New Delhi: Much like many Indians, it was his dream to become an IT engineer. When that plan did not pan out, however, Ranjitsinh Disale’s father prodded him into a teaching career. That has now paid dividends for the teacher at the Zila Parishad Primary School in Paritewadi in Maharashtra’s Solapur district.
On Friday, Disale won the Global Teacher Prize 2020, in recognition of his efforts to promote girls’ education in the district.
Disale had announced, when he was nominated, that if he did win he would share half the prize money of $1 million with the remaining nine teacher finalists from across the world.
On Friday, he reiterated that promise.
“The Covid-19 pandemic has exposed education and the communities it serves in a multitude of ways. But, in this hard time, teachers are giving their best to make sure every student has access to their birthright of a good education,” Disale told PTI.
“Teachers are the real changemakers who are changing the lives of their students with a mixture of chalk and challenges. They always believe in giving and sharing,” he added. “Therefore, I am very pleased to announce that I will share 50 per cent of the prize money equally among my fellow top 10 finalists to support their incredible work. I believe, together, we can change this world because sharing is growing.”
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The much-feted teacher
According to Global Teacher Prize, the 32-year-old began working as a teacher in 2009 when his first job involved a “dilapidated building”, sandwiched between a cattle shed and a storeroom” where girls from the tribal community were taught.
The region was known for child marriages. A disdain for education was not the girls’ only hurdle, language was another.
Hardly any curriculum was available in the language they knew — Kannada — thereby restraining their growth. The 32-year-old, however, resolved not just to learn the language but also “redesigned all the textbooks of grades 1-4 for better comprehension, along with unique QR codes that embedded audio poems, video lectures, stories and assignments in Kannada” — the first school in Maharashtra to do so.
His efforts resulted in a 100 per cent attendance rate.
His work has received expansive coverage and recognition — in 2016, the school was awarded the best in the district with 98 per cent students achieving their “expected learning outcomes before completing the school year”.
The same year, Disale was named the ‘Innovative Researcher of the Year’ by the Centre, two years later he won the National Innovation Foundation’s Innovator of the Year award. Disale has also featured in Microsoft’s Satya Nadella book Hit Refresh and has authored over 500 articles about his teaching methods.
He has also begun the “Let’s Cross the Borders” project — a platform for youth from India and Pakistan, Palestine and Israel, Iraq and Iran, and the US and North Korea to connect. Spanning across six weeks, students from one country are paired with another and interact with each other. So far, Disale has inducted 19,000 students from eight countries.
The prize
Founded by the Varkey Foundation in 2014, the Global Teacher Prize was conceived upon research that revealed a drop in the teaching profession’s status.
With an aim to recognise “an exceptional teacher who has made an outstanding contribution to their profession” and underline their importance, the Global Teacher Prize has been endorsed by “His Holiness Pope Francis, Prince William, Prince Harry, Stephen Hawking, Hugh Jackman and Bill Gates”.
Disale was chosen in the final 10 out of a list of 12,000 applicants from over 140 countries. The top 10 included Nigeria’s Olasunkanmi Opeifa, UK’s Jamie Frost, Carlo Mazzone from Italy, Mokhudu Cynthia Machaba from South Africa, US’ Leah Juelke, Yun Jeong-hyun from South Korea, Samuel Isaiah from Malaysia, Brazil’s Doani Emanuela Bertan and Ha Anh Phuong of Vietnam.
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Very noble cause