Poonam Adhikary is a pre-primary and primary English teacher at Stanvard School, Udaipur.

According to Poonam, she is a very calm and composed person and she advises that one must never panic however difficult or unexpected a situation may be but try to solve problems with a calm and collected mind.

For those who want to join the profession of being a teacher, she says that the first quality of a teacher should be punctuality. Devotion to education as a profession should be foremost. One must take the required decisions in favor of students' welfare. A good teacher should try to make classes interactive. A teacher is required to solve both the academic and personal problems of their students. A teacher is also expected to have good subject knowledge. A teacher should focus on the overall holistic development of a child as it is very important in this day and age even more so than the textual education. One should possess good communication skills so as to interact with children and understand their psychology.

During Covid 19, many challenges arose in the education industry. One of them was adapting to the new online method of imparting education to students in the absence of physical classes due to the government regulations on restrictions of physical classes. However, there were many limitations in online classes like students not being able to join the classes and lag in the network leading to improper communication. On a personal note, she enjoyed spending time with her family. She also inspired her students to take part in self-development courses during this period as it gave one ample time to develop oneself.

Poonam believes that education and experience are both important in one’s life as one is correlated to the other. One needs the education to imbibe experience and experience helps one to apply the knowledge gained from education.

On being asked about her views on leadership, she advises that leadership should not be a separate trait for a teacher because they should be like a friend to students. A teacher should be easy to approach for students and should not be too strict with them. They must learn to lead students by example. If she could go back in time, she would want to relive memories of her school days.