What teaching in Inspire India Project taught me.

Written by Sanjana Ganesh on 27 January 2021

Mahatma Gandhi once said, “The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others”. I believe that this quote elegantly summarises my journey so far with the Inspire India Project. On the first of August 2020, I started teaching music to children through Inspire India Project a project of the Shankar Mahadevan Academy Trust. I have been learning music for more than half my life, and music has helped me through tough times. It has helped me develop discipline, character, and skills useful for many more processes and activities in life. This project has propelled me to learn so much about not only teaching, but also about myself. 


Growing up in India, I’ve seen developing country problems all around me, and having grown up in such an environment, I have always felt a need to give back to society. Yet being a 16 year old minor, I really didn’t know how to do this. Since music has been something I have done for pretty much more than half my life, I can say that I’m familiar and comfortable with it. So, I knew I wanted to do something music related for giving back. However, I couldn’t concretely define what I wanted to do. 


The Inspire India Project proved to be this perfect opportunity and intersection between music and giving back. Initially, I had to take the Teacher Certification Course. The course surprised me a lot, as I did not realise how structured teaching actually is, with creating a syllabus, planning classes and trying very hard to make the class as interactive and fun as possible, with the added constraint of an online portal. After completing my Teacher Certification Course, I came to understand a lot more about the processes behind teaching. Making a teach-kit, planning lessons, and most importantly, knowing how to teach and be patient with students during class. I tried to implement all these newly gained skills in all my lessons. Moreover, taking classes as well provided me with experiential learnings to improve my lessons. 



As of now, I have been teaching for 7 months. Honestly speaking, I was very nervous when starting out. I have never taught children before, and I wasn’t used to interacting with children. So thinking about having to teach children, who wouldn’t necessarily understand everything I would say in the first go, made me feel a bit uneasy. However, that all changed when I started teaching. While I did struggle a little initially, I truly started enjoying the process of teaching these kids. The smile on their faces when I give them a compliment for them singing well is truly such a precious gift. And when they themselves want to sing and are having fun singing, it really warms your heart. It feels so good to know you are truly making an impact in somebody’s life. It validates you and really pushes you to do a better job. By the end of the classes (for the 6 week classes I had), I was completely looking forward to going to class and teaching. 



Without sounding conceited, I really do think I was able to teach the students something significant. In the beginning of the classes, many of the students were not able to sing in sur (sing in tune with the key of a song). Obviously, they aren’t perfect now, but I think they’ve come to a stage where they understand where they’re going wrong and are willing to change and learn; and in music, being aware is half the battle won. They were able to learn a lot about swaras (musical notes) and understand the role of swaras in music. 


Moreover, I was able to cover a significant number of rhymes during the classes, which I also owe to the students for being very proactive with completing their homework during the week to accelerate their process of learning. I also think they were able to gain some knowledge on sur and scales and the tanpura as well. (A scale is a set of musical notes, that are arranged in order, for example: Sa Re Ga Ma Pa Dha Ni. A tanpura is an instrument that gives a drone-like sound, guiding the singer to the key of the song.) I believe this is good, as it would provide a basic foundation for the Hindustani Vocal 100 classes. 


Like I mentioned before, this experience has not only helped me learn more about teaching, but has helped me develop personally as well. I really think my patience has increased a lot, which I genuinely owe to my extremely enthusiastic students. I have also started enjoying the process of teaching, which I never thought I could. This experience has also made me value my teachers and the role they play in shaping my life. It has made me appreciate the effort and work they put in to make the classes as enjoyable as possible, and to get us to appreciate the subject as well. 



Finally, I would have to end by saying I couldn’t have had such a memorable teaching experience without the help I received from Varsha Shringarpure, Ritika Madan and every teacher in the Inspire India Project. Debashree Das Gupta, Archana Kamath Hegdekar and Avanti Baporikar Karikar really helped me when I was facing challenges with how I should teach in my classes and approach the syllabus. They really gave me great, clear insights which always helped me refocus and come back on track. 


In conclusion, these 7 months has been a journey, which like any new experience, has had its own fair share of challenges. However, they have helped me learn so much about teaching and myself, that I wouldn’t trade them for anything. I truly enjoyed these 7 months of interning with Shankar Mahadevan Academy and teaching these students. I hope to continue this journey and be able to make an impact in not only others lives, but in mine as well. :) 



About the Author


Sanjana Ganesh



Love singing, playing basketball,

talking to friends and family,

eating amazing food,

watching cricket.