Success comprises of hard work, strong mind and a gentle heart

Mrs Meera Nair is a very sincere, conscientious, progressive, goal-oriented, diligent and focused person who strongly believes there is no alternative to success than sheer hard work performed intelligently in the right direction.

She embodies excellence and professionalism, setting an example for everyone who comes in contact with her. Before leading the Amanora School, Mrs Nair had been a part of Vibgyor High, Delhi Public School and had also been «: part of the corporate world for 7 years. Mrs Nair is a true teacher at heart, and has a passion for teaching Math and Physics.

Mrs Meera Nair has been an academician for 17 years now and has only continued to excel in her area. She has distinguished herself as a teacher of the highest order and a fine leader. She has an understanding of pedagogy and displays strong values in dealing with administration task and colleagues alike.

Her mantra to success is hard work with a strong mind and a gentle heart Teaching for me is what makes all the learning worthwhile. Learning through your work, research and reading is enjoyable in itself however, the pleasure of sharing that with a group and looking at it through the lens of newness is an experience that is difficult to describe.

Teaching for me happened accidentally. The joy that the profession offered me in that initial phase made me embrace it wholeheartedly, thus making it my profession by choice. My first stunt at teaching started when | was in grade IX and was looking at making some extra pocket money. It wasn’t long before i realised that i had a knack of making complex mathematical concepts easy and simple to understand thus gaining the admiration of a good tutor. This popularity continued till I graduated and took up my first job with the Tata Group, the country’s largest conglomerate. The exposure and glamour of the corporate world was so heady that it subdued the natural call of teaching for over a decade. Then the love affair started once again post the birth of my little girl. I had taken a sabbatical to be with my daughter during her first ten formative years and that is when my passion for teaching and shaping young minds aggrandized. Teaching gives us an unquantifiable and indefinable rewards of interacting with fresh minds, motivated or otherwise and knowing that it is possible despite all odds to maybe | sow a seed of change, a thought, an idea, that might make some difference and that is what fuels the fire in me each day to continue working in the field of academia.

As a person I have always been very assiduous and diligent. Being a thorough pragmatist, my core belief lies in the fact that hard work never kills, and so one might even say that I am a “workaholic” but along this beautiful endless journey of mine I have realised that the fruits of labour that you find along the way are truly worth the endless hours of work.

For me, each day at work brings in new challenges and new reasons to get motivated and so to pin point on an instance that has changed my life would be extremely unfair. Having said that though, I honestly feel that some instances have been such highlights in my life; the day I saw my first student grinning because he had aced his exams or be that the performance that I witnessed by my student with special education needs and such moments are the ones that give me the validation that I am traversing the right path. Like everyone, | too have my strengths and weaknesses wherein my biggest strength being not to give up easily. When I took over my school, the one thing that hit me was that unlike other popular schools, mine had catered to student influx without a thought. We had an assortment of students enrolled for grade X who were drop outs or detainees from other popular schools. We had huge shortage of teachers to tutor the students and it was our first board results, the quintessential make or break point of a school. The challenge was immense and the odds plenty. However, the teacher in me had immense faith that teachers are miracle makers and if they put their mind to their profession they can achieve anything that they desire and that is exactly what we do at Amanora.

To make a difference by just being myself is what I always aspired for and now in reality I have realised that by being myself and by believing in my morals and value systems I am able to develop the newer generation into the valuable youth of tomorrow.

It is said that “Allow your passion to become your purpose, and it will one day become your profession”. My passion for knowledge became my purpose for teaching which lead to my becoming a principal and that is how I channeled my vision into reality.

Amanora has been scaling great heights and achieving new realms with the passing of each academic year and in more ways than one, I have tried to be an impact in the school’s growth since the time I have been a part of it. Be that student strength or board results, each area has seen major leaps and I believe as a leader I have played my role by motivating and guiding them in the direction toward success.

School leadership needs to work on empowering its teachers through trainings that not only improves their professional skills but also boosts their emotional quotient. Trust and motivation play a very important role in retaining teachers as teaching is a service and not a job. it needs to be carried out without the anticipation of gratitude or a huge bank balance. It involves countless hours and it is not just a 9 to 5 job. I encourage every teacher should talk more about what makes them stay in these jobs despite the relative lack of rewards (in the financial sense’ and the relative lack of prestige which thereby inspires others to begin to see it as a viable option.

Amanora is a haven for learning but apart from just academia, we are firm believers in the holistic development of a child and thus have a 1ange of programmes designed exclusively for the enhancement of the social skills of children. Be that sports, vocational training, class activities, field trips etc. Amanora has a lot to offer to bring out the hidden potential of the youth. Walt Disney very rightly said and I quote, “Our greatest natural resource is in the minds of our children”.  I believe that each child is special and has a bright future in front of them and so when I came into Amanora, my main target was to give that bright future to even the children with special needs and thus from teacher sensitization to class sensitization and even new teaching techniques were all introduced. “Mistakes have the power to turn you into something better than you were before” that is the belief system that I would like to instil in my children. No one is born perfect but each one can strive for perfection and that is exactly what my school represents. it did not begin as a perfect school, it built its way to near perfection and there is yet so many more milestones to achieve. Similarly my children will only be perfect when they make mistakes and they learn from it.

Based on my corporate background, I introduced the concept of the School Development Plan (SDP) that caters to short and long term goals, the idea behind it being that when you visualize, only then can you materialize. Currently my vision is set up on introducing the 11th and 12th grade at Amanora and hopefully soon that too shall materialize.

Along my journey, the most important thing that | have learnt are the magical 3 Rs; Respect for self and others, Responsibility of your actions and Retrospect your decisions. To my dear teachers all I can say is understand the true calling of our profession and remember that a mediocre teacher tells, a good teacher explains, a superior teacher demonstrates however, only a great teacher inspires. So be a teacher who inspires her students.

To conclude I would like to quote Robert Frost “I am not a teacher but merely an awakener.”

Thank you!