Colarado middleware consultant is part of Kapra school development team
NRI's daughter, Lalitha, teaches her classmates at a government school. (Photo: DC)
Hyderabad: With an aim to help make government schools a better place, an NRI has enrolled his only child in a government school in Hyderabad to prove that practice is better than preaching.
Mr Vamsi Machiraju, a native of Cheerala of Guntur district who was working as a middleware consultant in Colorado, returned to India in 2013 despite having a chance to apply for the coveted green card.
He initially enrolled his daughter in a private school. However, he shifted her to the Zilla Parishad High School of Kapra this year.
“I realised that unless I am a stakeholder I won’t be able to do justice to my aim of making India a better place for everyone. I am a part of the school development team now,” Mr Machiraju said.
Lalitha Praneetha, his daughter, who is in Class 8 now, accepts that the transition wasn’t easy.
Initially, Praneetha found it difficult to strike a conversation with the classmates and teachers due to her accent.
“It was a bit hard initially. I am really not used to taking notes. Also, the teaching methodology in the American school was very interactive. Here, it is mostly rote learning and hardly anyone actually understands the subject,” the 13-year-old said of her experience of three months in the government school.
Praneetha and her dad now teach around five to six kids from her class in their free time at their house.
“I usually help them with mathematics, English and biology and at times, computer basics,” said Lalitha.
“The school is teaching me important life lessons,” the child said.
“While we were learning why child labour should be banned, one of my classmates missed school as she had to work in place of her ailing mother,” Praneetha said, adding that the school also taught her that “not just currency notes, even coins can keep one happy’.
While Praneetha engages with the kids, Mr Machiraju engages with the parents. He has launched “Organising for the Future,” a community engagement platform and has henceforth not taken up any high-paying jobs and is focusing on training people in vocational courses and life skills.
Mr Machiraju has no plans to go back to the US or take up a job in India. “I will do this as long as I can. I can always take up farming in my village,” he said with a confident smile.
( Source : deccan chronicle )
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