Abhijith Giridhar teaches Math to grades 5 and 6 at the V.D Ghate English Medium School in Pune. He loves spending time with children and wants to be a mentor and friend to his kids. 

This year, Abhijith raised funds on teachaclass.org to bring a digital library to his classroom. School WiFi is a device that stores and plays educational content, helping teachers keep students engaged. 

Initially, Abhijith used SchoolWiFi as a revision tool. He’d explain concepts and use the videos to revise learnings. But on our recommendation, he began integrating videos into his lessons, which changed the way he taught. Abhijith realised that the videos increased student motivation and helped him find different methods to explain concepts. Students could learn from the method they found the easiest. High-performing students picked up concepts with ease and practised by themselves. The average-performing students just needed clarification of a few doubts. 

What shifted when Abhijith introduced videos into his teaching, was surprising: he ended up with a lot more time to help students that were below grade level. He could show others videos while he revised concepts with them. This slowly improved their fundamentals in various topics they had not understood before. 

During one class, he read a story on the SchoolWiFi as a reward for good behaviour. His kids loved it so much that it became a regular feature of his lessons. Now during the last 10 minutes of a class Abhijith reads a story using StoryWeaver - if the class has done a good job! 

Through his stories, he started seeing an improvement in the reading and comprehension of his class. At first he read the stories to them, but after a few weeks his students were able to read with him. He now pairs students and let’s them read stories together - they only approach him when stuck. SchoolWiFi helped Abhijit improve math levels and contributed to an increased English comprehension after only six months. He had never imagined that a Math class could actually improve his students’ English too!

Abhijith sees a shift in the behaviour of his students, and believes access to the SchoolWiFi played a major role in causing it. He wants to use the SchoolWiFi to improve the grades of students that are struggling and give them more individual attention. We’re excited to see what happens next!