With schools shut since March due to lockdown, teachers in Neelamnagar, Mumbai, Maharashtra, became concerned that some youngsters would fall behind as their families cannot afford internet subscription for online classes. To overcome this, teachers painted the walls with lessons from the textbooks in Neelamnagar to provide education to the poor kids of the village. As many as 300 walls were used to teach students from Classes 1 to 10. Teachers used markers to draw diagrams and write text as students gathered around to learn, adhering to the social distancing norms. The teachers walk through the village each weekday morning, stopping to explain the lesson or answer any questions.
“Since most of the families lack resources to educate their kids digitally, we had to come up with an innovative method to keep children invested in education,” Ram Gaikwad, a teacher at Asha Marathi Vidyalaya school, told AFP ahead of Teachers’ Day in India. According to PTI, a teacher from the Asha Marathi Vidyalaya primary school in Neelamnagar of Solapur said that it was, in fact, convenient for the students to stand near the walls following the social distancing guidelines. There were a total of 1,700 students that were enrolled in the primary school and secondary section of Shri Dharmanna Sadul Prashala, as per the PTI report. From writing to trigonometry, the murals in the village cover many subjects, written in local Marathi and English. The entire village is invested in keeping the children educated during the pandemic.
India has the world’s third-highest tally of virus infections, with more than 3.7 million confirmed cases, behind the United States and Brazil. Despite a strict lockdown, the pandemic has shown no signs of slowing down as it moves from cities into the country’s rural interior.
