Hello! Greetings for the festive time of the year 2025. Here is the twenty ninth video about the attempt of Ruchi to change her career in the book, ‘Spinning into a Career’.
The Balaji coaching class is a mix of students, grades five to ten all in the same class. Ruchi sits on a bench to solve the problems of students. They memorize what they can and recite it to Ruchi without looking in the books. It’s a two hour job. The class is run by a Shetty who may have run a restaurant previously. Ruchi works in St. Joseph’s school as a teacher. The basement of the building forms the premise of the school. There are no classrooms. Divisions are there but no walls segregate them. A teacher uses a blackboard for teaching and behind it is another blackboard facing the opposite side with another division and another teacher. It is more of a factory than a school. One can hear other teachers teaching. Ruchi does not like the system. The principal, a lady takes a survey of all the teaching going on.
A month passes by. Ruchi goes to the principal’s office to get the experience certificate. The headmistress is annoyed and shouts at Ruchi, ” Who asked you to study so much? Girls like you should not study. I cannot give you the experience certificate unless you put in two years of service here.” From 1983 onward, a change takes place in Ruchi. She is determined to change herself. She cannot get a teaching experience certificate without teachers’ training and without a teaching experience, she cannot get into teachers’ training course. She seeks an opportunity to get an experience certificate from the headmaster of St. Joseph school, where she has worked as an untrained teacher for a month. When the madam is not there, the headmaster takes over the office. The naive headmaster prepares the experience certificate for her. As she takes the certificate from the headmaster, she sees the headmistress coming into the office. Ruchi barges out and runs as fast as she could till she reaches the railway station.
Meanwhile Ruchi gets her domicile certificate from the Bhimpoli court. Ruchi fills out application forms for Bachelor of Education with an attached photo of the teaching experience certificate that she has gotten by tricking the old man of St. Joseph school. She posts them to different colleges. Ruchi doubts she will be able to make anything of her life. She goes to a career psychologist and takes psychological tests. The tests reveal that she is intelligent and has talent. She could have been the best doctor, but she has not achieved her mark.
One fine morning, Ruchi’s father comes to her and says, “Two children of mine will be out of the cycle of birth and death. The younger daughter will vacillate between sorrow and happiness. Her heart will be battered by feelings.” Ruchi cannot understand her dad. Her aunt passed a weird remark, “I am surprised that you have visited the temple on ekadashi day. I suggest that you light a lamp behind the back of the idol of Lord Ganesha.” Ruchi is stunned even more when she states, ” We can derail a train that is on track.”
Ruchi begins with her Bachelor of Education course at Veerkar Education Research, Elpar. She takes a fast local train from Bhimpoli to Sagar or a slow local from Bhimpoli. She crosses the bridge and walks down a main road that has a slope. The college is a building located in a congested area. It has a small gate. It has a school and degree college too. She receives letters for admission from various colleges. She does not respond to them and chooses Veerkar Education Research because it has good recommendations. The subjects of her course are History and English. Other subjects are Evaluation, Methods of Teaching, Statistics, School Administration and so forth. She has micro teaching lessons or a practice of teaching a topic in five minutes. Educational tours to Shankar Art Gallery and Rani Roopmati Museum are conducted.
Thank you for listening. We shall continue with Ruchi’s Bachelor of Education course in the next video. Till then, goodbye!
Video can be viewed on You Tube by typing, ‘Spinning into a Career’ by Usha Raman.
