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Teacher Awards

There are several awards in India and globally which reward Teachers for who they are. These awards look to find the best teachers and try to tell the world their contribution to the world of education and pedagogy. In this blog I am only putting down awards given by the Government of India or by celebrated global foundation. Here is the list for teachers,

CBSE – Teacher Awards (Only for Teachers/Principals from CBSE Schools)

The Central Board of Secondary Education instituted the ‘Teacher Awards’ under the aegis of MHRD in the year 2000 to give public recognition to the meritorious services of outstanding teachers of schools affiliated to it. Since then, these awards are given every year on Teachers’ Day i.e 5th September. Each award consists of a merit certificate and a cash prize.

Eligibility

  1. Only a working teacher with at least 10 years of regular teaching experience in CBSE affiliated school(s) and working principals with 10 years of regular teaching experience and 5 years as a principal in CBSE affiliated school(s) may apply for the CBSE Teachers and Principals Award.
  2. A retired teacher or principal is not eligible for the award but those teachers or principals who have served a part of the calendar year (at least for four months i.e. upto 30th April in the year to which National Award/CBSE Award relates) may be considered if they fulfill all other conditions. The service rendered on re-employment after attaining the age of superannuation will not count as eligible service.
  3. Teachers or Principals who applied for the CBSE Teachers and Principals Award last year or before but not awarded the National/CBSE Award will be considered again if they are still otherwise eligible and are duly recommended by the Head of the school.
  4. Teachers or Principals who have already been awarded CBSE Teachers Award can apply for National Award for Teachers if they still otherwise are eligible and duly recommended by the Head of the school.
  5. Principals cannot apply in the category of teachers.
  6. An applicant can apply for only one category of award

Process of Application

Applications for the award would be accepted only through an online web portal. The link for registration is available at: http://www.cbse.nic.in/

http://cbseacademic.nic.in/

Evaluation & Screening

Checking of credentials/supporting documents of the shortlisted applicants will be done by a National Level Scrutiny Committee —– The shortlisted applicants will be invited for an online interactive session with the National Level Screening Committee.

MHRD – NATIONAL AWARD FOR TEACHERS

National Teachers Award program was instituted in 1958, the awards are given away by The President of India (or) The Vice President of India on 5th September (Teacher’s Day) every year to give public recognition to meritorious teachers working in primary, middle and secondary schools. The NAT is being executed under the overall supervision of the Ministry of Education (MOE).

It is a self-nominating Award. teachers and Head teachers of schools themselves can apply directly by filling the application form online through the web portal before the prescribed cut-off date.

Criteria of Selection

The applicants will be evaluated based on the evaluation matrix consists of two types of criterion:

Objective criteria: Under this the teachers will be awarded marks as per clearly given logic against each of the objective criteria. These criteria are given the weightage of 20 out of 100.
Criteria based on performance: Under this, teachers will be awarded marks on criteria based on performance e.g. initiatives to improve learning outcomes, innovative experiments undertaken, organization of extra and co-curricular activities, use of Teaching Learning Material, social mobility, ensuring experiential learning, unique ways to ensure physical education to students etc. These criteria are given the weightage of 80 out of 100.

Stage 1 – Web based applications for nominations

Stage 2 – Scrutiny of all the applications by District Selection Committee (DSC) headed by the District Education Officer. Upon evaluation of applications and verification of the supporting documents, 3 applications shall be selected (in exceptional circumstances 4 applications may be selected) and sent to the State Selection Committee.

Stage 3 – State Selection Committee who shall re-evaluate all the nominations and prepare shortlist of the best candidates, subject to the maximum number allotted to the States/UTs and forward the same to Independent Jury at National level through online portal. Independent Organization Selection Committees (OSCs) may also receive, evaluate and shortlist nominations and submit them to the Independent Jury at National level.

Stage 4 – Independent Jury at National level.

The Fulbright Distinguished Awards in Teaching Program for international teachers (Fulbright DAI)

This program brings approximately 45 international teachers to the U.S. for a semester. Fulbright DAI is a semester-long non-degree, non-credit, professional development program at a U.S. university. Selected international participants will be placed at a U.S. host university School of Education from August – December. Participants will audit courses in the host university’s school or department of education, and thus will be part of the university community. The program will include opportunities to observe and co-teach with U.S. teachers in a U.S. school near the host university, in order to actively engage participants in the U.S. classroom environment. Cultural enrichment, mentoring, and support will be provided throughout the program.

The Award will include the following support

Provisions of the fellowship

  • J-1 visa support;
  • A pre-departure orientation held in India;
  • Round-trip airfare to and within the U.S.;
  • A Welcome Orientation in Washington, D.C.;
  • Academic program fees;
  • Housing and meals;
  • Accident and sickness medical insurance coverage (does not cover pre-existing conditions);
  • Transportation to local school (if necessary);
  • A daily allowance for incidentals during the university academic program;
  • A professional development allowance;
  • A baggage allowance;
  • A technology allowance; and
  • The opportunity to apply for alumni small grants for alumni in good standing.

Dependents can accompany the program participants. Grantees are responsible for all costs for family members while in the U.S. and must demonstrate that they have sufficient funds available to support their family while in the U.S. To know more log on to the award information link.

Selection Process
Fellows will be selected through a merit-based open competition. After the application deadline, a screening committee will review all eligible applications. Short listed candidates will be interviewed by a committee which will select nominees whose names will be forwarded to Washington, D.C. for further consideration. Nominees will be required to take the iBT TOEFL examination in July 2021. All nominations from the participating countries will be reviewed by independent panels of educational experts in Washington, D.C. The panel will then recommend selected applications for further consideration and approval by the J. William Fulbright Foreign Scholarship Board (FFSB). All candidates will be notified of their status in September 2021.

Fulbright Teaching Excellence and Achievement Program

The Fulbright TEA Program will provide approximately 168 secondary school teachers from East Asia and the Pacific, Europe and Eurasia, the Near East, South and Central Asia, Sub-Saharan Africa, and the Western Hemisphere with a unique opportunity to develop greater expertise in their subject areas, enhance their teaching skills, and increase their knowledge about the United States. The Fulbright TEA program is a six-week non-degree, non-credit academic program at a U.S. University. The international participants will travel to the United States for one of two six-week professional development programs in either January 2022 or September 2022. The program provides academic seminars on new teaching methodologies and strategies, student-centered learning, content-based instruction, lesson planning, and instructional technology training for teachers. Intensive English language instruction will be offered to teachers who need additional practice. It will also include a practicum of at least 40 hours with a U.S. partner teacher in a U.S. secondary school near the host university to actively engage participants in the U.S. classroom environment. Cultural enrichment, mentoring, and support will be provided to participants throughout the program.

HOW TO APPLY

You are required to submit an online application along with supporting documents. Candidates can access the online application at https://fulbright.irex.org/. For instructions on completing the online application, please click here.

Global Teacher Prize by Varkey Foundation

The Varkey Foundation, initially the Varkey GEMS Foundation, is a global charitable foundation focused on improving the standards of education for underprivileged children. It was formed in 2010 by Indian businessman Sunny Varkey, the founder and chairman of GEMS Education, the world’s largest operator of kindergarten-to-grade-12 schools. The foundation’s main focuses are improving global teacher capacity by training tens of thousands of teachers and principals in developing countries; providing access to education via a variety of programmes and projects; and advocating for change in, and conducting research that can help develop, education policies worldwide. Since 2014, the Global Teacher Prize has gone from strength to strength, with the 2020 Prize bringing in over 12,000 applications and nominations. The Prize has inspired over 40 National Teacher Prizes to recognise and celebrate teachers at country level. 

Criteria

Applicants for the Global Teacher Prize will be judged on a rigorous set of criteria to identify an extraordinary teacher who has made an outstanding contribution to the profession. The Academy will look for evidence of a combination of:

  1. Employing effective instructional practices that are replicable and scalable to influence the quality of education globally.
  2. Employing innovative instructional practices that address the particular challenges of the school, community or country and which have shown sufficient evidence to suggest they could be effective in addressing such challenges in a new way.
  3. Achieving demonstrable student learning outcomes in the classroom.
  4. Impact in the community beyond the classroom that provide unique and distinguished models of excellence for the teaching profession and others.
  5. Helping children become global citizens through providing them with a values-based education that equips them for a world where they will potentially live, work and socialise with people from many different nationalities, cultures and religions.
  6. Improving the teaching profession through helping to raise the bar of teaching, sharing best practice, and helping colleagues overcome any challenges they face in their school.
  7. Teacher recognition from governments, national teaching organisations, head-teachers, colleagues, members of the wider community or pupils.

The winner will be chosen by the prominent Global Teacher Prize Academy made up of head-teachers, educational experts, commentators, journalists, public officials, tech entrepreneurs, company directors and scientists from around the world.

Few teachers from India have done very well at this award, Ranjitsinh Disale, a primary school teacher from the Solapur village in Maharashtra, won the US $1 million Global Teacher Prize 2020, and two Indian teachers shortlisted for Global Teacher Prize 2021.

To apply https://www.globalteacherprize.org/

ICT Awards to Teachers

In order to motivate teachers to use ICT in school education in a big way, the National ICT awards are given away every year. A selection process is followed for short-listing and recommendation of the required number of awardees to the Ministry of Education (MoE), GoI. In all 90 ICT awards are instituted by Govt. of India for different States/UTs and seven autonomous bodies/organizations under MoE. The award proposes to felicitate those teachers who have enhanced student learning by effectively and innovatively integrating technology supported learning into the school curriculum and subject teaching, and thereby promoted enquiry-based cooperative-collaborative learning using ICT amongst students.

Eligibility

  1. School teachers of primary, upper primary, secondary and higher secondary schools working in any recognized school in the Indian Union under the following categories are eligible to apply:
    1. Schools run by State Govt./UTs Administration, schools run by local bodies, private schools affiliated to state boards, aided by State Govt. and UT Administration.
    2. Central Govt. Schools i.e. Jawahar Navodaya Vidyalayas (JNVs), Central Tibetan Schools Administration (CTSA), Sainik Schools and Schools run by Ministry of Defence (MoD), Schools run by Atomic Energy Education Society (AEES).
    3. Schools affiliated to Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) (Other than those at (a), (b) above)
    4. Schools affiliated to Council for Indian Schools Certificate Examination (CISCE) (Other than those at (a), (b) above)

Award

Each awardee teacher will get an ICT kit, a Laptop and a commendation certificate. The awardees will be encouraged to function as mentors (resource persons) for their area to motivate and train other teachers. All the awardees will form a community of resource persons through networking. Selected initiatives would be shared as best practices across the country.

Application

This is an online self-nomination process. The applicant has to register themselves on a web portal welcome.aspx to apply for the Award. There is no separate physical application form to be filled. Portal —> www.nationalictaward.ncert.gov.in

CCRT Teachers’ Awards

The Centre for Cultural Resources and Training (CCRT) has also instituted CCRT Teachers’ Award, since 1985, which is given every year to selected teachers in recognition of the outstanding work done by them in the field of education and culture. The Award carries with it a citation, a plaque, an angavastram and an amount of Rs. 25,000 (recently enhanced). 356 teachers from all parts of the country have been presented the award so far. Though the award has not been given away since 2000s, teachers can check.

Website: http://ccrtindia.gov.in/award.php

Beyond this I believe most of the state governments have their own Awards for Teachers. Teachers can keep checking the state education board websites for the same.

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Abhiney Singh
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