Teach For India (TFI) Fellowship attracts people from all walks of life, irrespective of their qualification. All that matters is passion for teaching, love for children and an aptitude for leadership. What is so striking about TFI’s approach to education that gives schools, where Fellows teach, an edge over others?
Thasneem Fathima, a TFI Fellow from the batch of 2016, explains: “Having taught children as part of my part-time job in Singapore, I noticed differences between the typical school and schools where TFI is involved.”
The difference, she says, is at the grassroots level. “In most schools, students are helped with the concepts, homework and exam preparation. Students already have access and exposure to the resources through school. But here, it starts from scratch.” She says that teaching children from low-income backgrounds is all about providing them the exposure they would otherwise miss.
For the Fellows at TFI, it is a way of giving back to the society. Though Krishna has an engineering background, he says, “It is more than just teaching. It is an avenue for growth and a test of my limits. The fellowship envisions you to experience the reality of education inequity in the country and work on the challenges that you have identified post-Fellowship.” He continues, “Leaders are born out of the teachers who strive for excellent education in their classrooms and create student leaders.”
He believes the experience one gains at TFI is like no other. Agrees Alekyaa Mathangi, who believes that the Fellowship experience is unique for every member and that’s the only commonality of the experience. For Alekyaa, it was the start of something very meaningful.
“In the five weeks of the training period at Pune, we met passionate and like-minded individuals who constantly pushed us to achieve more and dream big. We would spend most of our time planning and working, but it never seemed stressful because we all knew what we were working towards,” she recounts.
At the heart of this entire movement are the students, who are the inspiration for Fellows such as Alekyaa. The anecdote that she shares is awe-inspiring. “Recently, we were discussing problems in our community and my students picked ‘Alcohol Abuse’.
It was then the students realised that 38 out of 43 of them get beaten up because one of their parents comes home inebriated. And here were these eight-year-olds talking animatedly about prohibition and permanent closing of TASMACs, so that they can get a little peace at night.
As I watched the kids discuss, debate, cry, express support and love, all in 40 minutes, about something that affected them on a day-to-day basis, I realised that kids are capable of just about anything.”
