Unnati: A Dedicated Teacher
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| Unnati- Dance on MGT |
Unnati Mehta joined Manzil as a volunteer in November. She belongs from The United States of America. She has always been passionate about environmental health and has wanted to focus a lot of her work in India, she succeeded in receiving a Fulbright-Nehru Student Research Scholarship to study air pollution and health in Delhi and started working in IIT-Delhi on a project about air pollution and its impact on anaemia in Indian children under the age of 5.
She
wanted to have an experience in Delhi that would be community-based, so she
consulted the United States India Education Foundation (USIEF) for some guidance
about which organizations could she volunteer with. Manzil was the first name
that was suggested to her, thus her we got a precious volunteer like Unnati with
us. She worked as an English teacher and also took English discussion classes.
She also took the responsibility of helping her fellow mate Manzil teachers in
their endeavours. She also helped one of the core team members to edit as well
as give feedbacks on articles for the newsletter. Unnati graduated with a
Bachelor's degree in Community Health and International Development/Conflict
Management from the University of Maryland, College Park in 2016 and is currently
pursuing her passion to work towards environmental health and safety. She left
MANZIL and went back to the US to begin her PhD degree in Environmental Health at
Harvard University in Boston.
Unnati was a very hardworking and very determined to
help the student’s breakthrough their problems and devise ways to deal with
them. She is very good at speaking English, thus choose to help those who were
not so good at it. She volunteered to teach in the English discussion which is
Fourth Level of English Class, wherein which she help students frame their
thoughts into words. She introduced various exercises through which she could
help those students who were shy at speaking in front of others or had less
confidence while speaking. She believes that through words a person can bring
about a positive change but one must know how to present his thoughts, which
can only be learnt with proper practise at speaking. She held activities like
topic discussion, book reading, political discussion and many more. She always kept
in mind during her session to give everyone a chance to speak while a
discussion is being held. Her classes were never boring for the students as she always made her discussions
lively and interesting by sharing facts and quizzes on the topics being discussed,
that made learning more fun. The topics chosen were always different in every
class and were easy to speak on, topics that they could relate to and speak
much confidently. It helped the students in self-reflection and realisation of
their capability to speak. It made them more confident and enthusiastic when it
came to speaking English.
The students found of her activities the most
interesting in which 110 questions were discussed. The gist of such questions
was to help them learn about how to establish a conversation with a stranger
and the proper way to answer a question. She found that the students lacked
interest in politics and were not aware of many social issues and general
affairs, which she felt was not a good habit on their part. She took
discussions on the current affairs and politics in which she used activities
like quizzes, fun facts, newspaper reading and talks on political history.
The students found themselves developing a taste for
it and actively participating in such sessions. She is also a trained
Bharatnatyam dancer and took part in performing at Manzil's Got Talent which
proved to be helpful as well as entertaining for the event. We want to thank
Unnati for the time and effort she has put into teaching the students of MANZIL
and raising the spirits of the students to believe in themselves. She has the
gift to bring out the best in her students and help them overcome their limits.
We wish to follow and implement the ingenious activities she used in her
teaching and provide the best environment to improve. We wish Unnati good luck
for her future!
Written by Saket, Volunteer with the help of Manzil
Students and Core
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