As a student, she used to walk 40 minutes each way to and from her school in Chirimiri, a “rather primitive town” (in her own words) in what was then Madhya Pradesh. After spending 21 years grooming countless students, on Teacher’s Day next week, Madhurima Acharya will be walking into Rashtrapati Bhavan to receive an award from the President of India.

The computer science teacher of Delhi Public School Newtown is one of the two teachers from Bengal to be selected for the National Teachers’ Award 2025 awarded by the department of school education and literacy. A total of 45 teachers from across the country are getting the award. Tanusree Das from Kuchlachati Primary School in Kharagpur is the other awardee from Bengal.

“The mail came on Monday,” said Acharya. “Frankly, I did not expect CISCE (Council for the Indian School Certificate Examinations) to consider my application. It is a tough competition. I must say I am still surprised,” she added with a smile.

The Council, she points out, invites two applications per school. “So you can imagine the number of applications they must have received. One has to submit a lot of documents, for which the school’s help is also needed. I give my hundred per cent to everything I do. So I had done the same here and left the rest in the hands of the Almighty. That was in June,” she said.

It was her school which had encouraged her to apply. “This is the second National Teachers’ Award to come to our school. Another teacher (of geography), Swarnali Chattopadhyay, had won this in 2013. As the academic co-ordinator of the senior school, Madhurima is a good leader; she encourages lateral thinking and has brought in a lot of innovation to the subject she teaches. She gets her students to participate in competitions, and they have represented the school in national-level finals too. And she has been with us for 19 years,” said principal Sonali Sen, who had to write a recommendation for the candidate.

One of the points Acharya recalled having to establish was a teacher’s role in preventing dropouts. “Though a city school like DPS Newtown does not face the challenge in the way village schools drawing students from underprivileged families do, I wrote about the tendency of students of classes XI and XII to enroll in a dummy school in their single-minded focus on competitive exams. To counter that, we get them involved in activities and project-based learning from the start, giving them leadership roles in projects, so that they want to continue in school in Class XI also. I answered their query by presenting how I help retain students,” she recalled.

She also wrote about the integrated classroom technologies she uses in class. “For instance, we do not use paper anymore to share study material, notices, assignments etc with students. Everything is posted in application-based online platforms, like Google Classroom. Earlier, we could attend to students only in schooltime. Now with Google Meet, if someone needs doubts clarified or someone joins a session late we can attend to the student there,” she told The Telegraph Salt Lake.

Once she was informed about the CISCE picking her in July, the next step was a communication asking to send a seven-minute presentation on her contribution and be prepared for an interview with the jury based on that. “I was worried as my presentation ended up being longer.” All doubts were laid to rest with the mail coming in this week.

After receiving the award, she feels her responsibility has increased. “It is not enough to read textbooks anymore. A lot of learning comes from experience.” She admits that, especially in the field of computer science, change is the only constant. “I studied C and C++ as a student. Now I teach Python and Java. New (computer) languages will come in tomorrow. We lay stress on logic-building and try to develop life skills in children so that they are able to adapt to changes.”

When computer came in, she pointed out, it replaced a lot of jobs but also created many. The same will happen with AI, she thinks.

Acharya is preparing for her trip to Delhi. “We have been asked to report on September 3. An orientation would be held to prepare us for the main event on September 5.”

Before that, she has to deal now with the flood of congratulatory messages coming in. “I am feeling so special,” laughed the resident of Koyla Vihar, on VIP Road.

Write to saltlake@abp.in