As Teach For India celebrates its 15th anniversary, Shaheen Mistri, Founder & CEO, Teach For India takes us through a remarkable journey of impact, innovation, and collective leadership. What began in 2008 with just 87 Fellows has evolved into a powerful movement of over 13,500 leaders who have directly and indirectly impacted more than 50 million children across India. In this insightful interview, Shaheen reflects on the key milestones that have shaped TFI’s journey—from the growth of its Fellowship to the launch of initiatives like Firki, TFIx, InnovatED, and KER, and the recent celebration of their milestone year with the musical ‘With Love.’
Ms. Shaheen also delves into the deeper challenges the Indian education system continues to face, particularly in low-income communities—ranging from lack of holistic learning to child safety and leadership shortages. She outlines the organisation’s ambitious 2032 North Star strategy to develop 50,000 transformative leaders and discusses how student alumni are coming full circle by returning as Fellows. With an emphasis on teaching as leadership and love as a driving force, this conversation uncovers how TFI is reimagining education and building a collective movement towards an India free of educational inequity.
Read on for the full interview below.
Q. Teach For India recently celebrated its 15th anniversary with the musical ‘With Love.’ What are some of the most significant milestones or turning points that have shaped Teach For India into what it is today?
A. 2024 was a special year for us. It marked a significant milestone as Teach For India turned 15. Over the last 15 years, we have built a movement of 12000 leaders who are directly or indirectly enabling young students nationwide to dream and work towards achieving those dreams. Ours is a community of thinkers and doers, innovators and creators, and people who have a collective imagination for a different future for India's children. To celebrate these 15 years, we had put together a beautiful musical ‘With Love’ which showcased the journey of a young girl: Tashi, who explores real stories of hope, love and truth. The musical was also an ode to collective leadership and what ‘lead with love' truly means.
Over the course of Teach For India’s journey, the most significant milestones have been achieved on the back of our vision that every child should be able to attain excellent education and develop the ability to live in an India free of poverty, filled with love. From launching the Fellowship in 2008 with 87 Fellows to 600 Fellows today who are currently reaching out to students across 8 cities (including Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru, Kolkata, Chennai, Hyderabad, Pune and Ahmedabad) and directly impacting 35000 students in our classrooms. Our Alumni have continued to deepen the impact of the movement, with 70% of them working in the education and social sector, reaching over 50 million children in India. What started as a Fellowship has grown into a movement with the addition of Firki, TFIx, InnovatED and KER.
But the true measure of our growth has been the changed trajectory of our students’ lives. We have students studying in esteemed colleges like APU, IIT, and Ashoka University and being active changemakers. In 2024, we welcomed 36 Student Alumni into our Fellowship, and we expect more to join the fold this year. It has been a full-circle moment since we see our students ultimately leading the movement forward.
Q. You’ve impacted over 50 million children through Fellows and alumni. What do you believe has been the most powerful element in driving such large-scale change?
A. We describe our community's work as a “movement of leaders, working collectively, with love,” and these ideas of collective action and leadership rooted in love have enabled the impact that our growing network of Fellows and Alumni has across the education landscape.
Educational equity is a wicked problem, and there are no silver bullet solutions. The path to transforming the lives of children is a long and arduous one. But we have seen that when a critical mass of diverse leaders, with shared purpose and values, collaborate across various levels, and embrace diverse avenues for change, the likelihood of system transformation increases. We have seen that children’s learning isn’t determined by isolated inputs, but by complex systems of interconnected actions that extend beyond the school gates into our communities and societies. And to change and sustain these systems, we need collective leadership. Therefore, what has enabled our community of 13,500+ leaders to drive large-scale change, is just the simple belief that we will achieve more together, and the unwavering commitment to leading with love, to transform systems that are typically rooted in fear.
Sixteen years in, we’re witnessing more than just glimmers of hope across the education system, but also across different geographies and in the country, where our Alumni have been meaningfully convening such that the sum of their parts can be greater than the whole.
Q. Teach For India has set an ambitious goal of developing 50,000 leaders by 2032. How do you plan to achieve this, and what roles will these leaders play across the educational ecosystem?
A. We aim to have 50,000 leaders working collectively, with love to transform the lives of 1 in 10 low-income children in our regions. How do we achieve this? We are uniquely positioned to achieve this through our North Star Strategy, which is built on the Theory of Change - an approach which is focused on bringing meaningful change by cultivating a collective force of leaders in the education segment. The Theory of Change enables Teach For India to Strengthen, Scale and Match promising leaders; Advocate and Act Collectively for Educational Equity.
It also addresses some of the pressing issues plaguing the accessibility, quality and delivery of excellent education. All of this can only be achieved through collective action by our Fellows, Alumni and external stakeholders ranging from government officials to policy makers. It’s in partnership with people across the segment, enabling the wheel of change to turn and transform the segment and help students become leaders of tomorrow.
Q. In your experience, what are some of the most persistent challenges plaguing the Indian education system today, particularly in low-income communities?
A. There are various issues plaguing the education system and some of the key challenges we address at Teach For India are:
- Lack of holistic learning
- Child Safety
- Leadership Development
HOLISTIC LEARNING:
The latest data from the ASER 2021-22 shows that 12.97 million children between the ages of 6 to 17 remain unenrolled in the formal education system. Equally disturbing is the quality of education imparted to those in low-income schools, with a number of children graduating functionally illiterate from the 8th standard.
With the collective force of our Fellows, Teach For India challenges the status quo, offering quality education to students in under-resourced schools. Additionally, we prioritise building strong leadership journeys that help Fellows invest in their students, community and peers. Our vision of an excellent education is outlined within our Student Vision Scale, which our Students use as a reflective tool to identify the skills they need to grow across the following three strands:
- Self: towards a life and livelihood of their choice
- Others: accelerating the learning of others
- India: working in partnership for change
An education anchored in these three aspects will ensure holistic development for our Students.
CHILD SAFETY:
A child can thrive only when they have a safe and joyful learning environment. It is important to create safe spaces in school and beyond. At Teach For India, we ensure that our Fellows create a safe learning environment for students to flourish. At a school level, it is also vital to ensure teachers understand the nuances of child protection through training modules focussed on child protection, clear methods of redressal for child protection violations, awareness building for parents through PTAs etc. In parallel, Teach For India builds workshops, organisational partnerships, and teacher training modules in collaboration with state governments to protect and safeguard children.
LEADERSHIP DEVELOPMENT:
Leadership is required at all levels in the education sector - teachers, principals, enablers, government functionaries, etc. To attract and retain leadership talent, it is important to deploy resources towards skill building and retention. At present, there is still a staggering shortage of teachers, leaving thousands of vacancies across schools in India. The shortage of teachers and, consequently, efficient leadership results in limited delivery of education with children from underprivileged backgrounds most affected.
At Teach For India, we build a pipeline of leaders who positively impact children from underserved communities ensuring access to quality education and better outcomes across life.
Q. How does Teach For India ensure that leadership training provided to Fellows translates into tangible improvements in classroom learning and student outcomes?
A. We believe that teaching is leadership. To help our Fellows and Students become leaders, we focus on building skills and mindsets through our Leadership Development Journey (LDJ). This Journey is deeply rooted in the Fellowship, where the fellows discover their commitments to self, others, and India.
Further, fellows have a Leadership in Teaching Rubric mapped to the 5 pillars which are- connect, envision, plan, execute and reflect. During the fellowship journey, each fellow's teachings are mapped across these pillars which helps them to hone their leadership skills. We believe these pillars are the core of leadership and once developed, our fellows can take on any task head on.
Fellows, later get the opportunity to take a step ahead in their leadership journey and opt for (and get selected) the program manager role while others continue to help students across low income communities in various capacities.
Q. Could you share a powerful success story—of a student, Fellow, or alumni—that deeply moved you and represents the kind of transformational change Teach For India strives for?
A. There are many, many stories that come to mind, especially as our Alumni movement grows every year, and plants seeds of change across all levels of the system. But the one shift that has felt incredibly important to our work, and to the idea of deep, lasting, transformational impact, is the full circle journey of our Student Alumni coming back as Fellows to teach in the classrooms that they once sat in.
Over the past few years, 50 Student Alumni have joined the Fellowship, with many of them teaching in the same communities and schools that they’ve grown up in. They are driven not just by the idea of accelerating their own leadership journey, but also by a very deep commitment to paying it forward, and to continuing our work at the grassroots level. They’ve experienced the power of an education that is rooted in love, joy, and learning - and they’re excited about bringing that to life for children everywhere. We have seen them strive for excellence, hold a high bar for their students, and consistently push our thinking on what we should stand for, advocate for, as an organisation too.
Even post the Fellowship, we’ve had them join our Staff, we’ve had a few of them continue as teachers and school leaders, and we’ve seen a few of them pursue higher education at some of the best universities in the world. We’ve always believed that we are building our nation’s leaders in our classrooms, and to witness our own Students at the forefront of this movement, has really reinforced the idea of our students being partners in the movement for educational equity.
Q. Partnerships often play a pivotal role in scaling impact. How has collaboration—with government bodies, schools, corporate partners, or other nonprofits—helped strengthen your mission over the years?
A. Over the years, we have had notable partnerships with the government and other organisations across cities. We have also been part of the consulting group w.r.t the launch of the DIKSHA platform, NEP, COVID-19 mitigation group. We have a dedicated Government Relations Team at Teach For India, who works with the district or the State on multiple programs. Two years ago, we also launched an annual conference called ElevatED, which aims to unite public sector leaders nationwide to energise our education system further and reduce inequity. Thought leaders, including SCERT/DIET officials and on-ground execution officials i.e. AOs, BOs, and EOss in Education departments had the opportunity to learn from each other and contribute to imparting their knowledge to our core programmes.
The yearly event serves as a cross-learning opportunity through peer-to-peer discussions, sharing best practices, and brainstorming solutions for common challenges that affect educational equity with our fellows, staff, and alumni. Through ElevatED, we hope to leverage diverse expertise and perspectives to build and foster a collective understanding of how we can build an India free from poverty and educational inequity[TFI1] .
Q. As you look ahead to 2032 and beyond, what are your top priorities for Teach For India in the next phase of its journey, and what kind of support or collaboration would you welcome from the broader ecosystem?
A. Our 2032 North Star envisions an India where 50,000 leaders are working collectively, with love, towards transforming the lives of 1-in-10 children in our regions, through an education that unleashes the potential of Self, Others, and India. As we think about this bold and ambitious vision, we believe that it is incredibly important, now more than ever before, to bring the right people into this work; people who share our vision for an India free of poverty, and filled with love. We truly believe that the best, most talented, and most passionate individuals in the country need to be driving this movement forward, beginning in our classrooms.
Through the Fellowship, and beyond, we seek to build a movement for an excellent education that is rooted in four advocacy pillars of child safety, student voice and partnership, holistic education, and transformational leadership. Our hope is for these ideas to expand the purpose of education, to transform the way we think about learning and progress, and to instill love and joy in our classrooms. To make these shifts, we need a collective and cohesive effort to transform the education system, bringing together all stakeholders - students, teachers, parents, school leaders, policymakers, and enablers of the system too. Only when each of us feels shared ownership of this vision, will we be able to bring together our efforts across school transformation, teacher training, policy and governance, and beyond. Building these communities of leaders working collectively towards the shared dream of a brave new India, in their own way and across different sectors, is what is driving our work at Teach For India.
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