Keep Pakistan Learning

Meet 2019 Fellow Rida Rizvi, who joined the Fellowship after completing her MBA from NUST. Rida currently teaches Social Studies and English to Class 4 students at Islamabad Model School for Girls, Rajwal. The village is home to a large Christian community, which meant her classroom had a mix of Muslim and Christian students who refused to sit together or work together in groups. To address this culture of intolerance, Rida led a series of interactive activities on concepts of humanity, tolerance and beauty in diversity. She recently discovered that her Muslim students visited their Christians class fellows’ homes over Christmas, bringing them presents and helping them celebrate the holiday! 

Rida’s interventions on religious tolerance and harmony are not isolated from the rest of the teaching. In fact, her classroom as a whole is a creative, safe space that encourages students to develop shared purpose. As you step into her class, it’s clear that every corner of the class is a new area to discover: the Feedback Corner, the Dream Board, the Resource Corner all have a different purpose but each is a reminder of the potential and responsibility of each student to pursue their educational and life goals. The Feedback Corner, for instance, is a space that allows her students to be involved in the lesson planning and much more. They are asked what they enjoyed in a lesson, what topics they hope to learn more about, and how they feel they can improve the classroom culture.

The corner was a big hit and students felt comfortable requesting more interactive learning activities like buzzer games and role playing because they felt that it helped them better retain content. It is rare for these young students to have the opportunity to openly share their ideas with an authority figure, but they now see that as their duty, knowing that there is someone eagerly listening to and incorporating those ideas.

Links:

• UK Royal Couple Visit Teach For Pakistan
• Literacy Day event
• Teach For All CEO and Founder in Pakistan

• Ringing in the New Year with Teach For Pakistan (PDF)
  

The past year been very exciting for Teach For Pakistan with big milestones achieved. With your help Teach For Pakistan is scaling to build a nationwide movement. We currently have 55 Fellows teaching 2,700 students across 24 high-need public and non-profit schools in two regions of Pakistan -  Islamabad and Peshawar.  

Thank you for supporting us in achieving this growth at high quality, and allow us to share with you some of the major milestones we have celebrated along the way:

1. Fellow recruitment: This year we recruited 40 Fellows into our 2019 cohort, a 134% increase from last year. We engaged 21 public and private universities across Pakistan, holding 42 information sessions, and connecting with over 2,300 graduating university students to tell them more about our work.  We received 920+ applications from across Pakistan, resulting in 40 bright young people being welcomed into the program. This 2019 Fellowship Cohort is diverse and represents people from over 23 towns and cities across Pakistan. They have studied from over 14 different universities across Pakistan.

2. Fellow Pedagogical Leadership Development and Student Impact: The 40 new recruits went through 6 weeks of intensive, pre-placement training between July and August 2019, and started their Fellowship journey in their placement schools in August.  

Our 2018 cohort which has been placed in school for over a year now, have been reporting remarkable growth in their students.  Our Leadership and Training team conducted scaffolded tests in Nov 2018 and May 2019 and found that on average, student’s learning grew by 1 academic year in 6 months in first year Fellow’s classroom.

We also conducted a Student Perception Survey in our classrooms, in partnership with Teach For All and Panorama Education, and found that Fellows are building classrooms where students thrive. The majority of the students, a whopping 85%, felt that their input and ideas were valued and 88% felt that encouraging and supporting relationships were fostered in the Fellow classroom.  

3. Fellow System Leadership Development: Our Fellows are growing into lifelong leaders for equity and excellence in education. Here is what one of our 2018 cohort Fellow has to say about her experience so far

“The first year of the Fellowship teaching English to 180 students has been quite challenging but even more rewarding. The children's resilience and quickness to forgive continues to surprise me, and it has been a pleasure to witness their growth.

I have learned how to invest people with drastically different socioeconomic backgrounds and life experiences than my own in my mission by looking for common ground that we can tread together. 

 I have also realized that it's okay if everyone in my surrounding is not an enabler - having a detractor or two actually pushes me to try and helps me think about the why of what I'm doing with more clarity”   - 2018 Fellow Maryam  

We have completed our planning for the year ahead and our Recruitment team is now ready to launch the campaign for the 2020 Fellowship. Thank you for enabling one generation of Pakistan’s leaders to nurture the next one. We hope you will continue the journey with us in 2020 and beyond!