“What do you want to grow up to be?”
During my time as a volunteer at Teach For India, earlier this year, I posed the question to my class of 13-year-old boys in a public school in Delhi’s Chhatarpur. The next hour was filled with the noise of 15 pens putting ideas to ink.
It was only later while grading their work, that I realised a possible miscommunication in the ask. What I had expected to be essays filled with their , turned out to be quite different — in a good way.
Hardik wanted to grow up to be “a good person”, Suryansh wanted to grow up to “end poverty”, while Yuvraj expressed his wish to “grow into someone with a superpower to ensure that not just the boys in the village but even their sisters, were sent to school”.
I kept reading.
Education must transcend the boundaries of the classroom, Shaheen Mistri, founder of Teach For India, tells me. The sole goal of academics isn’t perfecting one’s ABCs, her vision reveals. Instead, it must create a dent in the mindsets of children, thus raising a generation of changemakers in the making.
It was with this objective in mind that Shaheen set out to pioneer Teach For India — — in 2009. Currently, there are 50 million children in low-income communities across the country who are being impacted indirectly through the non-profit’s ripple effects.
Almas Mukri was 11 years old when she was introduced to a TFI classroom for the very first time. Having spent years loathing maths — “The school I had been attending was very strict. The teacher would teach us sums without asking if we’d understood the concept.” — Almas blames the lackadaisical attitude for her disinterest in the subject.
But in class 6, at her new school, things changed; she struck a deep friendship with the subject that she once detested. And the two are still going strong. Proof of this lies in her students who look forward to their maths class every day.
Teach For India impacts 1,00,000 children from low-income communities through its host of programmes
In her role as a Teach For India Fellow now, Almas is completing the circle of good. “I try to make my just like I was helped to. Bhaiyya (the TFI Fellow) would keep extra classes to simplify the concepts. He would make me redo sums until I got it right. The fact that someone was putting in so much effort for me, made me work harder.”
Almas is one of the 1,000 Fellows who are part of the Teach For India network that is re-examining the paradigms of learning in schools across the country.
As Shaheen unravels the journey that led to the inception of this radical idea, she credits her experiences with Akanksha — a non-profit that she started in 1989 to enable access to high-quality education for children from low-income communities in India. “My time at Akanksha helped me see the power education had over children’s lives. Not only were they graduating and getting good jobs but it was having a profound impact on their value systems,” she says.
She illustrates this observation with examples. “Many of the children who were helped by Akanksha started stepping up to help their families, they began and raising their voices against societal issues.” These children, she observed, weren’t simply using education to get to the next academic milestone, but instead leveraging it to influence the collective conscience.
“We began to realise that every child has potential and wanted to find a way to unleash that potential,” she smiles. The question was how to do it. And her answer arrived one day in the form of a visit by four Teach For America volunteers to Akanksha.
Through edtech, curriculums focused on interactive learning and remedial teaching, Teach For India is creating a revolution in classrooms
Conversations with the youngsters introduced Shaheen to a goal that she had been considering. “They spoke about education as a mission. They believed educational inequity was unfair and that it needed to be changed.” Inspired, Shaheen met with Wendy Kopp, former CEO of Teach For America to understand the nuances of the model.
What started out as an empirical idea to of India has now scaled into a revolution; one that is helping millions of children make their dreams a reality.
At one of their Christmas parties, hosted for the underprivileged children, Shaheen observed a little girl refuse to eat the vanilla ice cream she had been served. She was intent on taking it home.
“But it will melt,” Shaheen explained to her gently.
“I want to share it with my younger brother,” the girl reasoned.
Ice cream was a rarity in the community. And if the little boy at home couldn’t have some, the girl didn’t feel she deserved it either. The mindset, Shaheen discovered, was deeply ingrained, not just when it came to ice cream, but also education.
Crores of children do not have the opportunity to study or go to school. Teach For India is attempting to bridge this gap in education.
According to the 2011 Census, 8.4 crore children in India between the ages of 5 and 17 do not attend school. On further probing, it was discovered that poverty and the need to work to were the main hindrances.
Growing up, Shaheen, who had the privilege of studying in ten schools across five countries, was no stranger to how education was almost perceived as a luxury by the bulk of India’s population. Cognisant of her good fortune when it came to academics, Shaheen grew up wondering ‘Why can’t every child be as lucky?’ From asking the question to starting a revolutionary idea — Teach For India — that answers it, she sees her journey as a testament to her resolve to ensure education is no longer a far-fetched dream.
Shaheen Mistri is the founder of Teach For India, an endeavour to ensure every child in India has the opportunity to scale their dream
“Even today, our classrooms see children who struggle with different dimensions of poverty. But when you move from thinking of them as something to be fixed and instead as children being empowered to drive change for others beyond themselves, it will shift the way we see them. It’s about leaving a legacy of a world that is better and kinder for all people.”
The Teach For India Fellowship encourages youth to lend their services to government schools across the country
Elaborating on how Teach For India has expanded and diversified, Shaheen says the platform comprises different verticals. These include the Fellowship arm — where talented and dedicated individuals are placed in low-income government schools where they support the school through curriculum and ed-tech; online learning programmes for pre-service educators, teachers and school leaders conducted through their platform, Firki, InnovatED, a platform for training and in education, and TFIx, an incubator for education entrepreneurs across India who aspire to launch their own contextualised versions of Teach For India’s Fellowship to serve vulnerable children in their region.
Each arm targets a goal that is the need of the hour. “The work isn’t glamorous, it is difficult,” Shaheen emphasises, adding, “But what sets aside each Fellow is that they are willing to navigate these larger-than-life challenges in their classrooms, which are almost microcosms of society — you’ll find children who are victims of abuse, those who go to sleep hungry, those whose parents are unemployed, and those who don’t have the finances for a medical condition they are battling.”
Teach For India is ensuring a movement directed towards educational equity for every child in India
The kind of education and help the children need surpasses theory. “Our Fellows, some of whom are in their twenties, are willing to do whatever it takes to help these children. And that’s where real leadership comes from; it means putting someone where you stand, if not a little bit ahead of where you are. It means being of service to the children who need you,” Shaheen underscores while emphasising that they have robust reporting channels, child protection policies, , and stringent training of teachers and children in POSH (Sexual Harassment of Women at Workplace (Prevention, Prohibition and Redressal) Act, 2013.
As we come to the end of our chat, Shaheen does not need to reiterate the radical revolution that Teach For India is creating. I can see it first hand in the form of 15 essays titled, ‘What I Want to Grow Up to Be’. My assessment is complete and I must admit, not one failed to surprise me with its wit and soul.
Edited by Arunava Banerjee; Pictures source: Teach For India
During my time as a volunteer at Teach For India, earlier this year, I posed the question to my class of 13-year-old boys in a public school in Delhi’s Chhatarpur. The next hour was filled with the noise of 15 pens putting ideas to ink.
It was only later while grading their work, that I realised a possible miscommunication in the ask. What I had expected to be essays filled with their , turned out to be quite different — in a good way.
Hardik wanted to grow up to be “a good person”, Suryansh wanted to grow up to “end poverty”, while Yuvraj expressed his wish to “grow into someone with a superpower to ensure that not just the boys in the village but even their sisters, were sent to school”.
I kept reading.
Education must transcend the boundaries of the classroom, Shaheen Mistri, founder of Teach For India, tells me. The sole goal of academics isn’t perfecting one’s ABCs, her vision reveals. Instead, it must create a dent in the mindsets of children, thus raising a generation of changemakers in the making.
It was with this objective in mind that Shaheen set out to pioneer Teach For India — — in 2009. Currently, there are 50 million children in low-income communities across the country who are being impacted indirectly through the non-profit’s ripple effects.
Ensuring a level playing field in education
Almas Mukri was 11 years old when she was introduced to a TFI classroom for the very first time. Having spent years loathing maths — “The school I had been attending was very strict. The teacher would teach us sums without asking if we’d understood the concept.” — Almas blames the lackadaisical attitude for her disinterest in the subject.
But in class 6, at her new school, things changed; she struck a deep friendship with the subject that she once detested. And the two are still going strong. Proof of this lies in her students who look forward to their maths class every day.
Teach For India impacts 1,00,000 children from low-income communities through its host of programmes
In her role as a Teach For India Fellow now, Almas is completing the circle of good. “I try to make my just like I was helped to. Bhaiyya (the TFI Fellow) would keep extra classes to simplify the concepts. He would make me redo sums until I got it right. The fact that someone was putting in so much effort for me, made me work harder.”
Almas is one of the 1,000 Fellows who are part of the Teach For India network that is re-examining the paradigms of learning in schools across the country.
As Shaheen unravels the journey that led to the inception of this radical idea, she credits her experiences with Akanksha — a non-profit that she started in 1989 to enable access to high-quality education for children from low-income communities in India. “My time at Akanksha helped me see the power education had over children’s lives. Not only were they graduating and getting good jobs but it was having a profound impact on their value systems,” she says.
She illustrates this observation with examples. “Many of the children who were helped by Akanksha started stepping up to help their families, they began and raising their voices against societal issues.” These children, she observed, weren’t simply using education to get to the next academic milestone, but instead leveraging it to influence the collective conscience.
“We began to realise that every child has potential and wanted to find a way to unleash that potential,” she smiles. The question was how to do it. And her answer arrived one day in the form of a visit by four Teach For America volunteers to Akanksha.
Through edtech, curriculums focused on interactive learning and remedial teaching, Teach For India is creating a revolution in classrooms
Conversations with the youngsters introduced Shaheen to a goal that she had been considering. “They spoke about education as a mission. They believed educational inequity was unfair and that it needed to be changed.” Inspired, Shaheen met with Wendy Kopp, former CEO of Teach For America to understand the nuances of the model.
What started out as an empirical idea to of India has now scaled into a revolution; one that is helping millions of children make their dreams a reality.
Teach For India: where education goes above and beyond
At one of their Christmas parties, hosted for the underprivileged children, Shaheen observed a little girl refuse to eat the vanilla ice cream she had been served. She was intent on taking it home.
“But it will melt,” Shaheen explained to her gently.
“I want to share it with my younger brother,” the girl reasoned.
Ice cream was a rarity in the community. And if the little boy at home couldn’t have some, the girl didn’t feel she deserved it either. The mindset, Shaheen discovered, was deeply ingrained, not just when it came to ice cream, but also education.
Crores of children do not have the opportunity to study or go to school. Teach For India is attempting to bridge this gap in education.
According to the 2011 Census, 8.4 crore children in India between the ages of 5 and 17 do not attend school. On further probing, it was discovered that poverty and the need to work to were the main hindrances.
Growing up, Shaheen, who had the privilege of studying in ten schools across five countries, was no stranger to how education was almost perceived as a luxury by the bulk of India’s population. Cognisant of her good fortune when it came to academics, Shaheen grew up wondering ‘Why can’t every child be as lucky?’ From asking the question to starting a revolutionary idea — Teach For India — that answers it, she sees her journey as a testament to her resolve to ensure education is no longer a far-fetched dream.
Shaheen Mistri is the founder of Teach For India, an endeavour to ensure every child in India has the opportunity to scale their dream
“Even today, our classrooms see children who struggle with different dimensions of poverty. But when you move from thinking of them as something to be fixed and instead as children being empowered to drive change for others beyond themselves, it will shift the way we see them. It’s about leaving a legacy of a world that is better and kinder for all people.”
The Teach For India Fellowship encourages youth to lend their services to government schools across the country
Elaborating on how Teach For India has expanded and diversified, Shaheen says the platform comprises different verticals. These include the Fellowship arm — where talented and dedicated individuals are placed in low-income government schools where they support the school through curriculum and ed-tech; online learning programmes for pre-service educators, teachers and school leaders conducted through their platform, Firki, InnovatED, a platform for training and in education, and TFIx, an incubator for education entrepreneurs across India who aspire to launch their own contextualised versions of Teach For India’s Fellowship to serve vulnerable children in their region.
‘Our classrooms are microcosms of society’
Each arm targets a goal that is the need of the hour. “The work isn’t glamorous, it is difficult,” Shaheen emphasises, adding, “But what sets aside each Fellow is that they are willing to navigate these larger-than-life challenges in their classrooms, which are almost microcosms of society — you’ll find children who are victims of abuse, those who go to sleep hungry, those whose parents are unemployed, and those who don’t have the finances for a medical condition they are battling.”
Teach For India is ensuring a movement directed towards educational equity for every child in India
The kind of education and help the children need surpasses theory. “Our Fellows, some of whom are in their twenties, are willing to do whatever it takes to help these children. And that’s where real leadership comes from; it means putting someone where you stand, if not a little bit ahead of where you are. It means being of service to the children who need you,” Shaheen underscores while emphasising that they have robust reporting channels, child protection policies, , and stringent training of teachers and children in POSH (Sexual Harassment of Women at Workplace (Prevention, Prohibition and Redressal) Act, 2013.
As we come to the end of our chat, Shaheen does not need to reiterate the radical revolution that Teach For India is creating. I can see it first hand in the form of 15 essays titled, ‘What I Want to Grow Up to Be’. My assessment is complete and I must admit, not one failed to surprise me with its wit and soul.
Sources
by Press Information Bureau, Published on 27 March 2018.
Edited by Arunava Banerjee; Pictures source: Teach For India