An inspiring story of a teacher

"The mediocre teacher TELLS. The good teacher EXPLAINS. The superior teacher DEMONSTRATES. The great teacher INSPIRES." - William Arthur Ward

This is a story about how I met one such inspiring teacher recently and what we can learn from him. (I wrote this article in 2019, below was updated few additional items)

The lack of Spoken English is a massive barrier in rural schools across the world. This is impacting children's ability to further their education or find employment in major cities as well increasing the gap in their ability to connect with the rest of the world. In Sri Lanka, kids in rural areas are often discriminated or miss out on employment opportunities when they approach big cities due to their lack of spoken English.

Part of the issue is a lack of teachers who are both passionate and capable of teaching spoken English in these rural areas. Recently, I was inspired by what I was able to learn and uncover in a rural school about 160km off the capital Colombo (about a 6 hour drive from Colombo) in a rural town called Weligepola. The English teacher at this school Mr. Weeraratna has initiated a spoken English program for the school (130 kids) from 5am - 7am every day out of his own time and passion. It was amazing to see the kids following this program and getting to school at 5am every day including school holidays to learn English!

This picture was taken about 4.50am in the morning as the kids were arriving and getting ready for the class.

• What is driving these kids to get up and take the journey (most walk to school in the dark with lanterns as there are no street lights in this area)?
• Where did this teacher get the inspiration to drive this program?

I also uncovered that this school also happens to be one of the schools my grand-father had built and donated to the local community 73 years ago! It made it even more inspiring and special to me to learn more about it.

The original idea for this early morning spoken English class came from another school teacher (Mr. Wilbert Ranasinghe) who had initiated a spoken English program at another rural school off Colombo, in Kurunagala (lets call this School A). He has taken the initiative to run a spoken English class to the children from 5am - 7am and has seen great success with a 100% pass rate on English in this school. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SSTh4Pefl8k

Mr. Weeraratna has taken the inspiration from this school to try to replicate the same model in his school (lets call it School B).

How he replicated the model is inspiring!

At first Mr. Weeraratna had failed to replicate the model in School B as he himself didn't have the skills and the approach to do it. He then decided to engage the help of the security guard of School B Mr. Undugoda (who happened to be an old boy of the school and from the local community). Mr Undugoda had committed to attend school A as a student commuting once a week over 8 month period (leaving 2am in the morning) and has learnt how it's done in School A. Then both of them have got together to propagate the model in School B with great success.

What's inspiring about this story is the commitment of both the teachers, the children and most of all the parents who are devoted to support these kids to learn spoken English when none of them speak English. Almost 100% of the community in this rural village are farmers and it's inspiring how the community is coming together to help the next generation learn a skill their parents could not.

It's rare to find teachers who have the dedication and passion to go this extra mile to help our children. My hats off to the parents who are committing to help these kids and the English teacher who's driving this program for these children!

It was great to visit this school with my dad and to see the work my grandfather had done 73 years ago to build this school and donate to the local community.

Here is a picture of the class with the two inspiring teachers standing at the back together with the parents. We are currently exploring how this model could be replicated broadly across many other schools as well.