Number crunching has always been a dreaded thing for many a student. Making it child’s play for thousands of undergraduate students is BS Lakshman Prasad, a lecturer of Accountancy who served in PES University, Bangalore, for 22 years. Now, no longer with the institute, he runs an academy called Hamsa that coaches Class XII and BCom students in Accountancy, Statistics and Mathematics. He also volunteers to teach at Yuvaka Sangha, a free coaching centre for Commerce students, founded in 1944 in Bangalore.
Taking inspiration from his teacher and the founder of Yuvaka Sangha, known as Annaiah, Prasad became an exceptional teacher himself. “During my college days, I saw thousands of students flock the coaching centre, popularly called ‘Annaiah University’. I saw how much students needed education, and that it came at a cost. I was always an average student, but Annaiah inspired me to become a teacher,” says Prasad who holds an MCom, MBA and MPhil. He points out that a teacher never retires. While he was teaching at PES, a typical day of his began at 6 am. After two hours of coaching, he spent six hours in college followed by his voluntary work at Yuvaka Sangha. Even after leaving PES, he has devoted eight to ten hours a day to teaching.
Once a student of PES, he soon became the most popular lecturer on campus. What makes him special are his out-of-the-box teaching methods. He believes in concept-based learning. “I make sure I give examples. I read from works of TS Venkannaiah, and Belagere Krishna Shastri among others to make the class interesting. I try to explain why Accountancy as a subject has to be studied.” The kind of problems Prasad frames for students to solve are never a mundane bunch of numbers. They include characters like Prime Minister Modi, veteran Kannada actor Rajkumar, and topics like cricket.
— suraksha@newindianexpress.com