TFI Knowledge Base
Contents
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Please go to India/Knowledge Base
Purpose
Purpose of this page: This is an unofficial, bare-bones effort to gather the work done by all the Teach for India (TFI) Fellows and create a one-stop space that includes EVERYTHING that Fellows have developed so far which can be used not just by other Fellows but by educators all over. The intent is to take quality education that has worked in the limited-resources school scenario and make it available openly to educators everywhere, thereby giving everyone the opportunity to eliminate educational inequity.
By EVERYTHING, we mean: (including but not limited to)
- Standards and Objectives of all the grades exhaustively spelled out.
- All teaching objectives broken down to the very last level of detail.
- Exemplar Lesson Plans for teaching each and every objective, complete with all key points, instructions, teaching quides and assessments, in a way that any person anywhere can take the lesson plan and use it to teach a class of students (whose levels correspond to the llevel described in the esson plan) effectively.
- Multiple "flavors" of lesson plans - there can be many ways of teaching one objective.
- Teaching plans and schedules - year broken down to units (6-week period in TFI), broken down to weeks and days
- Classroom management plans - definitive lists of strategies, plans, dos and don'ts to effectively manage any classroom.
- Remedial plans - guides on how to help weak students bridge the learning gap and reach their appropriate levels
- All TFI training material so that any teacher anywhere can update self with it. (this is quite in demand by the local staff at most TFI schools)
- And anything and everything related to teaching.
Subjects
Maths
English
Science
Social Sciences
Classroom Management and Culture
Classroom Management and Culture
Value Education
Parents and Community
Students with Special Needs
School Relations
Teacher Resources
Concept
The problem with the traditional model
Traditionally, the work of one person - in this scenario, plans, assessments etc - would be published as that person's thing and would stay that way, isolated inside some or the other document. The documents could be shared but would go about as stand-alones. Traditionally people might resist publicly exposing their work due to issues of either ownership (this is mine, why should others be allowed to take it) or fear of judgement (I'm not good enough to be publicizing my work like this). In this model, majority of the work done by the Fellows, could be lost forever after they leave, even if elements of it could easily have been taken and applied anywhere. At the same time, during the Fellowship, every Fellow is constantly plagued with scarcity of good quality material available that fits the scenario perfectly, and it's simply impossible to expect every Fellow to come up with top-notch quality work on their own, week after week, given all the constraints. Besides, isn't it a serious waste of time to do something that has already been done excellently by someone working in the same context? Consequently he/she has to keep on compromising on quality to meet commitments.
The Wiki Way
Contrastingly, in a wiki model there is no individual ownership. The work published is instantly given out to everyone. But more importantly, instead of getting locked away in static documents, the work comes alive - it merges and converges with the work of others, and changes are made to it by multiple minds to make it better and better. In essence, your work, whatever its original quality may be, grows into something better.
So, in a wiki model, where many minds can work on one thing, we have a real chance to reach exemplar levels not just in one or two things but in abundance. We might be able to churn out the best 4 ways to teach addition with carry-over, and the best plans, assessments etc for anything. The benefits of abundance are enormous: One Fellow can make a significant contribution in one topic that benefits everyone else; and at the same time he/she can take the top contributions made by other Fellows in all the other topics. Finally what we get is the best practices of everyone, helps everyone perform better, teach better and achieve better results.
How is this going to work?
This project is something that cannot be achieved by any single person or even a team. Making people work on this full-time won't work as well as required. It cannot be benchmarked as the intrinsic value would be more important and up to each reader to decide. Neither can it be expected to meet any deadline - it would always be a work in progress just as wikipedia is. It can not have any owners, no one (not even the TFI organization )can take credit for it - for that would end up discrediting it. And the best way to achieve this is if anyone and everyone who wants to, takes part in this without having to take anybody's permission. In other words, this project belongs to the wikipedia paradigm or the open-source paradigm. Though originally made for TFI Fellows, this could be a place for educators from any place to come together and collaborate.
So let's see what happens.
Reverse Potential
This project need not be restricted to Fellows of Teach for India. As long as the parameters involved remain similar, any educator can get involved here and take as well as contribute. What if somewhere out in central India, one school teacher has perfected the best way to teach a particular objective? It needs to come here and be shared with everybody. All too often we end up separating TFI and non-TFI educators. Maybe here everyone can mingle, share, collaborate and make something awesome together.
Getting Started
This isn't going to work by sitting back and waiting for some "expert" to come in. Wikipedia was put together bit by bit by ordinary citizens; so must this project.
Editing and adding content to a wiki is very easy, and once you get the hang of it you won't want to stop. This page can help you get started: Help:Editing
For more guidelines go to the Getting Started sub-section.
