Teach For Pakistan held its first annual Alumni Induction Ceremony on July 2nd, welcoming 17 Fellows into the program’s Alumni movement. After completing their two years teaching and leading in 10 schools across Karachi, our first cohort will be starting a new phase in their lifelong journey to ensure every child in Pakistan has access to an excellent education and the opportunities this brings.

Speaking at the event, Class Eight student Saira Sharif reflected on her experience being taught by Teach For Pakistan Fellows, saying, “Before they came to my school I never did my homework and thought I was not smart. Now I understand what is happening and love doing my classwork – my teachers made me believe in myself.”

The event, attended by leaders in the corporate, education and development sectors, featured a keynote address by Dr. Ishrat Husain, Dean and Director of the Institute of Business Administration. The Induction Ceremony also featured speeches by students taught by Fellows, as well as Chairman of the Board Ahsan Jamil.

Teach For Pakistan CEO Khadija S. Bakhtiar began the ceremony thanking supporters of the program including Citibank Pakistan for donating the space for the ceremony saying, “Without your support and generosity, we would be unable to be here today, celebrating the impact our Fellows have had – it is because of all of you that our Fellows are able to affect the lives of their students.”

July at Teach For Pakistan has been a time of new beginnings and adventures, for students, Fellows and staff. Our first cohort of Fellows reflected on two years of transformation in their classrooms, as we inducted them into our Alumni movement. Tracing their footsteps, we welcomed 30 new Fellows into the Teach For Pakistan community.

For our students too, this was a month of milestones, as many of our 2012 Fellows conducted summer camps. To share just a few examples, Fellows Fatima and Adil held their summer camp at IBA Karachi where their students engaged with IBA undergraduates and staff from the Aman Center For Entrepreneurial Development.

Fellow Aroob Iqbal’s summer workshop, supported by the Karachi Youth Initiative, involved classes in which her 14-year-old students assembled, programmed and controlled their own miniature robots, while Lahore Fellows Nabeel, Taimoor and Abdullah focused on giving their students guidance for their futures through exam preparation and career counseling. All these summer activities represent an important commitment by our Fellows to develop their students’ skills, mindsets and attitudes, and use whatever time is available – including the summer vacations – towards this goal.

I look forward to sharing many more milestones in months to come with you.

Regards,

Khadija S. Bakhtiar

The Alumni Induction Ceremony 2013

July 2013

Our first cohort of Alumni with Teach For Pakistan CEO Khadija Bakhtiar, Aman Foundation CEO and Chairman of Teach For Pakistan’s Board Ahsan Jamil and Board Member Mohammad Ali Saya.

From the CEO’s desk

Blackboard Bulletin

Summer Camps: Pushing to Excel

The summer months may provide a break from school for many schools around Pakistan, but for some students in Teach For Pakistan placement schools, it is a chance to finally catch up on learning they may have missed out years before, preparing for crucial, life-changing exams or gaining hands-on experience through arts, crafts and other co-curricular activities. We would like to share one story from Lahore and images from activities across Fellows’ schools in Karachi and Lahore.

2012 Lahore Fellows Nabeel Siraj, Taimoor Toor and Abdullah Ali spent their school’s summer vacation holding a camp for students, focusing on academic content, career counseling and soft skills. As Mr. Zameer, principal of the Tauqeer Foundation School in which the Fellows are placed says, “The Fellows have been putting in a lot of extra effort, coming regularly despite the rain and heat [and] because of that, the children have become excited.” Indeed, to help prepare students for their Board exams, Fellows have been holding classes and session on Sunday, with an overwhelmingly positive response from students and parents.

In addition to activities aimed at developing students’ confidence and presentation and communication skills, the camp has provided an opportunity for Fellows to gain more teaching time with

their students, and cover the syllabus for Classes VIII and IX. In addition to covering course content, Fellows have also been holding counseling sessions discussing career and education opportunities for their students after their Matric, and helping them prepare for exams through past papers, and developing exam-taking techniques.

Taimoor, Nabeel and Abdullah were also keen on taking their lessons beyond theory, highlighting real-world connections and developing key skills to help their students succeed. To that end, Fellow Taimoor Toor has added extra English classes and Fellow Nabeel Siraj has focused on computer literacy sessions. Students finished the summer camp by developing presentations on topics they learnt and presenting them to their community in fluent English.

I’ve always had a difficult time trying to summarize what the past two years have been like particularly because, for me, these years have been an insurmountable number of experiences and emotions.

Every time I look back, vivid moments come rushing to me. I remember how angry I felt when a teacher at school said that I should just let Afsheen be, because she’s stupid and good-for-nothing. How sad I felt when Asiya said that she couldn’t complete her homework because she spent the night at the hospital with her ailing father. How frustrated and utterly helpless I felt, when after talking to Zaheera, I learnt that she couldn’t focus in class because of the harassment she had to deal with at home.

I also remember the childish excitement I would feel when at the end of every month, my co-Fellow Imaan and I would give out certificates to the high performing

students in class. I remember how proud I was when I saw a bunch of my students voluntarily skipping break to catch up on their class work. How touched I was when, during a class debate about riots in Karachi, Asma said that ‘at the end of the day we’re all humans and violence isn’t the answer to anything’. I remember how happy I was after every single girl in my class gave a self-prepared presentation entirely in English.

None of these emotions are unique to my time as a Fellow; I know that every member of my cohort has experienced these with their students. Through the highs and the lows, I’ve been constantly awed by how much I had to learn from my students. Their ability to bounce back, to smile in the face of challenges, to love unconditionally and without biases has nothing to do with the fact that they are children. Their unbelievable resilience is a

result of how they “choose” to think about and live their life. Despite an educational system that has no expectations of them and provides them almost no opportunities, our students chose to come to school to make something of their lives.

“Ms. Tooba and Ms. Imaan proved themselves to us. They got us so interested in our classwork that even the kids who used to hide in a corner got involved. Most of us now get 100 percent in our tests.”

– Saira Shariff, Class VIII, Government Girls Neelum Secondary School

Taking the Two Years Forward

Beyond the Fellowship: Entering the Alumni Movement

At our 2013 Alumni Induction Ceremony, Fellow Tooba Akhtar reflected on what the past two years have meant to her, what she’s learnt and the impact her students have had on her. Below are excerpts from her remarks at the ceremony.

2011 Fellow Tooba Akhtar and her student Saira Sharif at the Alumni Induction Ceremony held in July.

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As part of our 2013 Summer Training Institute, in which Fellows are provided pre-service training in Teaching As Leadership, our Training and Support team was honored to host experts and practitioners from across the education development landscape in Pakistan.

On June 28th, Baela Raza Jamil, Programme Director at Idara-e-Taleem-o-Aagahi (ITA) spoke to Fellows, sharing her insight and experience in the education sector. Jamil shared her stories on developing arguably the most comprehensive report on the education sector in Pakistan, the Annual Status of Education Report (ASER). This year, the ASER team surveyed 136 rural and 6 urban districts across Pakistan, gathering information on student progress and attendance, as well as their school facilities.

Zubeida Mustafa, one of the first female editors at Pakistan’s Dawn newspaper also shared her journey with Fellows. Mustafa discussed the evolution of the education sector, as well as her own journey covering social issues.

Our final speaker in the series was Shazia Mirza, an education entrepreneur who began the Manzil School Scheme. Mirza spoke about how passion drove her to start a two-room school and how it evolved into a fully functioning institution over the years. Highlighting the importance of humility and the role of teachers as role models, Mirza shared her experiences scaling up a small-scale project.

Leading Education in Pakistan

Fellow SPOTLIGHT

2012 Fellow Afsheen Farooq developed an interest in curriculum and learning resource development early into her time as a 8th grade math teacher in a government school in Lahore. To that end, she spent the first half of her summer working with Educational Assessment, System & Training (EAST) a Lahore-based company that provides textbooks to approximately 1,500 schools nationwide. Afsheen was keen to use her experiences teaching to support their work as they created materials for higher grade levels.

Speaking about the experience, Afsheen says, “I was looking for something related to curriculum development and wanted to get a feel for how the resources we use are prepared… I experienced a whole new side of the education sector and gained insights that I think will really help me in my classroom.” Afsheen was asked to create two chapters for their fourth grade mathematics textbook, but after seeing her work on those chapters, EAST quickly asked her to write all twelve chapters for the textbook.

After completing her internship, Afsheen continued to explore her love for teacher training and support, joining us to serve as a Fellow Development Officer supporting new Fellows during the Summer Institute. As she says, “I wanted to be part of this Institute to make it as special for the 2013 cohort as my institute was for my cohort and me… whenever I encountered a problem in my classroom, I always found a solution in the resources we learnt at our Institute.”

From top: Baela Jamil and Teach For Pakistan Alumni Impact Director Amber Zuberi; two students at Manzil school speak to the audi-ence; Zubeida Mustafa and Teach For Pakistan CEO Khadija S. Bakhtiar.