NICE International School teacher Nilu Anandappa wins Global Excellency and Asian Awards

Nilu Anandappa 

Nilu Anandappa proudly represented Sri Lanka in two well-recognised international contests – Global Excellency Awards by Global Digital Academy and Asia Awards 20/21 powered by Rula Awards and World Research Congress and bagged the prestigious award title of ‘Asia’s Outstanding Teacher of the Year’.

She was titled with Royal Honours in both contests. She is 32 years of age and a proud product of Ave Maria Convent a leading Catholic girls’ school in Negombo. 

Nilu says everything she is today is totally belonged to her loving parents who dedicated their lives to bring her up. According to Nilu she was a forward student since her childhood. She loved and participated in all the extracurricular activities specially music. Nilu is a good singer too. She had been the organist of St. Peter’s Church for about eight years and also an active member in the choir.

The passion of becoming a teacher started when she was 13. “Once I was walking with my friend and we noticed a primary teacher struggling to form a straight line with some naughty bunch of kids. You might be thinking ‘what’s the big deal in it?’ Same as my friend; we carry different perceptions as individuals. We had a firm argument and finally she gave up and accepted that teaching primary kids is not an easy task at all. Someone might think it’s a simple job but no, the real fact the complexity is noticed once you start experiencing it. It’s not an easy task to mould a little child into a correct path with a helping hand and a proper guidance. That perception made me to lead my goal of becoming a qualified teacher,” she explained.

The main objective she focused was to encourage and higher order thinking in a way that increases student performance, to build a long term career as an experienced teacher in a position that offers opportunities for career growth, and to keep up with cutting edge teaching technologies. Patience, empathy, self-improvement, adaptable, stress management and communication are her recognised skills. 

At the moment she is a teacher at NICE International as a class teacher and also a subject teacher. Her favourite area is Mathematics. Nilu teaches Mathematics, English, Science, Geography and History. 

Speaking about the school, she said: “It’s actually my second home. Mostly my personal theme of NICE is ‘We are from different countries but still we smile from the same language’. It’s a loving home actually, an environmental friendly home for locals and foreign kids. Starting from preschool to A2 it shows a massive updated development yearly. Something special about NICE is it embraces a kid with warm arms full of affection, knowledge and proper guidance. Waking up and making a move to school with a happy face gives me a new lesson each day. The uniqueness of each and every teacher has made the school a leading international school in Sri Lanka.”

Project based learning is an interesting area she loves to work with. 

Nilu said teaching is a blessed career, a career where all the professions are built. “You can be a teacher by completing all your exams but you cannot be a complete teacher if you don’t have the ability and the creativity to teach. A qualified teacher will never say a student you are weak, you cannot, and you will never pass exams. If a teacher pours the child negativity she or he is not suitable to this career. We are the people who should guide them mould them help them to clear the path to lead the future. Favouritism   should not be in this career. Each and every student should be our priority. The future is unpredictable; you might underestimate a child thinking he cannot and he will never succeed, but we never know, he might be the person you will have to get your car repaired when it faces a sudden breakdown on the road. Be positive, remember every child has a unique talent; we as teachers should recognise it. Teaching is not only covering a huge syllabus of loads of books but bringing up a child into a good citizen is also important.”

Nilu loves challenges. Her motto in life is ‘follow your heart, not the crowd’ and ‘stand for the right even if you are alone’. In the future she wishes to build her own school for special needs.

Speaking about the awards, she said: “I feel very blessed and grateful for being an awardee in this international forum of Global Excellency Awards by Global Digital Academy and Asia Awards 20/21 powered by Rula Awards and World Research Congress and bagging the prestigious award of ‘Asia’s Outstanding Teacher of the Year. I am thankful for the recognition on a global platform.

“I would like to thank my parents, without their dedication I would have not be able to be who I am today and my husband who always tries to encourage me. Special thanks to Kawisha and family, a student of mine, I never felt I had no siblings once I met you all. Thanks for supporting me from the start. I am so fortunate and blessed that I had you in all ups and downs of this path.”

She ended with a thought by Victoria Erickson: “‘Remember that you are more than skin and bones. You are 1,000 stories of before, 1,000 stories of potential, 1,000 stories you’ve yet to see and know, feel and breathe. There’s more to come. And it’s something beautiful.’ Every no and every rejection that came to my life made me who am I. Listen to your heart, listen to yourself.”