Two government school teachers from Punjab are among 46 selected from across the country to be honoured with national awards on September 5 (Teacher’s Day) at Vigyan Bhawan, Delhi.
As per the list of teachers selected released by the Union Ministry of Education, Punjab’s Arun Kumar Garg, principal, Government Model Senior Secondary School, Datewas in Mansa district, and Harpreet Singh, head teacher, Government Primary School, Bihla village in Barnala will be feted on September 5.
From making mathematics easy for children during Covid through online lectures, to putting years of hardwork in transforming the dilapidated condition of a primary school building in a backward village of Barnala, both teachers selected from Punjab have more than 15 years of experience in the field.
A YouTube channel for maths during Covid
Arun Kumar Garg (39), principal, Government Model Senior Secondary School, Datewas in Mansa district, is a mathematics teacher. During Covid, he started a YouTube channel ‘Abhyaas by Arun sir’ to deliver free lectures in maths for students and to resolve their queries. The channel currently has more than 11k subscribers.
Apart from YouTube, he also delivered 163 lectures on DD Punjabi, NCERT’s Swayam and e-Vidya channels during Covid to make maths easy for students. All his lectures are delivered in Punjabi for convenience of rural students.
Apart from the lectures, Garg has also developed several activities based learning models — Roman Wheel to learn Roman numerals, VeDiMa for Vedic multiplication, 3D maths man — inside his school premises to make mathematics a fun-learning subject for his students. “Now maths is easy with Arun” is the tagline of his YouTube channel on which he has uploaded more than 500 video lectures till date.
“My only motive is to ensure that students do not fear maths,” said Garg, who holds a MSc in the subject and has topped PPSC PES exam in November 2019, after which he was promoted as a principal in his school.
Garg, who has already won a state award for teachers, is also a author of several PSEB and CBSE curriculum books. Under his new initiative, called Pehal, rural girl students are being encouraged and being provided with help in pursuing the science stream. Making students learn maths formulas by poems, Garg had started teaching in December 2006 and currently teaches maths to board classes 10 and 12.
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20 years of hard work to transform a village school
Twenty years after Harpreet Singh (43), joined as the head teacher at Government Primary School, in Barnala’s Bihla village, the school has witnessed an overhaul, making it stand out. Earlier a picture of neglect with dilapidated building and parents thinking twice before admitting their wards at this government school, the education institute is now a “Smart School”, complete with a kindergarten section, that probably gives private schools in the area a run for their money.
The school now has 218 children and is equipped with mid-day meal dining hall, smart classrooms with LED projectors, e-library, smart language lab, education park.
“I have put in 20 years of dedicated hard work for this school. It is like my baby. When I joined here in 2002, it was nothing but a building in tatters. We renovated the building with help of NRIs initially, bfore pitching in with our own contributions from 2009 to 2013. Later, work was started to build the infrastructure and introduce learning aids on lines of private schools,” said Harpreet Singh. “Ours was the first government school to have a smart playing area for kindergarten (pre-primary) kids,” he said.