Transform the lives of 3200 children in Hyderabad

Vikram, a 2018 Fellow teaching in a low-income private school in Hyderabad was a banker for seven years with a hugely successful career that had an upward trajectory. He was thriving yet something was amiss. He had always wanted to pursue a career in education and decided to finally take a step in that direction and applied to the Azim Premji Foundation. He got through. But when it came to accepting the offer, he got nervous about moving to the education sector from the corporate world and so carried on with his banking job. He regretted it almost immediately and actively started sending out applications to non profits. He applied to Teach For India, got through and took the plunge. 

Kunal teaches English and Social Studies to Grade 9 students in Government High School Durgabhavani. A few months into his Fellowship, he witnessed an unusual yet wonderful scene unfolding in his classroom. After finishing the classwork assigned to them, a few of the gifted students started to help those around them who were struggling. Kunal noticed how Pooja, Akhila, Ashwini, and Sirisha explained the topic they were studying without a hint of impatience and observed them slowly and carefully answering the questions of their peers. Happy to see his students help one another he assumed this was a one-off incident and thought nothing more of it. But, it happened again the next day and the next and the next.

Kunal wondered if it would be possible to accelerate the learning in his class with the help of these students. The students had put this into motion but maybe with his guidance, he could help maximize the results of their initiative. He decided to appoint the students who were eager to help as ‘Mentors’ clearly because they were driven by the need to providing ‘individual attention’ to each student in the classroom. These students strongly felt that with consistent support, each child can become as good as the rest. The four students chose a topic of their choice each day that they would thoroughly study & research. They then taught that topic to the group assigned to them in class the next day. After having this system in place for a few days Kunal noticed that leadership in his class had increased not just amongst the gifted students but amongst the other students too. Many of the children were more confident about clearing their doubts and no longer hid it when they didn’t understand something. Slowly he started to see his students thrive simply because each one was able to get individual attention, which was otherwise impossible when there are fifty children in the class with different learning abilities and only one teacher.

This initiative called ‘Each one, teach one’ is truly unique as it is entirely student-led, created by the students, for the students.