A man for all seasons

Know your Principal: Arun Prakash
Principal Sai International School

Abhishek Pandey

Arun Prakash loves to click photographs. He is a lens man from the heart. His hobby of clicking photographs landed him in a newspaper job as a photographer in Allahabad. Mr. Prakash has a lot of his pictures on his computer. And, he still loves photography and leaves no chance to capture a fleeting moment. 

From his student days, he has had a love for non-academic books, newspapers and magazines. Being from Allahabad, he had an opportunity to be in touch with well-known Hindi literary personalities including Sumitra Nandan Pant, Mahadevi Verma, Firaq Gorakhpuri and many others.

He is the favourite of his students for one simple reason.  He is always there for them. Students can reach him in his office at any time of the day or can catch him on Facebook. Mr. Prakash is a tech-savvy person and interacts with students online too. He listens to them and answers their queries.

Mr. Prakash has many feathers in his cap. He has been founder-principal of many prominent schools in India and abroad. He graduated from Allahabad University and completed his Ph.D. from there.  He began his career in the same university as a lecturer (1981-88). During that period, he used to help in script writing for plays staged by the Indian People’s Theatre Association (IPTA). He used to organize plays and dramas and also motivated youth to participate.

  

Later, he served DPS (Korba) as a senior teacher (1988-95) and also became vice-principal of the school. In 1997 he was the founder-principal of DPS, Bongaigaon (Assam).  He admits that his job as a principal in Bongaigaon was the toughest. He used to get threatening calls from violent activists.  It was difficult to convince them that he was working for the welfare of their people.

He also served in DPS (Guwahati), DPS (Bilaspur), DPS, Jeddah (Saudi Arabia) and Academy International (Dubai). After serving these schools, he came to Bhubaneswar in 2007 and played an active role in establishing Sai International School that began functioning in April 2008.

Talking about the cut-throat competition these days, he says, “Competition was always a part of student life but it is becoming tougher day-by-day because parents’ expectations are high these days in comparison to our days.”

“The reason is that parents want their children to become more successful than themselves. Parents must listen to their children’s problems and it will definitely help them in many ways.”

Explaining his vision for the school and his students, Mr. Prakash said: “My vision is to make every child happy. Learning cannot take place if students are in distress. If study is stressful then students will forget. No one forgets his girlfriend’s number. The reason is obvious. My aim is to make learning fun and easy for students.”