Now in her 23rd year of teaching Mrs. Parvathy Sridhar hasn’t always had it easy. Coming from India to the U.S was definitely a challenge for Mrs. Sridhar, especially in the teaching environment. “Before coming to the U.S I had 17 years of teaching experience in India , but these were private schools. I never had experience teaching public schools,” Sridhar said. 

It took Mrs. Sridhar a while to find a good school to settle into. In 2006 she attended 3 school interviews and wasn’t pleased with the first 2 interviews. “I was qualified and met all the requirements to become a teacher at these two schools, but they wanted me to run the SOLs and I didn’t have experience with the materials being introduced to me,” she said. 

Finally, Mrs. Sridhar was pleased with her interview with West Po, and took a position here. She enjoys working for the math department here. 

Mrs. Sridhar opened up about her life and compared life in India to life in America. When she came to America she started noticing all these differences there were between kids in America and kids in India. “ Since most families paid for an education for their children they were really on it and took things seriously, while here in America education is free and some kids take that for granted,” Sridhar said. 

She came from a place where education was one of the most important things. “When I started teaching in America and hearing all these students talk about going to work after school, I wondered why they needed to work when education should be their top priority. I then started realizing that kids from America are much more independent than the kids in India. The kids in America are 16 and 17 working, while in India that’s not normal for kids to work, she said.

In her free time, Mrs. Sridhar enjoys cooking and gardening. She likes staying active during the day and that’s one of the reasons she enjoys teaching high school kids. “ I feel active when teaching, my students make me feel active,” she said. Mrs. Sridhar thinks that the way to achieve success is to have a goal, “Having a goal is the way to success, I had a goal and completed my master degree at 21.”