Good afternoon to the respected principal mam, esteemed

faculty members, staff, distinguished alumni, and my dear

friends. It gives me immense pleasure to stand before you on
behalf of B.Ed batch 2023. My name is Astha Pandey and I am
grateful and honoured, to stand before you today.
Before I begin, I would like to express my gratitude to everyone
who helped me come, this far. First of all, to almighty God,
apart from him I can do nothing.
I would like to thank Sally mam for always motivating us
throughout the year. Thank you to all the teachers for not only
teaching us things about our course but also about our life and for
caring about our well-being and our future. Thank you to all the
staff for always welcoming us with a smile and especially _____ for
letting us know the mood of Sally mam if we can approach her or
not.
Thank you to my family, my mother, my brothers, my husband, and
my in-laws for always being so supportive. I cannot be what I am
today without their love and cooperation. Thank you to all my
friends and classmates for sharing notes and lesson plans.
I have a preschool business in Ulwe since 2018. Its name is Creative
Learners Preschool. A special mention to all my preschooler’s
parents. They all have always supported and encouraged me
throughout the course of B.ed. The journey hasn’t been easy. There
were a lot of ups and downs in the process. You know handling a
bunch of preschoolers is not a cakewalk. It requires a great amount
of diligence, hard work, and pure love to deal with them.
I started taking tuition at the age of eighteen. I believe that I have
not chosen teaching but the teaching profession has chosen me.
Slowly and steadily, it became my passion without even realizing it.
It is what I do. Teaching is what defines my life’s purpose. Obsessed
with this passion, Creative Learners Preschool was born where I
could use my ideas and skills and pour my heart and soul into
teaching. It was the third year of doing business and I somewhere
felt stuck. I felt I had used all my knowledge but I still had not
achieved what I wanted. I decided to upgrade my knowledge and
that’s when I came across this beautiful course of B.ed.
As Henry Ford had said,
“Anyone who stops learning is old, whether at twenty or eighty.
Anyone who keeps learning stays young.”
So, I gave my CET and I was worried about which college would help
me to achieve my objectives. That’s when I spoke to my husband and
came to know that my mother-in-law was a student in Pillais from
the first B.ed batch back in 2001. She advised me to speak directly to
Sally mam. And that’s how my B.ed journey started.

On the first day of college, I saw a classroom full of diversity. Our

course was delayed due to COVID, and we all were bombarded with
community work, assignments, and group presentations. We didn’t
even get a chance to breathe. For me, it was a pretty tedious task as
managing school and classes was difficult due to time clashes. I used
to run to school in the morning by 8.45 and then by noon rush to
college. I came back by 4 pm and got started with tuition and by 9
pm I used to reach home. And above all, I got married the same year
I started college. It was overwhelming for me to take care of
everything but since I have a supportive husband and in-laws I could
manage to do well. As my Mother-in-law had done her B.ed from
Pillais, she knew how strict Sally mam was and what she expected
out of us. Her guidance was very valuable. My mother who is my
backbone through all thick and thin is the driving force behind my
love for teaching. My brother has taught me to give 100% in
everything I do, so it all helped me in this achievement. Also, it has
always been my philosophy that if you don’t be in the driver's seat of
your life, life will start driving you.
And at some point, life did start driving me when I managed to get
the first C grade of my life which led me to cry my eyes out in front
of the whole class. Look at me, I used to think B.ed was all about
mugging up the theories Jean Piaget and John Dewey and
presenting it on a piece of paper but it was my teachers and
examiners who showed me the larger vision of what this course was
all about serving the world with your knowledge. And when I opened
my mind to this very philosophy. I started excelling in all my exams
and it translated into efficiently managing my preschool. I started
improvising my classroom by the inclusion of micro and macro
lesson plans, core values, and recapitulation. The results were
unbelievable. I gained perspective of Gandhiji, and Rabindranath
Tagore and was able to use them in my day-to-day life. I have started
enjoying it very much as I was learning and doing it together. The
insights into national educational policies and how NCF affects our
whole education system made me think that we as teachers have the
power and the ability to make this world a better place. While I was
motivated enough to work harder towards my goals, here came the
chapter where we all were tested to our extent. ‘Internship’.
Managing school and internship became an uphill battle for me. But
with my hard work and perseverance, I overcame these difficulties
and achieved the first rank in my batch. As Subhas Chandra Bose
has said, “With hard work, focus, and perseverance, you can achieve
whatever you want in your life.”
Life will throw bullets, arrows, and even rocks at you; the beauty is
in how you dodge them and make your life meaningful. There are
many things in life for which we feel bad and keep complaining. But
you know we cannot change what people think about us and our
circumstances but what we can do is to stop complaining and start
taking responsibility. To everyone in this room go after the things
that scare you, the thing you really want, and do not let anyone tell
you that there’s something you cannot do. I urge you all to live every
day to the fullest and allow yourself to feel all that life has to offer.
Thank you once again Pillais College of Education and
Research for providing me with this platform. Thank you everyone
and wish you all the best!