Contents
Network Reflections
Teach For All Update
New Partners
Network Feature
Core Values
Peer Learning
    Hispanohablante
    Excellent teaching
Synergies Update
A Day in the Life of...
Local Leader Question
Network News
Feedback

Newsletter Archives
October/November 2010
December 2010
March 2011

NETWORK UPDATES


Teach For All team name changes
As you may have heard, Teach For All recently took the opportunity to redefine the names for two of our teams. To better define their responsibilities within the organization, we will now be calling Country Relations the “Partner Engagement” team and Country Support the “Network Support” team. These team names align much better with each team’s vision and should help to clarify their division of labor.


PARTNER UPDATES


Partners in the Press
In addition to the updates shared here, please visit the Press Page on the Teach For All website to find more links to recent stories about partner organizations in the news.


Empieza por Educar (Spain)

• In recruitment, we have more than 1000 registrations so far on our website, and 322 people completed applications for our first deadline (first of 3).
• We are in the midst of evaluating around 100 candidates in our first round of assessment centers.
  
  
• Our Head of Recruiting, David Bristol, and our Graduate Recruiting Officer in Madrid, María José García, attended the Iberoamerica Recruitment Conference.
  
  
• Our Head of Training, Julia Sanchez, attended the Excellent Teaching Conference in North Carolina.

Enseña Chile

Chile started their third year this March with 84 teachers and more than 10,000 students! We are happy to say that we are seeing rapid results in our classrooms which have been supported by recent national tests with great results for our teachers!


Enseñá por Argentina

• Buenos Aires was the city chosen to hold the first Recruitment & Selection Spanish speaking conference. This happened the second week of March and we received staff members from Spain, Brazil, Chile, Peru, Colombia and Argentina. The goals for the conference were achieved! We used our collective knowledge and skills to tackle our greatest challenges, we had a significant professional development experience for each person, and we reinforced relationships in order to facilitate future collaboration among the group. See pictures here.
  
  
• Teachers from our first cohort have been teaching since March 14th. Even though only a couple of weeks have passed, we have already received very positive feedback from four school directors where EpA teachers are placed regarding their inclusion in the classrooms.

Enseña por Colombia

In preparation for the organisation’s official launch, the Enseña por Colombia team has been focused on:

• Refining its vision of transformational teaching and what will be required to produce it in the Colombian context (engaging in the Excellent Teaching Conference in Durham, North Carolina was particularly helpful for the team), developing its theory of problem and change, and crystallizing its strategic plan,
  
  
• Building relationships with potential funders and placement providers,
  
  
• Running focus groups at Colombia’s leading universities to inform recruitment messaging,
  
  
• Preparing the logo, website (watch this space!), and mass media campaign in anticipation of officially launching.

We have a lot of work ahead of us but as we continue to meet a variety of stakeholders – from university graduates to school heads to policymakers – together we are growing more excited every day about the enormous contribution we can make to social change in Colombia!


EnseñaPerú

• In February, we participated in the “Microsoft Front Line Program.” Now we have had the opportunity to continue working with a five member executive team from Microsoft to build together a Strategic Plan for the next three years for EnseñaPerú. Their genuine commitment, talent and passion to support our mission and vision has been outstanding and we are truly grateful not only for their advice and experience but for their ownership and love for EnseñaPeru.
  
  
• In March, EnseñaPerú had the opportunity to organize its 1st Fundraising Cocktail event in NYC. Hosted by a Peruvian Vice-president of JP Morgan, this event - which welcomed more than 65 businesspeople - is a first step in engaging a broader community of Peruvians and wider network of friends from us to support our program. As well, during this month, our ED held meetings with current and potential donors and important stakeholders in Washington, DC and New York.
  
  
• Our second round of “first year” milestones started last March: the first second cohort of Young Leaders, the first second-year cohort, the first major growth phase of the staff members. We are happy but not settling; challenged, but not afraid. Now we are in 27 schools and our family is spread out: 67 committed and admirable Young Leaders from 12 regions of the country, engaged teaching in three regions and confronting significant differences in context. Now, stepping back on the whole picture of the program, and learning from other countries in the network, we focus our energies and strategies in a process of discovering aggressively the answer to a set of questions: What does transformative teaching look like? What does transformative tutoring look like? What does transformative managing look like?
  
  
• After one energizing week sharing experiences and enriching our work at the Hispanic Recruitment Conference in March in Argentina, EnseñaPerú has just completed our campaign to commit our new force of volunteer University Coordinators, who are trained as talent detectives, seeking out their universities’ most talented candidates. Additionally, we have taken on the new challenge of recruiting in our new region of Arequpia, the 2nd most important city in the south of Peru. Also, to harness growing interest in collaborating with EnseñaPerú’s community, we have designed a new position of EnseñaPerú Representatives, a group of volunteers who will provide supplementary mass marketing support to the University Coordinators and in cities in which we have less direct presence.

Ensina! (Brazil)

• The school year has officially started in Rio de Janeiro! Our first month of the school year was filled with exciting new challenges. Our participants are experiencing the expected challenges of beginning teachers such as learning how to balance planning, classroom management, and building strong relationships with students, families and the school community.
  
  
• In mid-March, one of our school communities got an exciting boost with the visit of US President Obama to Rio. President Obama visited the Cidade de Deus (City of God) community where we held our Summer Institute. Many of our summer school students were present and a lucky few participated in a drum performance for the President.
  
  
• In addition to getting our ongoing support strategy underway, our team has also been busily gearing up for our second recruitment season, which will start officially in June. The soft launch of our preliminary online application has already yielded a couple of hundred pre-applications, so we are excited for the recruitment season to kick-off.
  
  
• Amidst the bustle of the start of the school year, our entire community in Rio de Janeiro experienced a deep feeling of sadness and loss over the tragic school shooting in the Realengo neighborhood only a week ago. While not an Ensina placement site, the school in Realengo is only a short distance away from the schools and communities where many of our participants teach. Our participants, our students, our school partners, and all of our staff members were profoundly affected by this tragedy and its painful reminder of the harsh realities that our students face. As one of our participants, who taught classes with a fellow participant on the next school day after the incident, wrote in her blog:
  
  “My weekend was marked by a blender of contradictions. Should I try to address the scars of the marks of the tragedy in Realengo with my students? What will their reactions be? Although in doubt, I decided to risk it. Nothing could be worse that trying to ignore everything they are feeling. To do this, Raphael and I created an agenda of activities for each class. We began to put it into practice on Tuesday the 12th, with 3 classes of 6th grade students.
  
  One class created a ‘Mural of Tomorrow.’ After taking off our shoes, closing our eyes and relaxing, we discussed the values that we need to reinforce daily in order to prevent new tragedies from occurring: love, tolerance, respect, attention, care, partnership, absence of prejudice. It was so beautiful! One of the students confessed at the end: ‘Today, I will sleep better, teacher.’”

Noored Kooli (Estonia)

• Noored Kooli just completed their recruitment season with a record 172 applications – a 25% increase from last year. With selection in full-swing, the 5th NK cohort looks likely to be the biggest cohort NK has ever had!
  
  
• On April 6th, Noored Kooli hosted Wendy Kopp & Nick Canning in Estonia. Throughout the day they met with the Estonian President Toomas Hendrik Ilves, visited NK participant classrooms, and participated in a panel discussion about education in Estonia with different educational leaders. Thomas Backteman, the VP of NK’s biggest supporter – Swedbank – flew to Estonia from Sweden to meet Wendy on this day as well. Pictures from Wendy Kopp’s visit are available in the NK photo bank (flickr.com/nooredkooli ) while a video of the panel discussion can be seen on NK’s youtube channel (youtube.com/nooredkoolitube ).

Teach First (UK)

• For one week from 7 – 11 March 2011, more than 30 successful figures from business, politics, journalism and the world of entertainment were given the opportunity to experience life as a teacher in Teach First partner schools across the country. Guest teachers taught a lesson on a subject of their choice in schools across the country and were matched with a Teach First participant at the chosen school who worked with them to plan their lesson in advance and give them a valuable insight into what they could expect on the day. Teach First Week is an annual campaign which gives guest teachers the chance to share their passion and expertise in their chosen subject with a class of pupils and gives them a taste of life as a Teach First participant and the challenges and rewards that come with being a teacher on a daily basis. teachfirst.org.uk/TFWK2011
  The Birmingham Post
  East London Advertiser
  Target Jobs
  Coventry Telegraph
  
  
• In March Teach First was named as the 32nd best place to work in the Public/Third sectors in the prestigious Sunday Times annual poll. This is the first time that Teach First has been included in the list. Click here to read more.
  
  
• The Higher Education Access Summit, organised by Teach First, chaired by new trustee Lord Adonis and attended by the charity’s patron HRH The Prince of Wales, brought together teachers, university staff, students, government representatives and business leaders to discuss the need to ensure that pupils from schools in challenging circumstances have equal opportunity to go into Higher Education. Click here to read a teacher’s account of the day and here for more information on the summit.
  
  
• In September 2011 Teach First will place 40 graduates in schools in challenging circumstances in the North East region to help support North East school improvement programmes. Click here to find out more.
  
  
• Click here to read about how a 17 year old further education pupil became the joint winner of Teach First’s national What Would You Change competition.
  
  
• In March Teach First was named Graduate Employer of Choice in the Public Sector at The Times Graduate Recruitment Awards 2011. In addition to this the charity maintained its position as 7th place in the list of Times Top 100 Graduate Employers, and moved up from 7th place to 3rd place in The Guardian Top 300 most popular Graduate Employers. Click here to read more
  
  
• Teach First partnered with national newspaper The Times to hold a panel debate to discuss if UK schools are fit for purpose. Click here to read a Teach First Ambassador’s account of the discussions.

Teach First Deutschland (Germany)

• We received 748 applications for the 2011 fellow cohort – a new high! We’re currently busy streaming them through our selection process and look forward to welcoming the class of 2011 soon!
  
  
• Almost 80 people participated in our two charity runs in Bonn and Berlin to raise money for Teach First Deutschland. Runners – fellows, friends, staff from both Teach First Deutschland and our supporters – ran distances ranging from 3,5 km fun runs to half-marathons. Deutsche Post DHL agreed to donate 5 Euro per kilometer run (and provided our yellow shirts), which amounted to a 6.400 Euro raised. Pictures from both runs can be found here.
  
  
• Wendy Kopp came to visit us in Germany to visit a fellow’s classroom, advise our leadership team on a range of strategic issues and to interact with our team. A main discussion point was how to further maximize the impact fellows are having on student achievement. Thank you, Wendy, for your time and valuable input! Click here for a photo from the visit.
  
  
• One of our placement schools, the Heinz-Brandt School in Berlin, was awarded a prestigious Berlin school award (“Starke Schule”) that recognizes outstanding performance and innovation in preparing students for vocational training. Fellow Malte Gregorzweski had the idea of preparing and submitting an application for his school. The jury especially praised Heinz-Brandt school’s commitment to opening the school to the community by working with external partners, such as Teach First Deutschland. As the regional winner, the school is now among the 15 finalists for the national German School Award (Deutscher Schulpreis). Congrats to Malte! Our fingers are crossed for the final jury decision in June! Click here to see Malte with the award.

Teach First Israel

• We are closing out our recruitment season soon and have already reached our recruitment targets by receiving more than 1,260 applicants. We will select approximately 110 applicants to join our second cohort.
  
  
• The placement team has been working hard to generate a buzz about the program and create a demand for our teachers among relevant middle and high schools. The Ministry of Education director at the Haifa district invited Teach First Israel (TFI) to a meeting a few weeks ago, in order to create an expansion plan for TFI's teachers in the district. The meeting was attended by representatives from non-participating schools as well as three schools that currently employ TFI teachers. A highly-regarded principal from a participating school said: "The contribution that TFI's teachers have made in my school is outstanding. These are high-quality people with great motivation and drive to succeed." In response, one of the non-participating principals remarked: "I came to this meeting full of doubts, and I leave it with an absolute conviction that our school must take several of TFI's teachers."
  
  
• Teach First Israel sent two of its academic partners from Haifa University to the Teach First off-site in Warwick, UK. Throughout the two days they conversed with Brett Wigdortz, Professor Sonia Blandford and Amanda Timberg about the Leadership Development Program and working with academic partners as well as staff in the Ambassador department. They also went to visit a participating school in Liverpool. Upon his return, Dr. Arie Kizel remarked: “It was so enriching to speak with Teach First staff about their mission and their relationship with the 14 university partners. We have gained a great deal and are eager to apply some of the lessons learned in Israel.”
  
  
• Lihi Gross-Avital, a first year teacher in Haifa, is having an important impact on her students and the community. Lihi initiated a long-term volunteer effort with her class: "My 10th grade students have adopted a 4th grade class in a special needs school close to our school. We visited the kids several times: each visit is planned, organized and executed by the students themselves. It is wonderful to see them playing with the kids and making them happy. The students are so satisfied and motivated by this activity; they are so happy to be doing so much good for others! Many of my students experience failure on a daily basis; they need help from other people all the time. When they volunteer and help others, they experience success in a new way. Beyond being satisfied with the result of their efforts, this experience boosts their self-esteem and helps them in their daily lives and even with their school achievements." Here you can find a picture of Lihi’s students putting on a comedy skit about Shabbat to the 4th grade students.

Teach For America

The Teach For America community is celebrating a number of recent appointments and accomplishments of our corps members and alumni that are not only a testament to their hard work and dedication but increase our confidence that we will achieve our vision of educational equity in the U.S. Here are some highlights from our community:

• After more than a decade of working for Teach For America, most recently as the Executive Vice President of Public Affairs, Kevin Huffman (Houston, '92) was recently sworn in as the Commissioner of Education for the State of Tennessee. Soon after, Emily Barton (South Louisiana, ’04) was selected to be his Chief of Staff.
• John White (New Jersey, '99) will leave his position as the Deputy Chancellor of the New York City Public Schools in May to serve as the Superintendent of the New Orleans Recovery School District.
• In March, Kaya Henderson (New York, '92) was confirmed as Chancellor of the Washington, D.C. Public Schools
• In just her second year of teaching, Birdette 'Birdy' Hughey (Mississippi Delta, '09) was named 2011 Mississippi State Teacher of the Year. Click here for a video of her accepting this honor.
• Lauren Harshbarger (Miami-Dade '09) was named 2011 Rookie of the Year for the Miami-Dade School District.

Teach For Australia

• We’ve just concluded our first of two recruitment rounds for 2011, after the Recruitment Team and other staff members pulled through a month of crossing the nation to attend careers fairs, information sessions and coffee chats!
  
  
  • We ended up with 388 applications – the calibre was excellent, and 40% were put through to Phone Interviews. We’ve just started 2 weeks of Selection Days, and things are looking great so far.
    
    
  • Here are a few snaps from the recruitment campaign spearheaded by our guru Marketing Specialist, Rob.
  
  
• We’ll now be gearing up for Placement – the recent CEO Council Call provided some great insights, and we’re looking forward to reading the White Paper.
  
  
• The next few weeks and months will see the Strategy, Growth and Development and Recruitment Teams engaging with a range of Principals and maximising Associate placements.
  
  
• We’re officially expanding into our third state – Western Australia in 2012. This announcement arose from a highly contested (and in the end successful!) WACOT Board Meeting (The West Australian College of Teaching) – where the Unions were lobbying against us, and there was much media attention. A timely Letter of Endorsement from Mr Brett Wigdortz himself didn’t hurt either!
  
  
• With a whole new State of placements to fill, Dan Mitchell will be heading up Recruitment in WA as our newly appointed Talent & Recruitment Manager.
  
  
• WA has some of the most remote regions in Australia, including Indigenous communities. To help with our Remote and Indigenous Engagement Strategy, Fi Belcher, an Honours student and a specialist in Indigenous studies has joined us part-time.
  
  
• Read this article written by one of our Cohort 1 Associates, for her alma mater law society annual journal.

Teach For Bulgaria

• After our first deadline, we made offers to 15 candidates to join our program, and 14 have accepted our offer to join. Our second deadline on April 15th brought us 200 new candidates, and we are in the midst of selection. We hope to extend offers to 30 successful candidates.
  
  
• Teach For Bulgaria has become a pilot organization for a Salesforce data solution for our organization. Working in close partnership with Teach For All, we have created custom records in Salesforce and are using it to ensure that our selection process runs as efficiently and as effectively as possible.
  
  
• We are working in close partnership with Sofia University on the design of our pre-institute work and the institute sessions. We have translated and adapted many of the Teach For America pre-institute materials and are now beginning to craft the actual session content for the institute.
  
  
• We are currently developing our Impact assessment framework which focuses not only on subject knowledge mastery and student attendance data but also on competencies that favor students’ life success (such as functional literacy, numerical literacy, meta-cognitive skills, soft skills and motivation for learning). We plan to work with external partners to develop an external assessment tool that could be used in classrooms of many of our teachers (as in Bulgaria external assessments are not often conducted and are mostly focused on pure subject knowledge).
  
  
• Brett Wigdortz came to visit Teach For Bulgaria on April 12th -14th. He met with a number of key stakeholders including our teachers, our corporate supporters, our university partner, the deputy minister of education, and union partners. See photos here.
  
  
• Click here to see our Teach For Bulgaria newsletter, which went out at the end of March.

Teach For India
On 16th April almost 80 of the inaugural group of Teach for India Fellows graduated to become the first Alumni of India's national movement for educational equity. TFI are thrilled to support the Fellows in becoming leaders in all fields that advocate and support the mission. Additionally TFI are excited to welcome 16 of the new Alumni onto Staff!

Teach For China

• As of April 14th, China Education Initiative (CEI) has officially changed its name to Teach For China (TFC)/中国教育行动. The decision and implementation was a collaborative effort involving TFC’s Board, alumni, and Fellows, and was done to more closely reflect TFC’s mission, model, and partnership in the Teach For All network.
  
  
• April 11th through the 16th was an exciting week for Teach For China. Our co-CEOs traveled to Washington D.C. and San Francisco to engage a number of high level officials from the U.S. and China in discussions of the U.S. federal initiative ‘100,000 Strong’. The conference, entitled the US-China High Level Consultation on People-to-People Exchange, was led by U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Chinese State Councilor for Education Madame Liu Yandong. The ‘100,000 Strong’ initiative is a national effort designed to increase dramatically the number and diversify the composition of young Americans working and studying in China. As of April 16th, TFC has officially cemented its role in the 100,000 Strong initiative. Wendy Kopp has also been invited to join the ‘100,000 Strong’ committee and will be playing a major role in directing the initiative’s trajectory. The U.S. government press release can be found here.
  
  
• March 11th marked Beijing’s second annual International Women’s Day (IWD) event to benefit Teach For China. The venue, an art studio with a 200 person capacity, was bursting at the seams as generous friends and supporters of TFC and IWD convened for an evening rousing speeches (TFC’s co-CEO Rachel Wasser actually delivered her speech to the entire studio without a microphone!) and impassioned bidding. All proceeds are funding Fellow salaries as well as innovative female mentorship projects at TFC’s placement schools. A link to an article on the event can be found here.

Teach For Lebanon

• Diana, cohort of 2009, was selected to present at the Thirteenth Annual Science and Math Educators Conference (SMEC 13) at the American University of Beirut on April 9th. The conference includes presentations and sessions conducted by local and international speakers.
  
  
• On March 12, and in the occasion of Teacher's Day in Lebanon, Teach For Lebanon hosted the 20 Fellows of both cohorts for a dinner in appreciation of their hard work. Click here to see a photo from the celebration
  
  
• We are still receiving applications for the upcoming cohort of 2011, and both numbers and quality of applications are remarkably better than the previous two years.

Teach For Malaysia

• Our recruitment and admissions team have been on a whirlwind, global tour, meeting and interviewing top Malaysian students at universities in the US, UK and Australia this month. We have been very grateful to receive support from participants, alumni and staff of our partner programmes in the UK, US and Australia, that have greatly reduced the significant logistical challenges of having a global recruitment market. Our interviews have led to nine official offers so far, for the inaugural 2012 Fellowship.
  
  
• After intensive site visits to schools in the three states surrounding our capital Kuala Lumpur, we have identified 17 partner schools that our 50 Fellows will be placed in, in batches of 3s, beginning January 2012.
  
  
• On the fundraising front, we have received verbal confirmation of official partnerships from Malaysia's leading telecommunications operator and a large American oil and gas company. We are finalising minor details with these corporations before announcing these partnerships.
  
  
• Teach For Malaysia was profiled in an article in the Sun newspaper this month.

Teach For Pakistan

• Teach For Pakistan completed its first ever recruitment drive on March 15th, 2011. One of the highlights of this period for us was when a current Teach For India Fellow, Rakesh Mani, wrote an article in a leading daily newspaper about his Fellowship experience, showcasing the potential of Teach For Pakistan. It was such a media activity that enabled us to get nearly 3,000 registered applicants and a total of 666 submitted applications, surpassing our overall application target.
  
  
• Not only did we hit our targets for recruitment from the top universities in Pakistan, we received an overwhelming response from young Pakistanis currently living abroad and eager to move back and join the movement. The team has been working round the clock during the last month to process applications and complete phone screens.
  
  
• We are now preparing for our series of Assessment Days in Lahore and Karachi, kicking off on April 14, 2011.