In Bengal village, a teacher turns walls into blackboards
Nayak teaches nursery rhymes on importance of masks
In a small tribal village on the eastern tip of India, an enterprising teacher has turned walls into blackboards and roads into classrooms, trying to close the gap in learning brought on by prolonged school shutdowns in the country.
Deep Narayan Nayak, 34, a teacher in the tribal village of Joba Attpara in Paschim Bardhaman district of the eastern state of West Bengal, has painted blackboards on the walls of houses and taught children on the streets for the past year. The local school shut down after strict Covid-19 restrictions were imposed in March 2020.
On a recent morning, children wrote on one such wall with chalk and peered into a microscope as Nayak watched over them. “The education of our children stopped ever since the lockdown was imposed. The children used to just loiter around,” he said. The teacher came and started teaching them,” Kiran Turi, whose child learns with Nayak said.
Villagers grateful
Nayak teaches everything from nursery rhymes to the importance of masks and handwashing to about 60 students and is popularly known as the “Teacher of the Street.” Nayak said he was worried that students, most of whom are first-generation learners and whose parents are daily wage-earners, would stop studying if they didn’t continue with school.