IIT Tirupati is a place where students are allowed to speak their ideas freely, no matter how small or big the idea. The IIT-T administration is also quite supportive in applying these ideas to real life.
A classmate came up with such an idea: to visit local schools once a week and teach the students there science and maths. He preferred government schools, as their students come from families which are below the poverty line. Here, parents have been known to stop their children from coming to school for many adverse reasons. The plan was to inculcate an interest in learning, so that they would continue coming to school in the future.
He started off by sharing his ideas with a college professor. He even visited a few government schools nearby, to understand and to explain his ideas for them. Everyone was quite impressed with the concept. As soon as he shared his idea with the rest of us, IIT Tirupati’s greatest quality came to the fore. Most of us students volunteered to teach in the schools. Everyone took an active part in the programme.
With our professors guiding us, we demonstrated a few science experiments to the students at one of the schools we selected. We taught them a few tips and tricks in maths, as well as Vedic Mathematics. Since the school we volunteered at is a Telugu medium school, the teachers helped us translate a few words and phrases.
Even though it is a government school, it had physics and chemistry labs. We also took some equipment with us to the school, which was helpful to the students. Although some of the experiments we demonstrated were not from their school syllabus. we taught them more for the knowledge so that the students would benefit and keep studying, to improve their future and destiny.
Overall, we enjoyed teaching these children, who liked our presence. This project also helped us improve our teamwork and increase our confidence. It was a fun project.
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