeet Singh Disale, please visit his Instagram handle.
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