Making Mathematics easy-peasy

Teaching is an inseparable part of life for 47-year-old Padma Priya Vummaji, a government mathematics teacher in Hyderabad. Now, her teaching skills have received recognition as she has been selected for 'National Best Teacher Award' by central.

The 47-year old is gaining quick fame for evolving herself and her pedagogy to develop a deeper understanding of the subject. Padma is one of the 47 teachers nationally felicitated with this award, she is the only one teacher from the Telangana state.

Being a government school teacher, she tries to implement different ideas and techniques for teaching mathematics in her classroom. This helps benefiting the children for learning the subject.

She shares, "It's been an honour to get selected for the award from Telangana state. I dedicate my award to my students, colleagues and family members for their encouragement."

She started her teaching career in 1996 and was married in the year 1997.

She says, "These 24 years of teaching would not have been possible without the support of her husband and in-laws, who always supported and encouraged her every time. My family is very happy that I received the National award. It is the greatest achievement of my life."

According to her, this all started from her childhood, when her father passed away when she was 9-year-old, and she decided to help her mother and started giving home tuitions since her schooling. She was good in mathematics since her schooling and was a rank holder in mathematics degree during her bachelors. She pursued B.Ed from Andhra Mahila Sabha College and completed her M.Ed from Dr BR Ambedkar University in 2013.

She says, "I also pursued 2-year Diploma in Advanced Software Technology in the year 1997 and being an advanced in software, I decided to teach and became a teacher which is now being felicitated with the National Best Teacher Award."

Sharing her experience about her US visit in 2016, she said that she participated in the Teaching Excellence and Achievement Program under United States-India Educational Foundation (USIEF) in the Naveda, USA for 6 weeks starting from September 13 to October 31.

" I learned various teaching skills, which helped me to explore new methods of teaching. During my visit, it was a great learning experience, and I also had pedagogical discussions with other 80 teachers from different countries," adds Padma.

She has also conducted several video conferences between her school students and USA classrooms, where her students learnt a lot from that. She had also hosted three American teachers at the Government Nehru Memorial high School, as part of Teachers for Global classrooms.

She said "Her classrooms are digitized classrooms and most of the classes will be conducted on projectors. There are a total of 5 projectors which were donated by NGOs. A projector and 2 computer systems were donated by the American teacher who came for Global classroom."

She had been taking online classes from 2017 for her students who applied for the National Means Cum-Merit Scholarship Scheme (NMMSS). Around 15 students will be applied for NMMSS exam and for these students she used to take online classes during Dussehra holidays.

Telangana state education minister Sabita Indira Reddy called on and felicitated her at her office and Hyderabad City Commissioner Anjani Kumar visited her home and felicitated her with seed Ganesh idol and several other teachers, organisations, politicians felicitated her.