Teachers are vectors of eductaion, believes Satyam Mishra. The 26-year-old teacher also feels that education is the “single-most powerful tool that can transform the entire world into a saner and happier place”. Mishra’s love for teaching and passion to spread education is taking him on an unique mission: he is going to teach refugee children at the Malala Yousafzai All Girls School in Lebanon. Mishra said the opportunity came his way when he was interning at the SMILE Centre in IIM Ahmedabad in the summer of 2016. That’s where he got to know about the various schools worldwide that work for disadvantaged children, including the Malala Yousafzai All Girls School. “Since the school was looking for teachers, I contacted them. I got in right away, as Math and Science seemed to be very difficult for the students.,” he said. Mishra said he was not content with just “sitting at home and condemning the violence in Syria”. “I am happy that I am packing my bags and heading to the Syrian border, to be an agent of change in my own humble way. The education of the girl child happens to be an issue very close to my heart. The logic is: I educate a girl, she educates a generation,” he added. Mishra, who hails from Bhagalpur in Bihar, holds an engineering degree from the Manipal Institute of Technology. In April, he finished a two-year Fellowship programme with Teach For India (TFI) in Pune, where he worked as a TFI Fellow at the Acharya Vinoba Bhave Secondary English Medium School and taught Math to students of Standard IX and X. On how he developed an interest in teaching, Mishra said, “When I was in school, I saw that teachers had a huge impact on students, be it in terms of their interest in any subject, or the students’ confidence. I had a few mentors who made me love their subjects and even though years have passed, I have the same amount of respect for them — Anand Kumar, Professor Anil Gupta, Dr Sanjay Singh and Rajeev Kant Mishra, to name a few — they shaped me for this role I mention these names as I could connect to them. A teacher’s job is not just to educate the students but to understand and connect with them.” Encouraged by one of his teachers, he appeared for the SAT exam in 2010 and cracked it. “I thought to myself, if I could do it, there must be so many students who can do it too. I started thinking if I could be inspiring enough to change lives, if I could be like my own mentors, if I could be a teacher, I could be a leader.,” said Mishra. His experience, while teaching in Pune as a TFI fellow, made him believe that every child is special, with his/her own share of strengths and problems. “Being a leader, it’s one’s job to. make the student feel that they are wanted, to stand up for them when they are right, and more importantly, to make them feel confident and able,” said Mishra. “Earlier, I would not be very convinced if I heard this very common sentence uttered by teachers - ‘I learn from my students’. But I have a first hand experience of learning from them. My students would brave all odds to succeed. Once convinced about the fact that education could help them immensely in the future, the children would brave winters and be there in the school as early as 7 am to attend extra classes,” said Mishra. He added that when he started teaching at a Pune school in September 2015, the average score by students in Math exams was 58 With the dedication and hard work of his students, in just one-and-a-half years, the Math average in the board exam increased to 80.3/100, with 80 per cent of the students earning a distinction and 95 per cent crossing 70 per cent, said Mishra. Satyam Mishra recently met Congress leader Shashi Tharoor, who mentioned him in a tweet and hailed him for the “noble task” he was about to undertake.
