In Bengal Village, Teacher Turns Walls Into Blackboards To Close Digital Gap

Deep Narayan Nayak has painted blackboards on the walls of houses and taught children on the streets for the past year.

In a small tribal village on the eastern tip of India, an enterprising teacher has turned walls into blackboards and roads into classrooms, trying to close the gap in learning brought on by prolonged school shutdowns in the country.

Deep Narayan Nayak, 34, a teacher in the tribal village of Joba Attpara in Paschim Bardhaman district of the eastern state of West Bengal, has painted blackboards on the walls of houses and taught children on the streets for the past year. The local school shut down after strict COVID-19 restrictions were imposed across the country in March 2020.

On a recent morning, children wrote on one such wall with chalk and peered into a microscope as Mr Nayak watched over them.

"The education of our children stopped ever since the lockdown was imposed. The children used to just loiter around. The teacher came and started teaching them," Kiran Turi, whose child learns with Mr Nayak, told Reuters.