Teacher Spotlight: Sarvesh P. Purekar
Meet Mr. Sarvesh P. Purekar an engineer and education enthusiast in Nov Teacher Spotlight series.
I am Sarvesh Purekar, an educator and academic consultant from Mumbai!
An IT graduate by education but teaching enthusiasts at heart and pursuing teaching as a passion!
I am a workaholic person while on my work but equally love to enjoy my time when I am off the work by travelling! Loves to explore new places and meet new people! Being a patient listener I am great and learning through conversations
An year long world tour is on my bucket list down the years!
Name: Mr. Sarvesh P. Purekar
School / Institute: OPTIMUS ACADEMY
Email: spurekar24@gmail.com, nidzp01@gmail.com
Designation / Title Co-founders
Tell us about yourself – Your overall experience in education field, National / International experiences, variety of work you have done in the education field.
Me and my friend Nidhi had met each other during our diploma in 2010 and have been together since then. We were in the same college during our engineering.
We both are engineering graduates and have been into teaching over a decade now. We were teaching in other institutes until we finished our engineering and when we were in our final semester we decided to continue teaching and pursue it as a profession. That was it. Before we could finish our final semester in exam in 2015, we had our institute set-up and running.
How did you choose the field of education? Was it by choice or some inspiration from someone or a childhood dream? Please help with more details.
It was definitely by choice and many of the teachers we met inspired us to pursue teaching. However for both of us the primary inspiration was at our homes.
I stayed with my granny until I was 12. She was a retired principal of school and used to take tuitions at home. So in my childhood I have been into this atmosphere of teaching and tutoring.
For Nidhi, her father is a math teacher and he also has his own institute. Nidhi used to help her father for teaching students coming at their place in her early days.
These experiences helped us to strengthen our decision to take up teaching as a profession and inspire young minds.
What would you like to mention for your greatest achievements in field of education? Which gives you a sense of satisfaction?
Here I should be talking about our results. Our IGCSE-2019 results are something that made us happiest as teachers. Out of our 39 students appearing for IGCSE with us, 17 students scored more than 90% and 12 students scored more than 80% in their boards. As an institute that was a special day for us to have such a great result.
How has the education system changed as per your view since you were a student yourself?
We see the changes in following aspects: Rigidity, Complexity and Tech-aid approach
When we were students, the education system was rigid in terms of subjects and examinations like we could select our subjects only in 10+ level etc. but nowadays in many boards students get to select their own subject in early grades. This has its own pros and cons but if an informed decision is taken then it helps students in their career prospective.
The complexity and the depth of the syllabi for subjects have changed. This also helps teachers to go beyond the boundaries and share the knowledge which is outside the textbooks unlike at our times when we used to stuck with textbooks and textual questions for exam prep.
The digital advancement in the field of education surely have complimented the teaching. Teachers can make sure that students are understanding the concepts by involving videos, animations in teaching.
What are the qualities you think an individual should possess to be a good teacher or work in field of education?
The only quality a teacher should posses is dedication. You should be dedicated to your teaching, dedicated to make sure that your students are learning from you, dedicated to their educational, personal and behavioural upbringing and to see them achieving their goals.
How do you handle discipline problems in today’s world? What is the most difficult aspect of discipline for you?
As I mentioned above the education system has become a bit more relaxed, unfortunately on discipline as well and hence teachers and parents are facing discipline issues.
The root cause of this is lack of communication between children and parents. We at Optimus academy have learnt this problem and started working on the solutions to it.
We are undertaking seminars by children counsellors who would help us to bridge these gaps and which will help students to grow personally and academically
If you were to change 1-2 things in our Indian education system, what would be those & why?
Indian education system is still lacking majorly in giving liberty to students in terms on their learning. For eg. In your 11th grade you must decide whether you wish to go for Science, arts or commerce stream. It can be case that a student would want to study a subject of commerce along with other subjects of science but he won’t be able to do it due to constraints from the board.
Another issue is Indian education system is still considered to be theoretical and hence students lack of practical learning which is must from the early stage.
As we cater exclusively for IGCSE-CIE examinations which is UK based education system we do not face the above two problems. I feel the other boards should slowly adapt to the foreign education system.
What is your philosophy of teaching?
Teach in a way that your students should know everything that you know. Only then you can generate interest and engage students in their studies.
What is your suggestions or guidance for today’s parents in shaping up children’s personality? Especially in this Online or computer age..
As mentioned earlier communication is the key here. Parents needs to have a constant communication with children and build the trust that children can freely share their concerns etc with parents first.
Children these days are well advanced in terms of technology and hence parent and teachers should channelize their online skills in right directions
What are the three most important strengths you possess that will make you a successful teacher? Also any weakness in you which you want to improve upon?
Affection towards our students, quest to learn new things and eager to share it, improvising the methods of delivery constantly to ensure fun-filled learning
If you had not been a teacher or not associated with education field, what would you have been and why?
For both me and Nidhi the career option would have been IT corporate as we both are IT graduates and had good opportunities in campus interviews.
We also had plans to do our masters abroad so if we wouldn’t be in teaching we would have been working somewhere abroad in technology
What do you want to accomplish in your profession in next 5 years?
We aim to become a premier institute for IGCSE/ A-level coaching providing guidance to regular schooling as well as home schooling students.
We also aim to introduce new dimensions of open learning in India wherein the studies won’t be constrained for a text-book or for a particular exam.
Any other things you would like to share about yourself, your profession, your hobbies, your views?
About teaching over the time we have observed that people look this profession as a part-time job. There are many people who work in corporates and teach parallel just to earn little extra. Not in everyone’s case but in general I feel that if you have this approach in teaching then you wouldn’t be able to give your best to the student. Commit yourself to teaching as then only you can do justice to the child and your work.
How would you rate our website yayskool.com especially this teacher spotlight program? 1 being the worst, 5 being the best.
I am delighted to see such a platform which allows teachers to share their views, journey etc. This will surely help others who wants to join this noble profession in future.
I would rate this platform with 5 stars
