An Introduction

Before I start talking about Teach for India, let me give you some background on me. I am a B.com from Ness wadia College, a Chartered Financial Analyst from ICFAI and recently I have completed my LLB from Pune University. I am very aptly qualified for my previous job at PwC as an Indirect Tax Consultant.

My Desk at PwC

This is my desk at PwC. As you can see I was so good at my job that I was always surrounded by files pertaining to the clients I was working on. PwC did teach me a lot. It taught me respect and teamwork and quality over quantity. But still what I was doing there was not enough for me as a person.

I have an inherent belief that the only way the world can become better is if people actually go out and change it. So the question that always haunted me in my cushy consultancy job was Am I changing the world, Am I making it a better place? Was filing the service tax returns of a company making a difference to the world? I think not.

So I started wondering what to do about it. I realized very early on that the root cause of anything that goes wrong in this world, be it littering, ill treatment of animals, spitting on the ground,etc - all stem from one main cause – lack of education. At this time Teach for India walked into my life. I applied for TFI on a whim. I mean I honestly didn’t believe that I would actually give up an awesome job at such a reputed company , earning quite a decent salary, with growth opportunities and all such perks, to do what? Teach kids? But today I am glad that my inner voice guided me to this place and I am glad that I listened to that inner voice. Now I have the opportunity to actually tap into that root cause and change the world from there.

These past five weeks training with TFI have been truly transformational.

Abhijit, Me,Meenakshi and Prakriti at the Happy Tree 

I love my work place and my peers, my friends. We were 4 teachers to a class room. That is us, with me hugging the Happy Tree which has flowers with all out student’s names. Our classroom was called the Happy Learners. You can see the joy in our smiles. We would go to summer school by 7 am and everyday we felt that we didn’t get there early enough. 9 o clock, the usual corporate timings was half way through the day for us. We might have worked for 20 hours and slept for only 4 hours everyday during these past five weeks, but every morning when our students walked into class we were wide awake ready to teach them something  new.

These bright faces have been my clients for the past five weeks.

Class 2B Class Assembly

The kid showing of the V in the front row is Pranav – Pranav wants to be a CID man. The only student who doesn’t want to be an Engineer, Doctor or Teacher. His father is a Policeman,  that is where he gets his inspiration from. Pranav is the 3 feet nothing of a boy who always wants to answer, who can never keep quiet, who will yell out the answers without being asked to. But, when he was made the class monitor, his CID side came out. He was so efficient at making sure that every student sat in his or her place, without pushing or pulling the child. And that is a big thing. By the end of summer school he was the one who had the responsibility to make sure everyone in the class was quiet and he performed it so very brilliantly while his own performance also improved dramatically.

The boy with folded arms in the front row next to the girl in the red dress is Yash Avale. Don’t let the picture fool you; Yash is one of the most kinesthetic learners I have come across. He cannot sit still, he cannot sustain his attention when the teacher is explaining something, he cannot keep quiet. He always needs to move his hands. He would poke people, play drums with his pencils, hum in the middle of class. And let me tell you, he would still know everything, but would never apply it. I was lucky enough to discover his fondness for clay when I gave him a small piece of blue tack. And I say lucky because most of the time you discover the problem too late to find a solution. The one day he had blue tack with him, he kept quiet through the class and actually listened. At the end of summer school I gave him a piece of clay and told him that whenever he needs to move his hands, use the clay and it will work. I know it will work because I am just the same.

There is one more story about Yash. We had to do a community visit during our five weeks of training. My co teachers who visited Yash’s house told me later on that at home Yash was shy and quiet and did not say move around or even say a word. This was a complete contrast to the ever moving, ever talking effervescent Yash in my classroom. At home he was repressed and in school he was free.

Together we can make a difference

I wish I could tell you the story of every student in my class. But that would mean us sitting here till midnight, because there is just so much to tell. When I see these faces, I wonder why is it that they don’t have the same opportunities as the kids their age in private schools do.They are just as brilliant and just as capable or learning. It is nothing but the Achievement Gap. By sheer luck of draw, these kids were born into low income families who cannot afford private schools. They have to go to Government run Schools.  And our country is such that Government schools are associated with poor education quality where these happy faces fall victim to this unfairness. 

They don’t even know it yet.

Doing what I believe in - One A for Apple at a time

Our students are some of the brightest and most eager minds that I have met. If I can spend the next two years, proving to them that they have the potential to do anything they want, to be any thing they want, teaching them how to imbibe knowledge and skill with or without me being there to help them and showing them the things that they can do, I know I would be making a difference in this world.

Thank you!