Ranjitsinh Disale: A Teacher Who Innovated Teaching

We all have an image of how a teacher can be. And when we talk about an Indian Government Teacher, people start assuming what their personality can be? But what if I tell you that there is a teacher that evolved the teaching system and made students come to the school voluntarily. He made studying fun for the students and the school where students went rarely started having 100% attendance.

Ranjitsinh Disale, a teacher who made studies interesting for students and won the Global Teacher Prize in 2020. Ranjitsinh Disale, a resident of Paritewadi village in the Solapur district of Maharashtra. He wanted to be an engineer but things didn’t go as planned for him. After he was not able to make it in IT, his father convinced him to join the Teacher’s Training Program. Once he joined the program he came to the realization, that teachers are the real change-makers of society. 

In 2009, he was appointed as a teacher in the Zila Parishad Primary School in Paritewad. The school building was not in very good condition and along with that, not many students attended the school as well. The residents of a tribal community, most of the students, especially girls did not attend the school. Another problem was the language used to teach the students. Many children were not able to understand anything because of the language. 

Ranjitsinh did not back up from all this and decided to come up with a solution for every problem that stopped the students from learning. He started learning the native language of the village. He then translated the books for the students in their native language. He also embedded the content with a QR code. Through these QR codes, the students have access to the study material in their native language and they are able to understand it. He also made several videos doing several experiments. His teaching methods made it easy and fun for the students to understand the concept. 

It was a dream come true for Ranjitsinh when a girl from the village graduated from a university. The idea of using QR codes to make it easy for the students to learn the concept of a particular is now used all across India. Seeing the success of Ranjitsinh’s teaching method, NCERT did a study on the use of these QR codes. And in 2018, NCERT also embedded all its books with QR codes.

On December 3rd, 2020 he received the Global Teacher Prize. He received this award for his innovative ways of teaching. He also received the prize money of One Million Dollars, and as soon as the award was announced he decided to distribute the prize money among all the nine finalists for the award. This shows his sincerity towards his profession. The school was awarded as the best school in the district as 85% of the students have an A grade in the final exams.

Recently, Ranjitsinh Disale was also appointed as an advisor for the educational programs at the World Bank. Along with this he also joined the educational community in the worldwide Girl’s Education Drive. The international community makes sure that the girls also have access to technology and they also have the same opportunities as every other student.

India announced its new Education Policy in 2020 and with the implementation of this policy, there will be a lot of changes in the education system. It could be hard for the students to face these changes and we need teachers like Ranjitsinh to come with solutions for these problems. 

The teachers need creative ways to make studies interesting for the students. India needs teachers like Ranjitsinh, who not only teach the students but also make it fun and enjoyable for them.