MADURAI: Since joining a government girls’ higher secondary school in Tirumangalam, Madurai district, in 2005, science teacher C Cinthia has worked to give her students opportunities to explore science beyond the classroom.
When she began teaching there, the school had nothing besides one outdated computer. Practical projects that ideally require a laboratory were being carried out on laptops Cinthia borrowed from her daughters because, despite the modest funding, she firmly believed in her students’ potential and refused to find a compromise.
So when two of her students were recently selected for Mission ShakthiSat, along with 12,000 other young girls across the world, it was like one small step towards a great leap for all the girls in her class. And for their science teacher, it launched her students into a world they had only read about in books till then.
Born at Valliyur in Tirunelveli, to parents who were both teachers, Cinthia has considered education central to her life since childhood. Her father took a special interest in reviewing her progress. It was perhaps natural for her to become academically inclined and get a degree in physics to pursue teaching herself.
But it is not the same for her students. Nearly 90% of the students here come from economically disadvantaged families, she said. Education is the only hope of building a better future for many children, she said.
“Our students are very bright. Our school consistently achieves 100% results in the Class 10 and Class 12 examinations,” she said. It is in this spirit of encouragement that she joined 10 of her students in a 120-hour online programme by Space Kidz India in November 2025. Nearly three decades into her teaching career, she continues to find joy in learning alongside her students.
An initiative by Dr Srimathy Kesan, who founded the aerospace startup Space Kidz to make space accessible to all, Mission ShaktiSat aims to have scientists and professors teach young girls about space, coding, electronics, and satellite structures and let them contribute to payload-related activities with an aim to develop a lunar mission.
As the programme ended, two of the 10-member cohort from Cinthia’s class were selected, along with 19 young girl students in India and thousands globally, for this initiative. After their selection, N Monica from Class 11 and A Jameela from Class 10 went on a state-sponsored trip to New Delhi for a 10-day workshop.
For Cinthia, teaching has long stopped being about lessons, marks, or examinations. She knows some of them found their calling when she saw them immersed in working together during the ShakthiSat programme. Cinthia’s involvement in science extends beyond the school syllabus.
As secretary of the Tamil Nadu Astronomy Science Society, she promotes astronomy education in government schools. Her contributions and dedication as a teacher have earned her the Dr Radhakrishnan Award in 2023.
In 2025, she served as a regional coordinator for the Youth Astronomy and Space Science Congress, a flagship initiative organised by the NGO Tamil Nadu Astronomy and Science Society (TASS).
In her earlier engagement with Space Kidz, she had mentored students involved in the launch of AzadiSAT-1, which missed its intended orbital trajectory following the unsuccessful maiden flight of ISRO’s SSLV in August 2022. Then she mentored them ahead of the AzadiSAT-2, which was launched successfully in February 2023 and re-entered into the Earth’s atmosphere nine months later due to natural decay.
After more than 30 years in teaching, Cinthia feels the greatest satisfaction not through the awards she has received, but in seeing a girl gain confidence.
As a teacher who has been teaching at the same school for so long, she finds that opportunities like ShaktiSat serve as a reminder to other girls in her class that their rural background need not stand in the way of their ambitions. “When a student from a disadvantaged family succeeds like this, we feel that our efforts have borne fruit. This is the real success of being a teacher for me as well as my colleagues.”
(Edited by Veena)
