Anu Aga
Ms. Anu Aga is on the Board of Thermax Limited and is the Chairperson of the Thermax Social Initiative Foundation which runs the CSR activities of Thermax, including two schools for children from the under-privileged sections of society. She is also closely associated with the Teach for India Initiative which attempts bridging the inequity gap in education. She is keenly involved in the causes of communal harmony and human rights, especially women and children. Recently she has been asked to join the National Advisory Council.
Session- OPENING NIGHT ADDRESS
Sidharth Agrawal
Sidharth joined Teach For India in 2009 as part of its first batch of Fellows. He serves as a Grade 4 class teacher in a PMC school in Pune. He is an Economics graduate from Fergusson College and completed his MBA from S.P.Jain in 2006. Before joining Teach For India, he worked as a management consultant with Genpact. He is currently part of a team that is co-authoring a book on the Indian education system under Sridhar Rajagopalan of Educational Initiatives. He is an avid reader and is deeply passionate about innovation in education. In his free time he likes to paraglide and go on long bike rides.
Session- SCHOOL SPOTLIGHT
Vishnuteerth Agnihotri
Vishnu has a degree in Mechanical Engineering from IIT Madras, and heads the Test Development function at Educational Initiatives (EI). EI is a leader in assessments, and is working on scalable ways to solve the problem of real learning using assessment driven content. His team is involved in building various products
1) ASSET- a diagnostic test for children of classes 3-10 across all subjects
2) Detailed Assessments- these are detailed diagnostic tests on individual units where teachers can get immediate and highly granular feedback on areas of difficulty
3) Mindspark Science- an online adaptive self-learning program for Science, where children are exposed to a series of finely graded questions.
Session- CHECKS FOR UNDERSTANDING: USING ASSESSMENTS WISELY
Ritika Arya
Ritika founded MIE (My India Empowered), a youth social Organization that works towards providing supplementary education to children from deprived communities and Mobilizing youth in order to tap the infinite potential to create positive change. She have served as the Co-Coordinator of the Entrepreneurship Cell at Jai Hind College, Mumbai (2009-10). She was first introduced to social entrepreneurship under the fellowship that I received from Ashoka’s Youth Venture Program in 2008-09 and was nominated by Youth Venture India for the Staples Ashoka Youth Social Entrepreneur Competition. She was one of the 5 global finalists to attend the Youth Venture U.S. National Summit at Boston, Massachusetts in June 2009. In December 2009 she received the Cherie Blair Foundation for Women – National Entrepreneurship Network (CBFW-NEN) Fellowship 2009-10.
Deepa Avashia
Deepa is the School Leader of Key-stage 2 (grade3 to Grade 7) in the Riverside School for the last three years now. She specializes in Leadership, Curriculum development, Organizational Management and Professional Development. She has traveled to various places across the world to attend/conduct workshops. She is involved with leadership and teacher training and has taken up workshops to inculcate the Riverside pedagogy to teachers and School Leaders of Day Star School in Manali, TGES Rajkot, Centre Point – Nagpur and the Army School Ahmedabad. She has also represented Riverside School at Singapore for the conference on “Teaching For Understanding” and at the Design School at Stanford.
Session- CLASSROOM MANAGEMENT AND CULTURE:CREATING A CULTURE OF LEARNING
Heeru Bhojwani
Heeru Bhojwani has been in the teaching profession for over fifteen years, she has taught in local as well as international educational systems. As an elementary school Librarian she enjoys learning new technology tools and discovering new ways to integrate them in classes. She loves reading all genres and hopes she can transfer her love for reading to all those who come in contact with her.
Session- INFORMATION LITERACY AND LIBRARY MEDIA SPECIALIST
Nikita Desai
Nikita Desai is currently Head of Teacher Training Center and leads and organizes teacher’s training workshops. She has been with Riverside School for the past 9 years as an Educator in different classes. She is an extremely enthusiastic and a quick learner and has a great talent for telling puppet stories and is forever in demand in the school assembly. Nikita has attended workshops on ‘Drama’ and ‘English,’ which she topped. She has also attended a conference on ‘Democratic Education’ at Bhuwaneshwar and ‘Child Rights and Education’ at Chennai. She has also been to Bhutan to present Riverside’s philosophy to the Royal Education Council of Bhutan. Nikita takes every opportunity she gets to work for the upliftment and well-being of the under- privileged children. Tees Ka Dum – a one-on-one tutoring program is an initiative started by the Riverside School to teach English and Math to Municipal School Children. She has also volunteered her time to do story telling sessions and educational visits with these municipal school children.
Lopa Gandhi
Lopa Gandhi completed her Master’s degree in science from Mumbai University after completing her graduation from St. Xavier’s College. She was associated with Akanksha for the last nine years in a variety of roles from HR to teaching the kids in a leadership program to teaching Akanksha Teacher Fellowship fellows and coaching School Leaders. She currently works independently on different consulting and training assignments in the development sector.
Session- STUDENT-LED CIRCLES OF LITERATURE
Vandana Goyal
Vandana Goyal is currently CEO, The Akanksha Foundation, where she leads a team of 90 nonprofit professionals, 150 teachers and close to 500 volunteers – all serving schools and after-school centers that educate 3,500 children across Mumbai and Pune. Vandana joined Akanksha in 2006 as the Akanksha representative on the McKinsey team that developed the blueprint for Teach for India, and worked as Manager of Beyond School Centers, serving Akanksha’s adolescent children. Prior to her current role, she was Director of Akanksha’s School Project, which seeks to pioneer the charter school movement in India, establishing and growing six schools in three years. Previously, Vandana spent four years with a Boston-based nonprofit organization called Citizen Schools, which is dedicated to changing the life trajectory of underprivileged urban children, beginning her career as a teacher and then as a program developer and manager.
Session- GOOD TO GREAT: A BOOK DISCUSSION
Ruchika Gupta
Ruchika Gupta graduated from St. Xavier’s College, Mumbai with a BA in English Literature. She went on to acquire a Degree in Mass Media from the Symbiosis Institute of Mass Communication, Pune. Ruchika has been a part of the Akanksha team since 2003 playing multiple roles in the organization. She is currently heading the Art for Akanksha program. The program aims to foster art as a medium of expression for all children across Akanksha schools and centres. She is also involved in setting up the project to generate revenue while spreading awareness for Akanksha through the Akanksha Art Shop.
Session- THE COLOURS OF LEARNING- USING ART IN THE CLASSROOM
Madeleine Heide
Madeleine was born in the Philippines, lived in Brazil, the United States, Belgium, Taiwan, and Hong Kong before coming to Mumbai. She is currently the Assistant Superintendent at the American School of Bombay. She has been a Principal in two premier international schools – Hong Kong International School for eight years and the International School of Brussels for six years. She has had various experiences leading professional development for teachers and for parents. In her current role, she works with educators across the entire spectrum from Preschool through Twelfth Grade. In all of her experiences, she has been fortunate to work with highly talented and skillful teachers and those have been major highlights of her career. She continues to learn from daily experiences with educators, parents and students in all kinds of school settings.
Session- MEASURE TO ‘EXCEL’ -DATA DRIVEN INSTRUCTION AND PLANNING
Kavita Kumar
Kavita Kumar has worked in the field of conservation education with the Bombay Natural History society for the past 2 years. She has also undertaken a project on ‘Environment Improvement Society’ towards environment education under the MMRDA. She writes extensively on the environment and is Editor of Green Guide for Teachers, an environment education handbook and Editor of online course “Leadership Course in Biodiversity Conservation”. Kavita has conducted various nature trails, presentations and interactive sessions for schools, colleges and private groups.
Session- SAVING THE PLANET – ENVIRONMENTAL EDUCATION
Craig Johnson
Craig Johnson is currently the Superintendent of the American School of Bombay, in Mumbai, India. Craig returns to India (where he spent 12 years of his childhood) after 15 years in Brazil. While in Brazil, Craig served as the High School Principal, at Graded School in Sao Paulo; and more recently as the Headmaster of the American School of Brasilia, Brazil. Craig’s roots, as a classroom teacher, are in Middle and High School English and Social Studies. Craig continues to keep engaged, in student life, by coaching soccer, and trying to teach or co-teaching an English class as often as possible. A regular presenter and workshop facilitator, on a variety of Leadership and School Improvement topics, Craig has also published a novel (Wave Watcher).
Session- WELCOME ADDRESS and CLOSING
Amit Kaushik
Amit Kaushik has a wealth of experience working in the education field for both the government as well as the private sector. From 2001-2006, Amit was Director Elementary Education in the Ministry of HRD, Government of India, where he was associated with the development and implementation of policies related to Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan. After leaving the government, he worked in the private sector as Director of the SRF Foundation, running the well-known Shri Ram Schools in Delhi, and later as the Chief Executive Officer of Shri Educare Pvt Ltd, an education services provider that offers a range of services from establishing preschools and K-12 schools to teacher training, curriculum development and consulting. He is currently the Chief Operating Officer of the Pratham Education Foundation.
Session- RTE- FROM PAPER TO PRACTICE
Vibha Krishnamurthy
Dr. Krishnamurthy has been practicing as a Developmental Pediatrician in India for the past 10 years. She is the Medical Director of Ummeed Child Development Center, a non-profit organization she set up 8 years ago. Dr. Krishnamurthy is a consultant to Jaslok Hospital, Mumbai as well as several other non-profit organizations. She also serves as a resource person for the Expert Committee on Autism for RCI (Rehabilitation Council of India) and the National Trust. She is currently faculty at Children’s Hospital, Boston.
Session- DEVELOPMENTALLLY APPROPRIATE CURRICULUM AND PLANNING and PLANNING FOR THE MOST VULNERABLE: INTRODUCTION TO LEARNING DISABILITIES
Jahnavi Mehta
Jahnavi is the School Leader of Key-stage 1 (Pre-K to Grade 2) in the Riverside School for the last four years now. She has recently completed her training in Montessori education. She specializes in Leadership, Curriculum development and Professional Development. She has travelled to various places across the world to attend/conduct workshops. She is involved with leadership and teacher training and has taken up workshops to inculcate the Riverside pedagogy to teachers and leaders of Day Star School in Manali, Beacon School in Bhutan, TGES School in Rajkot and Jamnagar (Gujarat) and The Army Schools in Ahmedabad. She has also represented Riverside School at Singapore for conducting workshops on School Leadership and Student Leadership. She has attended numerous workshops/ conferences to develop her professional skills, including ‘Creative Partnerships’ in London and ‘Teach don’t Tell’ in Bombay. She now teaches various domains across the grades in Riverside School and conducts in house workshops for teachers, parents and trainees.
Maya Menon
Maya has been in the field of education for thirty years. Her areas of professional experience include conceptualizing, designing and implementing a wide range of school and teacher-related projects and services – including the Wipro Applying Thought in Schools Teacher Empowerment Project initiated in 2001. In 1988, she set up the Newspaper in Education Programme for The Times of India in Bangalore. Her interests include school effectiveness research, teacher development, collaborative approaches to teaching and learning, interpersonal communication in the classroom, school-industry links for school improvement, leadership and strategic management of schools. She is an Accredited Teacher Trainer for Jenny Mosley Consultancies (UK) for training teachers on Whole School Quality Circle Time across schools in India. She is also an Accredited Master
Trainer for the Cambridge International Diploma for Teachers and Trainers of the University of Cambridge International Examinations, UK.
Shaheen Mistri
Shaheen Mistri is the founder of the Akanksha Foundation, a non-profit organization with a mission to impact the lives of less privileged children, enabling them to maximise their potential and change their lives. Akanksha works primarily in the field of education, addressing non formal education through the Akanksha centre model and also formal education by initiating school reform. Over the past 19 years, the organization has expanded from 15 children in one centre to over 3,500 children across Mumbai and Pune. Mistri is an Ashoka Fellow (2001), a Global Leader for Tomorrow at the World Economic Forum (2002), an Asia Society 21 Leader (2006) and serves on the boards of Ummeed, The Thermax Social Initiatives Foundation and is an advisor to the Latika Roy Foundation. Mistri has been working on the idea of Teach For India from 2007, and serves as its founding CEO and one of its founding Board Members
Session- INNOVATIONS IN EDUCATION: AN INDIAN PERSPECTIVE and TAL IN ACTION: STAND AND DELIVER (MOVIE)
Milind Nagda
Presently, Milind is teaching second grade students in a municipal school in Dharavi, Mumbai. Milind is leading the community and parental empowerment effort by finding means to invest external stakeholders in children education. Before teaching full-time in under resourced classrooms as a Teach For India Fellow, Milind designed the world’s latest technologies in next generation computing at Advanced Micro Devices. He received his B.E. in Electronics Engineering from the University of Mumbai and a M.S. in Computer Engineering from the University of Texas at Austin. Milind Nagda is passionate about service, creating change, youth energy, ed-reform, community empowerment, child-related pedagogy, technology, microprocessors, science and Calvin & Hobbes.
Session- YOUTH MOVEMENTS PANEL
Kayt Norris
Kayt Norris ( Teach For America, St. Louis ’07 ) graduated from Tufts University with a BA in Political Science in 2007. Following her Tufts career, Kayt sought out an opportunity to develop a deeper understanding of the policy issues she is passionate about. This led her to Teach for America where she taught fourth grade and 6 th grade in rural Mississippi and then urban St. Louis. Kayt has recently joined Teach for India as a program manager. In this role she provides training, management and support to teaching fellows as they strive to achieve significant academic gains in underprivileged schools. Kayt believes education is one of the greatest social justice issues of this generation and is excited to be a part of a historic time in India’s future as it moves to ensure every child has the opportunity to have a quality education.
Session- THE CAT IN THE HAT: INTRO TO PHONICS
Nandini Parekh
Nandini has been with Riverside since its inception. She has taught Grades K1, 1, 4, 5 and is currently teaching Grade 7. Her experience enables her to take workshops for parents and other teachers. She has participated in several professional development programs herself, including a summer institute at the Harvard Graduate School of Education (for Teaching for Understanding and Making Learning Visible), a conference on ‘Creative Partnership’ in London, and presented at the Teaching for Understanding conference in Singapore. Nandini is currently looking after the language programme for grades 3 to 7.
Session- CLASROOM MANAGEMENT AND CULTURE:CREATING A CULTURE OF LEARNING
Usha Pandit
Usha Pandit is a teacher, writer and educational consultant, specializing in curriculum development, gifted education, and academic management of educational organizations. She has set up a highly successful gifted education programme at the Australian International School in Jakarta, covering startup and marketing, as well as developing identification criteria, and curriculum framework for the programme. Usha also manages and coordinates a highly popular and successful after-school enrichment programme at the Cathedral Schools from grade 2 to 8, which involves thinking skills and out-of-the-box creativity for children.
Session- EMPOWERING ENGLISH
Srihari Prabhu
Srihari Prabhi has taught 7th and 8th Standard Maths and Science through Teach for America in Newark, New Jersey from 2007-2009. He also worked on Teach for America’s Training Staff during the summer of 2009. He’s worked with Teach for India since August of 2009 primarily in the areas of teacher support, curriculum, and impact.
Session- UNDERSTANDING BY DESIGN- “PLANNING” A ROADMAP FOR YOUR CLASSROOM
Sridhar Rajagopalan
Sridhar Rajagopalan is the founder of Educational Initiatives Pvt. Ltd (EI) which works with both private and government school systems and aims to improve the quality of learning in students. It develops tools to measure and improve student learning and achievement levels in primary and middle schools in English and about 15 Indian languages. Sridhar is a member of various education committees of the Government of India like the NCERT’s National Expert Group on Assessment in Elementary Education (NEGAEE). He is currently a member of an expert group created by the state of Gujarat to recommend decisions related to the structure of the Board Exam in the state.
Session- RTE- FROM PAPER TO PRACTICE
Ashish Rajpal
Ashish Rajpal is the co-founder and CEO of iDiscoveri Education. Ashish quit an international corporate career to work in education. Apart from managing iDiscoveri’s growing organization, he creates and facilitates programs on teacher development, leadership, and organization culture. A former student of Howard Gardner, his areas of interest include “doing classrooms”, self-esteem of children, and non-authoritarian leadership. He has personally led the creation of an NCF based experiential primary school curriculum cum teacher training program, called XSEED that has now reached over 440+ schools across the country. Ashish has an M.Ed from Harvard University and an MBA from XLRI Jamshedpur. He enjoys reading and writing, sufi music, running, the outdoors, and making up children’s stories. He also teaches Grade 4 science. In 2008, he was identified by Education World magazine amongst the 50 top leaders changing education in India.
Session- 5 STEPS TO REAL LEARNING IN THE CLASSROOM
Shalini Sachdev
Shalini Sachdev has been a part of the Thermax Social Initiative Foundation in the capacity of a Principal at the KCT Vidya Niketan English Medium School since 2007. The school is a government school, but the team that runs it is recruited by TSIF, and trained by Akanksha foundation. She was the Director, Andaman and Nicobar Scholarship Initiative whose goal is to select 6 students from the region for scholarship to Rishi Valley School, who have strong social skills (for easy adjustment in a new environment), and show promise where their cognitive abilities are concerned.
Session- SCHOOL SPOTLIGHT
Swati Sahni
Swati Sahni is currently based in New Delhi where she works as a Senior Consultant to India’s Ministry of Human Resource Development with the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan program. With the Right to Free and Compulsory Education coming into force, she is specifically working on supporting the Ministry in areas of Educational Policy & Planning at the National level and with the State governments in the implementation of the Right to Education across the country. Ms. Sahni is also the New Delhi coordinator of the Global Young Indian Professionals and Students(GYIPS), a group aimed at developing stronger networks among young Indian professionals and students, with the aim of furthering their professional development as well as contributing to India’s political, social and economic development.
Session- CLOSING
Mona Seervai
Mrs Seervai was in J.B Petit School for ten years as Science teacher before she moved to Bombay International School as the principal. She’s been with BIS as Principal for the last six years.
Session- PARENTS AS PARTNERS
Sheetal Shah
Sheetal Shah graduated from R.A. Poddar College of Commerce and Economics, Mumbai with a B.Com. Sheetal joined Art for Akanksha as a volunteer in 1997 and has been a part of the program since then. She is now managing Art for Akanksha and has illustrated Akanksha’s first book ‘Miss Muglee goes to Mumbai’ with her student, an Akanksha alumni, Sirajul. She is currently working on an art curriculum for the School Project to ensure that every child has the opportunity to express themselves through art while learning new techniques and being pushed to think creatively.
Session- THE COLOURS OF LEARNING- USING ART IN THE CLASSROOM
Vishal Talreja
Vishal co-founded Dream A Dream along with 11 others, in 1999. Dream A Dream is an 10-year old professional organization that is working on empowering children from vulnerable backgrounds by developing life skills and at the same time sensitizing the community through active volunteering leading to a non-discriminatory society where unique differences are appreciated. Vishal is an Ashoka Fellow (www.ashoka.org) and also sits on Boards of many organizations including Unltd India, ITIHAS and Bangalore Cares. Vishal also mentors many start-up NGOs and provides his expertise in areas of governance, strategic planning, fundraising strategy, project evaluations, financial planning, etc as an independent consultant.
Session- VOICES OF CHANGE: YOUTH MOVEMENTS PANEL
Fiona Vaz
Fiona Vaz holds a Bachelor’s degree in Psychology from St Xavier’s College, Mumbai and a Masters from Mumbai University. She worked with Confederation of Indian Industry for close to a year on Policy Advocacy and events. She is now a Fellow with Teach For India (2009) and serves students in a low income private school in Malad. Fiona’s other interests are writing and most creative art forms.
Session- SCHOOL SPOTLIGHT
Ramya Venkataraman
Ramya leads McKinsey’s Education practice in India on a full-time basis, as part of the Firm’s global Social Sector practice. Ramya’s experiences in education cut across school, higher and vocational education. They include: driving system transformation related efforts often working closely with Governments; serving foundations, non-profits and large institutions (including some institutions of national importance) on their own strategy for having large scale impact; serving private clients building large businesses in this space; helping investors evaluate potential opportunities; and providing inputs to policy frameworks.
Session- INNOVATIONS IN EDUCATION: AN INDIAN PERSPECTIVE and INNOVATIVE PRACTICES IN PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT
