VISAKHAPATNAM: Teaching is not only his profession but also passion, which he follows with a devotion to bring about a change in students from rural areas. Konathala Phanibhushan Sridhar, who bagged the national best teacher award for 2021, is a social science teacher at Lingarajupalem ZP School in S Rayavaram mandal.
The only recipient of the award from the State, he says till now, he has been following what his father told him on the first day of his joining as a teacher at Ayyannapalem in Nakkapalli mandal in 1997. He says his father told him to justify his role as a teacher. Within five years of service, he received the best teacher award at district level in 2002. “I was the youngest recipient of the award then,’’ he says.
His father K Ramalinga Swamy, who hailed from a lower middle class farmer’s family, became an agriculture scientist and assistant professor. He was the first vice principal of the agriculture polytechnic at Anakapalle. Sridhar says his father is his inspiration and role model. However, he says, “I could not fulfill my father’s wish of becoming a doctor.”
In 24 years of service, he received 40 awards in education, environment and social work. He also received the national best innovative teacher award for zero investment innovations for educational initiatives at a global conference in Delhi in 2019. An innovative project of ‘healthy children, happy nation’ fetched him the national award from Aurobindo Society.
Sridhar says he motivated students to make the school plastic-free and set up a vermicompost unit to grow organic vegetables, which are used in the Mid-Day Meal scheme. He says, “My approach is to groom primary and high school students through an integrated eco-friendly and socially responsible education system wherever I worked in rural areas, including slums.”
Sridhar says he is associated with national environment awareness campaign and Green Club, Anakapalle. The aim is to promote activities such as distribution and planting saplings, conservation of biodiversity, scientific land management, conservation of natural resources, water harvesting, Swachh Bharat, Green Ganesh campaign, replacing leaking taps and the like.
He distributed one lakh saplings of avenue and forest species in Anakapalle, Munagapaka, Kasimkota and Butchayyapeta mandals. He motivated farmers in Munagapaka and Kasimkota in water conservation with watershed management models. Success of any system, he says, hinges on encouraging all stakeholders to participate in it, which results in rural prosperity and nation building.
He got entry into National Teachers Portal of Azim Premji Foundation in collaboration of National Knowledge Commission. The UK-based Joint Review Mission team visited MP elementary school in Turakalapudi and praised the programme taken up by Sridhar as “society partnership event”. He raised a social nursery in the school with participation of the students.
He bagged Dr BR Ambedkar National Fellowship Award in 2019 from Buddhist Trust of AP by Theerathna Buddha Vihar at Bethany Educational Society, Ravulapalem. He also bagged Vriksha Mitra Award from the field publicity directorate, Hyderabad and presented papers on climate change, biodiversity conservation among others, he says.