Ms. Alpa Nigam is head teacher at Primary School Tilauli, Gorakhpur, Uttar Pradesh. With 15 years of teaching experience, she has trained approximately 1,25,000 teachers at NCERT and SCERT. She is also a member of the assessment framework team and the tools development team for the State Level Achievement Survey (SLAS). Her contribution to eContent and QR code development at NCERT and SCERT has helped make classroom teaching effective, easy, and accessible for many learners. Ms. Nigam uses art, craft and puppetry as pedagogical tools to make her classroom teaching effective for children with learning disabilities. In recognition of her innovative teaching methods, she received the National ICT Award 2016 from the Indian Ministry of Education and the State Award in 2017.
Through her Fulbright DAI project, Ms. Nigam is working on developing tools and content for early detection of learning difficulties that children face in classrooms. After returning to India, she intends to share these insights and experiences with her learning community of teachers through webinars, orientation meets, and training programs. She also plans to orient parents of children with learning disabilities so that they can cater to the educational as well as personal needs of their children. She hopes these efforts will eventually benefit numerous children enrolled in different schools.