Coimbatore: You could pet, play with and pamper a toddler. But how about teaching a toddler? Tejal feels her Life mission is to teach kids.
“Teaching kids is something I was born to do,” she says with a smile as she frisks around with her “Teeming Turtles”. That’s how she calls the group of toddlers she trains at her centre in Saibaba Colony in Coimbatore.
“Baby turtles always walk in a group, my kids are like them, and they walk together in unison,” she laughs. From a content writer to a toddler trainer and an introverted student to a gushing communicator, Tejal Sangani has fumbled, faltered and taken quite a few baby steps.
“I had no idea that I would end up being around with children. In high school I wanted to do hotel management but parents didn’t approve and so ended up graduating in Commerce. After my under-graduation in Kochi, I went to Mumbai,” she recalls. And it was Mumbai that gave the right direction to her Life.
After finishing under-graduation in her hometown Kochi, she worked with Raksha Special School for a while. “Mumbai changed my life. I did post-graduation in education management, which happened without planning. I got associated with Billabong High International School which is now known as Vibgyor High in Goregaon, Mumbai. I was teaching the pre-school children there in the mornings and afternoons I used to write curriculum content and activities for the school.”
Two years ago, she came down to Coimbatore with a plan of doing some content writing for educational institutes, but it didn’t work out. And then she decided to pursue her passion - teaching kids.
With her savings and little bit of help from her father, she started a toddlers and kids activity centre, the Teeming Turtles. “I bought small toys, educating objects, creative things to teach children with a basic investment of Rs 1.5 lakhs.”
Her mentor, Poonam Mehta, an educationist and president of ‘Be the Change’ shed a whole, new light on handling kids. “She taught the basics of writing a creative curriculum, planning and designing the content for a school and how to be a good teacher,” she recalls. Tejal is also a certified teacher of spoken English.
Recently, she shifted her centre to a commercial complex in Sai Baba Colony because the number of children is increasing “At present I have 12 children. Initially I started with four toddlers.”
She offers two programmes for the kids. ‘On the Move’, toddlers programme is a 36-week course and it is for 12 to 36 month old kids. The other one ‘Let’s Explore’ is a quarterly programme for 3 to 8 years old kids. “It’s just something I love to do. People keep asking me how I manage to handle a lot of kids. I think I was born to be among kids,” she grins.
