Testimonial for Aslam

Since my childhood, I found Aslam as a progressive and an intelligent individual engaged in not only his studies but also in making pen-friends, collecting stamps, coins, bank notes, view cards, maps and magazines at a global level. I saw him establishing the VOA Fan Club in Bandai Khara possibly with a view to having his community contact stronger and being more social. Above all, he was a talented individual at a very young age. These were some of the attributes suggesting that he was a fun-loving person with a lot of energy and enthusiasm.

I used to have occasional contacts with him. During my personal visits to our village, I used to see him and get an update on what was happening to him. I was always interested in his personal wellbeing.

He got himself engaged in educating young students in a private setting. Last time, when I went home possibly before I departed for Canada, I heard from him that he was going to set up his own training centre for young students. After about 5 years, we resumed our contacts. I gathered that the materials that once he collected as a matter of his own interests were being used as education tools for teaching his students. He transformed those materials into very useful and interesting training aids for his innovative teaching.

Since, I had long been familiar with his ideas and thinking, I could easily understand the way he was moving forward. I have seen very few individuals who invest time, energy and efforts in something that is primarily meant for education and information sharing purposes. However, I found him quite different in that he eventually managed to get his website up and running to demonstrate to the people not only in his locality but also around the world about his passions, ideas and approaches to a new way of teaching young students for enhancing their learning styles.

Nowadays, we understand that the lecture method of educating students is of very little value. They remember only about 7 percent of what is taught through verbal means, such as lecture. The rest of the learning and understanding comes through para-verbal means (38 percent), such as tones, pitches and speech rates, and non-verbal means (55 percent), such as postures, gestures, facial expressions, and spatial distances. A good article by R Windle and S Warren on communication skills and teaching approaches can be found at this link.

Communication is the key nowadays in everything whether it is meant to be used for education, presentation or discussion. Proper communication ensures that the message gets transmitted in its entirety to the audience.

The reason that I have introduced the concept of communication skills and teaching approaches here is that the way Aslam teaches students and sends messages across, I have a feeling that he must have realized the bottlenecks of traditional teaching techniques (teachers lecturing and students getting bored…and are sleeping!!). Subsequently, he figured in his own way using his pre-existing resources with the addition of a computer and made his training centre “Protiddhoni Shikkha Kendra”, an ideal place for young students to build a strong foundation for further development in their student life. He made education for students enjoyable, interesting and humorous. Very few people can do this and Aslam does deserve appreciations.

Now, the question could come up on whether the teaching techniques being used by him are effective. The number of students who obtained junior and primary scholarships because of his unique coaching is the strongest evidence to suggest that his techniques indeed can make a difference in the performance of students. As a result, I presume, the span of his teaching centre continues to spread over time to a significant number now from only five students, a couple of years ago.

I understand that Aslam not only gets involved in making a direct contribution to enhancing the knowledge level of students but also makes an invaluable contribution to the social and environmental development for the local community. His recent endeavor in collecting relief aids and sending them off to the cyclone SIDR-affected people is a prime example in this regard.

Just to conclude, I am very pleased to see the work he has done so far in helping students using the best teaching method possible, assisting the community in social matters and participating in activities for environmental protection.

I wish him continued success in life.

Bhagbat Sarker, CRSP

Canadian Registered Safety Professional

Toronto, Canada

www.bhagbat.com