UTTARAKHAND: It is said that values passed down from parents play a significant role in shaping children. Something similar happened in the life of Vibha Pokhriyal Naudiyal, a senior teacher at the Kendriya Vidyalaya in Hathibarkala, Dehradun.
Vibha is a native of Bali Kandarsi village in the Pabo block of Pauri Garhwal. Vibha’s neighbourhood was home to a differently-able girl named Hema Rawat, whose family often made her sit in the courtyard all day. Sometimes she didn’t even wear full clothes. Vibha was also young at that time and Hema left a permanent impression on her mind. The experience helped her in laying the foundation for her social service, which has now become an integral part of her life. Apart from the regular school schedule, Vibha, an innovator by nature, said, “A gentle mind needs a stress-free, loving and affectionate environment. And with a view to imprinting life skills in students, a teacher should be given opportunities to experiment with innovative ideas.”
In order to inculcate the value of belongingness, Vibha decided to work on some innovative ideas like preparing eco-bricks from the single-use plastic in the school premises. Vibha said, “A group of students collects all the used plastics and make ecobricks daily in school. My plan is to develop eco-parks and develop a sense of environmental conservation among students,” Vibha said.
Working towards environmental protection, Vibha has been successful in motivating students who bring used plastic bottles from their homes and neighbourhoods to school and convert them into eco-bricks. “I have planned to create tree guards and a seating space with these ecobricks,” elaborated Vibha, whose future plans to set up a recycling unit are also gaining momentum now.
She is also working towards getting the unit to install hand-made paper using the paper used in the school. A fully-equipped recycling unit will be developed soon with the help of the school administration.
“Students will learn a lot of things in the field of environmental protection through these activities,” said Vibha.
Vibha is very creative and always comes up with innovative ideas. She believes that value education is the demand of the time. Teachers are the most important people who can change the world. With an experience-oriented approach, Vibha stressed, “The journey of life without quality education will remain a distant dream unless we infuse into our children the water of morality, that is, to the extent of learning and re-learning the art of being human.”
We can’t help but conclude that the miscreants and criminals who end up committing various types of crimes were once students. The question then becomes, “what went wrong with the process of raising them? Whether or not it was a lack of care and caution or circumspection? The reasons are myriad and so are the answers.”
Vibha married VK Naudiyal, a physics teacher at Kendriya Vidyalaya, in 2002 and sees her two daughters, Gargi and Gauri, as inspirations in her life.