Aliya Abreu
Santosh Gaonkar, who won a national award for teachers earlier this month, is a firm believer that when it comes to excelling at Science, it is not language skills, but a crystal clear understanding of science concepts that will help students achieve success. He believes that once a student understands a concept, words in which to express it will flow naturally as a consequence. Gaonkar, principal at Poira High School, Mayem, Bicholim, was one of the teachers felicitated by the Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD), in New Delhi this year on Teachers’ Day, for his contribution in making Science interesting and fun for his students.
Gaonkar recalled his experience receiving the award from Vice-President Venkaiah Naidu, and interacting with Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Union Minister for HRD Prakash Javdekar. “It was a great feeling. It is the highest award for teachers like us. But I was also a little worried and nervous initially while talking to the PM,” he said. However, Gaonkar soon overcame that initial worry, and was happy to explain to them what he brought to the table during his Science classes. “All teachers teach,” said Gaonkar. “But the PM and the Minister wanted to know how my classes were different,” he explained. Gaonkar sure made an impact on the Prime Minister, who went on to praise Gaonkar on his Twitter feed after the interaction. Modi tweeted about the significant improvement in Class X results that Poira High School saw under Gaonkar’s leadership.
In conversation with ‘The Goan’, Gaonkar explained how students and teachers from village schools always feel that they’re at a disadvantage. “For students, it’s the language they often struggle with, while teachers are often afraid of science laboratories and equipments,” he said, while stressing that labs and instruments shouldn’t be the prime focus for teachers - a lot of material from our surroundings could be used to explain simple science phenomenon. Goankar himself uses magic tricks and low cost teaching aids to explain basic Science concepts.
In fact, the first project that Gaonkar undertook on mining, viz. ‘Water Retention Capacity of Mining Affected Soil’, was undertaken using a plastic bottle. “This plastic bottle took me to Delhi where I met the scientists Yash Pal, and APJ Abdul Kalam, the former president of India. My experiment was shown on ‘Ignited Minds,” he said, encouraging teachers to go in for simple teaching methods.
Gaonkar, who started his teaching career in 1988 at Shantadurga High School, was inspired to teach Science differently by a friend of his - Sujit Kumar Dongre, an environmental scientist and project co-ordinator at the Center for Environmental Education (CEE) at Goa. Gaonkar also modeled himself on other science teachers from outside the state who made learning Science fun.
Gaonkar, along with his students, started a project on ‘The Ecological Importance of Crabs to Khazan Lands’ around eight years ago. Besides winning a prize for the same from Wipro in 2016, the project also brought forth the discovery of a new crab species. “In our Khazan lands, there are so many species and crabs that are not known. There’s lots of scope to explore,” said Gaonkar. He and his students often stumbled upon rare species of crabs in this way.
Goa sure is proud of the milestones that this teacher from Poira High Schools has reached and while the results of Gaonkar’s hard work have already been visible for years now, his influence will spread further than even he will ever imagine. In the words of Henry Adams, “A teacher affects eternity. He can never tell where his influence stops.”
