Teach For India - Teach For India Fellows

Teach For India Fellows

Teach For India Fellows consist of Indian citizens and foreign citizens of Indian origin. Past Fellows have included Indian-origin residents from the United States, United Kingdom and Canada. TFI's selection process is rather rigorous and only 7.5 percent of the applicants made it into the program in 2012. TFI Fellows have come from top-notch institutions such as the Indian Institute of Technology, Indian Institute of Management, FMS Delhi, Harvard University, Princeton University, New York University, St. Xavier's College, Mumbai, National Law School (Bangalore), Shri Ram College of Commerce (Delhi), BITS - Pilani, and St. Stephens, Delhi. Many TFI Fellows in recent years are young professionals who have worked in the corporate sector for organisations such as Goldman Sachs, McKinsey, Microsoft, JPMorgan, Hindustan Unilever, Infosys and Thermax.

After being selected by TFI, Fellows undergo a rigorous training program. This is followed by placement in government-run or low-income private schools for two consecutive academic years. The Fellows are then continuously advised by TFI. The Fellows are expected to get to know their students in and out of the classroom, create instructional plans that match not just the class' but the individual student's needs, teach in an engaging manner (and make assessments to ensure all students are making progress. TFI calls this "Classroom Instructional Leadership". TFI Fellows' teaching methods have been frequently cited in the media. Apple featured one TFI Fellow's Class in its 2012 WWDC Conference for ingeniously using technology in day-to-day teaching.

TFI also requires its Fellows to do a Leadership Project as part of which Fellows discuss with the community and school authorities, and then choose and tackle one fundamental challenge to the students' achievement. This helps Fellows build their leadership and project management skills which they can use in any sphere of work after the Fellowship. The idea is that the experience will shape and guide the methods through which Fellows tackle educational inequity in the country, both in the short term and long term.

TFI Alumni till date have gone into a variety of careers. In line with its philosophy of impact on educational reform through its alumni, TFI offers Fellows 5 optional courses in the second year of their fellowship, on how to effect change in any given sector of interest: Social enterprise, CSR, Government, Education or Advocacy.

Teach for India appears to have made steady progress since its inception in 2008 (the first fellows started teaching in 2009). The organization's team asserts that almost 85 percent of the schools that TFI is associated with have requested more fellows.