Om Prakash Mishra, in-charge headmaster of Government High School of Jeypore, who was the lone teacher from Odisha to receive the National Teacher Award, got a warm welcome from the denizens here.
48- year-old Mishra received the award for the year 2017 from Vice President M Venkaiah Naidu in New Delhi on the Teachers’ Day. He was among 45 teachers selected throughout the country for the national award by the Ministry of Human Resources Development.
Mishra said he began his teaching career from the remote Mathapada village high school under Boipariguda block of Koraput district in the year 1998. During his stay at Mathapada, he realised that practical classes were difficult to be conducted in rural areas as science equipment were not easily available. So, he planned to write a science practical handbook to help teachers of rural areas and wrote 'Experimento' in 2015.
This apart, to help the students in clearing the national means-cum-merit scholarship (NMMS) test, which is conducted for Class 8 students, he prepared a 40-day practice book, entitled 'Kinetics'. "As tribal students of our district were unaware of logical reasoning and modular reasoning which figure in the question paper of NMMS, they used to fail in clearing the examination. Hence, the Kinetics was prepared and it helped the students immensely and the success ratio of the district improved," said Mishra.
Mishra has also co-authored two books titled 'Transit' and 'Transit-2' a course in mathematics for students of Classes 7, 8 and 9."It was seen that most of the students in high school lack basic knowledge in mathematics. Hence, to provide them the basic knowledge before learning the regular syllabus, the two books have been prepared," he told.
"I believe in work as work speaks,” said Mishra who has been honoured with the State Government’s best teacher award earlier. He said the national award will act as an inspiration for him.