12-year-old from Alibag teaches kids via YouTube

Suhaima Bangara, a 12-year-old Class 7 student from Alibag, is busy with classes. Not as a student, but as a teacher. Bangara loves teaching and used to teach younger children in her society before the pandemic struck. She now teaches them through her YouTube channel, with each video on a chapter from the state board syllabus, and the lectures are free.

A student of St Mary’s Convent School in Alibag, Bangara’s family hails from Kasargod in Kerala and settled down in Alibag. Her father Saleem, 43, runs a bakery while her mother Ruksana, 36, is a homemaker.

“Teaching is my hobby and I started teaching children before the pandemic. After the pandemic, they stopped coming and I missed teaching. That’s when the thought of a YouTube channel for teaching the children came to my mind and I asked my parents about it. They too were excited,” she said.

Bangara and her three siblings started a channel – Cappuccino BroSis – during the lockdown and it was mostly about them, small challenges they would take up and her elder brother Razeen, 16, would edit the videos. From there, she learnt the skills of video editing.

“Small children usually get bored of online classes, hence I felt if a student taught them, it might interest them. Even if one child watches my videos and learns from them, I would be very happy,” she said.

Her typical day is spending time with her siblings — three-year-old sister Swiyyah, nine-year-old Rehana and Razeen, making videos and studying.

“I try to make a video every day and cover one chapter. On Saturdays and Sundays, I don’t make videos. On other days too, I do my studies first and then make the videos,” she said.

Her sister Rehana, who studies in Class 4, sometimes helps her with the camera for shooting while she edits and uploads the videos herself.

She uses an app to refer to the textbooks and till now, she has covered six chapters of English and three from Maths.

Her parents are proud of her. “She is very fond of children and loves teaching them. We also motivate her to make videos. In a way, she is also brushing up her knowledge,” Ruksana said.

Even as she aspires to be a paediatric doctor, she believes that she might always try to keep up with her teaching hobby somehow.