Teach For India Reviews

- If you have financial responsibilities towards your family to take care of, loans to clear or want to build a sound financial base, this is not the place you should come to. Your bank balance will be zero or negative at the end of two years. Quite a few of us realized in the process, that people who came here were from financially sound backgrounds. - Teach For India, does really aggressive marketing for its recruiting. Don't buy the stories you read on social media, in various publications or hear on radio. Media loves to create zero to hero stories and Teach For India, knows that very well. Think before you leap. - Politics and nepotism is highly rampant. You'd expect, an NGO to be free from politics because people are 'giving up' their career to come here and serve children. Reality is a whole lot different. The altruistic nature that you hear is driven by hidden agendas. It's important to know that many folks who come here, do the fellowship with the intention to go further for an MBA/MPP program at various schools across the world. BSchools really like non profit experience on their profile. TFI, serves that need very well. - Not everyone is welcome in TFI, even though you are selected as a fellow. Your selection to a certain group is determined by a few factors: 1) Your proximity to your managers/seniors. 2) How cool you are 3) How well you speak 4) How intelligent you are 5) Your background 6) Your financial status This btw, also largely determines the hidden opportunities that most are not accessible to. For instance, some people receive early information about meetings, visits by influential people or media mentions, or speaking opportunities at events like TEDx talks, etc. - If you've recently graduated, don't come here. You will dramatically reduce your opportunities to go into the for-profit world or other organizations. You know why TFI markets itself to this crowd? There are quite a few reasons. a) TFI knows the pulse of today's youth. The 'do-good' factor that youth wants to indulge in, is exactly what TFI wants. Spend two years and you'll do good and feel good about serving the country. You really serve a classroom. If you do well, your excel sheets show your performance. If performance is good, senior management is happy to prove the money invested by the investors. - Post fellowship opportunities are largely focused around education, social sector and other non-profit organizations. The stories you hear about people getting into top tier management consulting or investment banking firms are one off instances. They happened because the fellows already has stellar backgrounds before coming to TFI, or someone/a friend referred them within these companies or in one cases, people interviewed and got through, with very low packages. There is a reason why, majority of the bigger firms don't want to touch your resume post the fellowship. You don't necessarily gain hard skills which is transferable to other orgs. You may ask how? If you were into coding, finance, HR, marketing or engineering role, or any other functional role prior to TFI, none of these will be used during the fellowship. You'll rust. But, you'll certainly learn a thing or two about teaching. which sadly doesn't constitute as work experience in the real world of performance. So, here it is. No major employer will be bothered about your TFI work ex, unless you are in the areas mentioned above. Which is why I mentioned in the earlier, it would be a major setback to your career if you came directly to TFI from your undergrad or postgrad. I know many who came that way and have regretted that decision, both financially and career wise. Others who did not bother telling, didn't, because there were no options for them other than join the staff of TFI, after fellowship. TFI has built for itself a steady pipeline of candidates to join the firm post the fellowship. - The more you are visible on social media and your stories are heard about children, the more favorable you'll become. You become TFI's favourite, because guess what? You are freely marketing on behalf of TFI. - The management is where possibly everything originates. The posts of program managers (PMs), senior program managers (SPMs), are run by children who just have TFI fellowship to show for their 'leadership' experience. To give you a perspective, program managers (PMs), manage around 15-20 fellows under them. In many cases, the PMs are 22-24 year olds and under them are people with upto 5-15 years experience. In some cases, maybe more. SPMs, manage a large group of PMs. This is no different. You understand the story. There is a reason why, senior folks who join the fellowship never want to come back to TFI again. As a result, a very amateur, unprofessional and a moody behaviour runs rampant all across. If you are not someone, who the organization views as 'favourable', your words will have zero value. However noble and right your suggestions are, they will have zero weightage. You will often hear how important feedback is within the organization. Sadly, it's lip service. You will be told how critical it is to hear your thoughts. The moment you share what's honest and right, you'll often be debarred. So, good luck with raising your concerns. I did find some wonderful people during the fellowship, but most of them left. Either in disgust, or for better opportunities or for being terribly let down. There have been rampant stories of people being drunk during work hours or not handling the kids properly. - I just spent the last one hour writing this, to tell you, that you can certainly volunteer in a classroom to get the experience of 'serving the nation' or 'teaching children'. You don't have to be a fellow and give up two years of your life. - It is all a numbers game. You are a cell on the excel sheet. The organization has to explain its success to the investors to raise more funding. If are among the 'star teachers', you'll get recognition on public platforms. Still trying to understand, how can one establish star teachers, when everyone who joined the fellowship came forward to 'serve children'?

1) What you see from outside is different from what you get. The Fellowship is only about teaching, making report cards, tolerating things that you don't like and the trainings are about teaching and 'pushing yourself'. If you want to be a teacher, it is great. If you are here to learn, grow as a professional and work in private sector later on, then forget about this place. Companies won't even touch you. 2) People are completely unprofessional in staff roles. Many people who join here are smart people but they are treated like kids. Fellows are not respected. The managers are immature bunch of fresh college grads who have only 2 years teaching experience. 3) They do not like feedback. It is completely frustrating because everyone here tries to convince you to buy their nonsense. If you are the kind of a person who wants to make genuine impact, work with talented people and bring about a change, this is NOT your place. They are very good with marketing. Please do not get fooled. This will ruin your career. If you think TFI will get you good jobs, admissions, it will not! Those are only one off cases which are highlighted. But if you want to be a teacher all your life, this is really a good place. Network, talk to current staff and fellows before joining these guys. Don't make the mistakes we all made! Its like two years are down the drain.