Excellent education for 2500+ students in Chennai

As Teach For India Chennai progresses slowly towards its vision of “One Day All Children will attain an excellent education” across 36 schools through its team of 110+ Fellows (teachers), we bring to you a story from a classroom in Chennai where children have crossed several milestones and overcome several hurdles to be on their path to Excellent Education. 

Swati Nandy joined the Teach For India Fellowship in 2014 and was placed in a school in Taramani, Chennai. She started teaching a class of about 35 students in 2nd grade. Most of the children come from the neighborhood and are from backgrounds where the parents are from various occupational backgrounds like domestic help, auto drivers, construction workers, etc. Students from these communities had their fair share of exposure to domestic violence, alcoholism, etc. From the beginning, through Swati’s mentorship, her students gained exposure to the happenings in their community and were encouraged to think independently and come up with solutions to common problems in their society. A simple example were her lessons on “What limits you?”and “What are my values” that she conducted with her students where she was surprised when her kids opened up about their household problems ranging from alcoholic fathers to domestic violence and then poverty! The students not only were able to articulate the problems but also thought of ways they could solve these problems - Some of them even meticulously illustrated that! They even exhibited an innate understanding of themselves and the path they chose to take, such becoming a doctor to earn money for their family, once they grew up!

Swati was also one among those selected to present her paper at a State-level conference on ‘Effective Classroom Processes and Practices to Enable Children as 21st Century Citizens’. 

Her students were among the top scorers in the city in an internal benchmarking exercise conducted for Mathematics aligned to Samacheer. In addition, Swati also coached her students for the ‘Terry Fox Run’ focusing on both building fitness as well as creating awareness about cancer. Swati has reinforced for all of us how being an effective teacher directly connects to leadership across dimensions andit is through Fellows such as Swati that we dream that our vision of “One day all children will attain an excellent education” is not too far! You too can be a part of this movement by contributing to this project and sharing this with your family and friends.

October being the month of giving, we need your continued support to make this happen as the saying goes “Alone we can do so little, together we can do so much!”