Transform the lives of 3200 children in Hyderabad

The Fellowship has been a tough but also very enriching experience. Teaching English, Biology, and Physics to ninety-five students in Grade Ten and taking up additional responsibilities for the non-Teach For India class has been a great learning opportunity regarding the grassroots and the underbelly of the Hyderabad Old City. The students have had two years of continuous loss in learning and now facing a major challenge to write the Board Exams this academic year. Despite being a Teach For India intervention class the learning loss was real, with serious behavioral management issues, crippling financial position, and other social ills. Though there have been shifts In terms of Behavior Management, the progress has been slow and hard. 

Conducting bi-weekly investment sessions with the parents, having career counseling sessions with the students, conducting open spaces for students to share their views, taking in feedback and incorporating the same in my teaching strategies, investing students in weekly plans. This ensured that the students were much more invested in their academics and the purpose of academics and attending school. Empathy Mapping and one-on-one conversations helped us and the students to express themselves clearly in terms of what they feel and what they would like to be doing in the future. I have been conducting many Career Counselling sessions as well as talks with external people to build interest and hope in the students. 

For all of these to be conducted effectively, I have been conducting analysis to better understand the root causes in the community that may be hindering the student's growth by taking into account the cluster analysis and basing on the problems faced by the students and the parents, the hypothesis that we created for the problem statement for various community-level issues and academic performance issues in the school were effectively conducted. For all of this to happen, I leveraged free courses from the Acumen Academy as well as engaged with Alumni who have been active in the field to help better in analysis.

Post the first year of the Fellowship, along with my school team, we identified that there has been a growing lacuna in terms of compliance, governance, structure and strategy, and effective impact evaluation in the community. We also identified plenty of gaps in providing support for Girl children beyond Higher Secondary grades, and additionally, there are a lot of gaps in Low-Income Private Schools and the infrastructure, capacity building of the schools. 

Hence we realized the need for providing such support to these schools beyond the Fellowship. My school team and I have created a fund to support the education of the girl children in the community and to aid capacity building and resources for the school to ensure excellent education, such as salaries for skilled and qualified permanent teachers, infrastructure, creating community Leaders. 

The progress we have made is two-fold. One, We have reached out to the Teach For India community in Hyderabad to support us in this project and help us build our skills and further our efforts. We have also reached out to Alumni to help us conduct surveys and establish strong monitoring and evaluation systems to ensure the sustainability of the project post our support.

Penamakuri Krishna Kumar Vasishta

Cohort 2020

Hyderabad