Digital classrooms in Nigeria, libraries in Vietnam, how Global Teacher Prize winner Ranjitsinh Disale’s shared prize money promotes education worldwide

“One of my students in the Zilla Parishad primary school always said that ‘God gives us to share with others’, and this thought has stuck with me for years. So the idea of sharing the prize money was inspired by my student. And today, I feel content as the decision resulted in tremendous outcomes,” Disale shared with the indianexpress.com.

“I believe teachers can bring real change and I want each one of us to get an equal chance to do so. Today, the prize money is being used to create digital classrooms in Nigeria, libraries in Vietnam, two scholarship schemes for 20 eligible students in USA and Italy and a project to promote education for specially-abled students,” he shared.

‘Peace and education – two pillars of development’

Disale’s objective with the remaining prize money was to launch an initiative to ensure that each year at least 5,000 students from the war-afflicted countries of the world are recruited into a ‘Peace Army’. The prize money will help in reaching out to the maximum number of schools and students.

“Each year, governments throughout the world spend billions of dollars to strengthen their army. I believe that if they spend even half of that amount on educating the children, the world will be a better place with no sign of wars. Keeping this in mind, I launched an initiative ‘Let’s Cross the Borders’ in 2017. A part of this initiative is to create a peace army of students in war-hit countries,” Disale said.

Let’s Cross the Borders is a Skype-based collaborative project that connects students from countries in conflict. The six-week programme involves 150 schools and 5,000 students. It matches ‘peace buddies’ across countries, addresses issues of conflict, tries to find ways to resolve the problems and attempts to draw up plans of action for the future. Currently, the project is working among students of six countries – India and Pakistan, Palestine and Israel, US and South Korea.

“After winning the global teacher prize, several teachers from around the world approached me to expand this initiative and include more schools and countries. We are currently working on a global curriculum and this will be further expanded to cover many other countries in the near future,” he said.

‘Teachers should focus on the outcome, not income’

While talking to indianexpress.com, Disale shared that the improvement of the education system in both rural and urban areas relies on the participation of teachers.

“Teachers need to think out-of-the-box methods to keep their students interested in studies. Getting synced with technology is a primary tool for that. The day all teachers across the world stop worrying about their income from the work they do and are concerned about the outcomes of their teaching, the development of countries will grow ten-folds. Students come to schools to learn; it is our responsibility as teachers to educate them right.” Disale stated.

‘NEP 2020 is revolutionary, implementation is the key’

Disale, who is currently in the USA to attend Fullbright scholarship, wishes to return to India in the next coming years and contribute his bit in the implementation of the National Education Policy 2020.

“I believe this new education policy is revolutionary and will promote education, especially in rural areas. However, the key part is implementation. All policies look good subjectively but when it comes to implementation, the real task begins. It should be a collective effort of both the government and teachers to promote education,” he opined.