“Teach for All” campaign to tap potential of young graduates
August 2, 2008 – 11:10 amAround this time next year, 100 fresh college graduates will find themselves back in the classroom—but this time they’ll be standing in the front, teaching. They may not want to be teachers, they may have no teaching degrees, and they may never teach again. But, for two years they’ll work in primary schools and other education institutes as part of the inaugural batch of the Teach For India, or TFI, campaign.
Quality education: A file photo of a school in Anoopshahr in Uttar Pradesh. The Teach For India campaign is based on the Teach For America programme that was launched in the US in 1989. (Photo: Harikrishna Katragadda/Mint)
Quality education: A file photo of a school in Anoopshahr in Uttar Pradesh. The Teach For India campaign is based on the Teach For America programme that was launched in the US in 1989. (Photo: Harikrishna Katragadda/Mint)
“The essential mission is to expand educational opportunities globally but with local enterprise,” says Puja Sondhi, acting chief operating officer of Teach For All, an umbrella organization that is helping to set up such campaigns in 10 other countries as well. TFI is based on Teach For America, or TFA, a programme that began in 1989 with the express purpose of plucking promising graduates out of college, training them to tutor for five intense weeks, and installing them for two years in low-income schools.The result was what one American journalist called “the Peace Corps for struggling city schools”. Graduates with good intentions found themselves in tough neighbourhoods like New York’s Harlem or the Bronx, facing difficult-to-control students who were exhausting, and in some cases even intimidating.
TFI, funded wholly by a $2.6 million (more than Rs11 crore) grant from the Michael and Susan Dell Foundation, started by computer-maker Dell Inc. founder Michael Dell and his wife, will winnow its 100 candidates over a three-month selection process starting in September. Candidates will be trained in March and April, and then sent to 50 schools in Hyderabad and Pune. By 2013, the TFI road map plans to have 2,000 participants across eight locations in India.
The mission to attract applicants has already begun, via a “Teach India” advertising campaign by TFI’s media partner, The Times of India, the newspaper published by Bennett, Coleman and Co. Ltd, or BCCL, that also publishes The Economic Times. BCCL competes with HT Media Ltd, publisher of the Hindustan Times and Mint.
“That is the first phase,” Sondhi says. “In the second phase, we’ll invite people to apply directly to us and start the process.” “In Pune, we’ll be working with government schools, as the municipality has been very supportive,” says Shaheen Mistri, the interim leader of TFI. “In Hyderabad, it will be low-income private schools.” TFI initially pitched for Mumbai, “but there was not much enthusiasm on the part of authorities,” he adds.
Source: http://www.livemint.com/2008/06/12001803/2008/07/12000421/8216Teach-for-All8217-ca.html