Creating an Education Leadership Movement with Teach for All

Featuring Wendy Kopp, CEO and Co-founder Teach For All and Shaheen Mistri, Founder and CEO, Teach for India.

Wendy Kopp: [00:00:02] So what we're kind of building is this growing force of people all around the world who just have a genuine sense of possibility because they believe so much in the potential of students, in the kind of marginalized communities they're working at. They believe so much in their own potential to make a difference. No one will convince them that there's a silver bullet solution. They know it's going to take collective leadership. It's going to take all of us working together to tackle the many different dimensions of the issue. That's what the whole thing's about. [00:00:34][32.5]

Tulaine: [00:00:41] You're listening to System Catalysts. Each week you will hear personal stories of change makers who are bringing more inclusive connective system level solutions to our most persistent challenges. I'm to Lane Montgomery. In this episode, Jeff Walker spoke with our guests Wendy Kopp and Shaheen Mistry. Some people view leadership as an individual journey. They think that to lead others, they need to invest in themselves. But system catalysts see leadership as a collective effort. They see others as their partners and remain open to learning from them. They use their energy to invest in others as well as themselves. Wendy Kopp, CEO of Teach for All, believes that true leaders inspire others to become leaders themselves. [00:01:46][64.6]

Wendy Kopp: [00:01:48] We think a lot about this notion of collective leadership and how ultimately the fact that the circumstances of kids of birth predict their outcomes is this big, complex, systemic challenge. And ultimately it takes a lot of people exerting leadership in order to change it at every level of the system. And those people need to be kind of united by a shared purpose and shared values, shared vision, and have the networks and relationships to be able to collaborate and learn together. [00:02:22][33.9]

Tulaine: [00:02:23] So imagine what we could achieve if every leader encouraged others to become trailblazers in their own communities. Or perhaps you don't need to imagine. You can simply take Teach for All as an example. Today, Teach for All is a global network of over 60 organizations all over the world. Each partner recruits outstanding graduates to commit at least two years to teach in marginalized communities. But change doesn't stop there. A majority of teach for All alumni continue to engage in mission related work. And these teachers are training students to become the leaders of tomorrow, creating huge ripples of change. The idea for Teach for All was planted over three decades ago. Believe it or not, it was Wendy's undergraduate thesis at Princeton University. [00:03:10][46.9]

Wendy Kopp: [00:03:13] I thought of this idea essentially. Why weren't all these, quote, outstanding recent college graduates all over the country being recruited as aggressively to commit two years to teach in our urban and rural public schools as we were being recruited at the time to commit two years to work in banks. And I became very obsessed with that idea. And I was searching for something I wasn't finding in terms of an opportunity to assume a big responsibility that would make a big difference in our country. And I felt that I wasn't alone in that. There were thousands of other graduating seniors out there just searching for something that we weren't finding. And so this idea was meant to address that, right, to give us a way to channel our energy against something that would really matter even from the start. I thought that would be so important to galvanize all this energy into communities where every additional super committed teacher makes a difference. But also knowing that, you know, if we're going to take some of the most promising leaders in our country and have their first two years be teaching in under-resourced communities across the country, that's going to shape their priorities. Everything, their career trajectories, their values, like I thought that would change the consciousness of our country. And that idea really is still at the heart of this work. [00:04:43][90.5]

Tulaine: [00:04:45] Wendy didn't wait long to make this vision a reality. She founded Teach for America shortly after graduating from Princeton. [00:04:51][6.0]

Wendy Kopp: [00:04:52] But it was just very quickly, far beyond me. I think it kind of just magnetized, really. Thousands of people, even in that first year from the recent graduates themselves who really didn't jump at the chance to do this to veteran teachers and teacher educators all over the country and said, we want to come together and train these folks to donors and school systems and other allies in the education community. And in a way, that same thing. I mean, that's sort of what happened that led to teach for all. 15 years later, like I had my head down, I was fully focused on my own country and just the massive inequities here and the effort to make Teach for America bigger and better. But there was just something in the water in the rest of the world. And literally within one year, this was maybe now, say 17 years ago, I met 13 people from 13 different countries who were just determined that something similar needed to happen in their countries. [00:05:56][63.5]

Tulaine: [00:05:59] One of these people was Shaheen Mystery. At the time, she was running Akanksha, a foundation in India that provides free education to children from low income communities. [00:06:08][9.4]

Shaheen: [00:06:10] Coincidentally, we had four Teach for America volunteers come through our gang shop, and they had all volunteered at different times in Teach for America in different places. And yet they all spoke this incredibly passionate, mission driven language. And so that that intrigued me. And I said, I want to understand a little bit more about this organization called Teach for America. I happened to be traveling to the US, and so I reached out. I remember I bought Wendy's book the day before she agreed to meet me, read it through the night, and showed up in her office, really with just a question on whether she had ever thought about doing something like this in India. After that first meeting, she wrote me a very polite email to say, You know, I was sort of intrigued with this idea of doing this model in a very different context. And I brought it up with my board. And that agenda item lasted a very short time because they said, you have your hands full with Teach for America. And then I came back a month later and told her, like, why don't you just come to India and see? [00:07:16][67.0]

Tulaine: [00:07:20] Wendy decided to go. She was prepared to witness all of the differences between the U.S. and India, but she wasn't prepared for the similarities. [00:07:28][7.7]

Wendy Kopp: [00:07:30] I actually wasn't sure that made sense initially. I mean, of course, the reality in the U.S. and the reality in India, for example, it just seems so far from each other. But Shaheen Mistry, who organized this week, the first thing we did was go on a school visit. And I still remember it really clearly because we went into classrooms and we talked to the school principal. And all I could think was, I mean, it was shocking to me. I felt like it was just like the school visits that I had been on all over our own country and just realize that the circumstances of the most marginalized kids there are probably more similar across the U.S. and India than to the more privileged kids in each of our countries. And then we're talking to the principal. She started explaining how there was only so much she could do. And at that point, I had heard that so much from so many school principals across this country. And that point and many other points during that week. I mean, as we talked to almost everyone from college students to potential donors to government officials and such, I just could not get over kind of the similar roots of the issues that we were addressing. And it was really at that moment that I realized it would be really short sighted not to find a way to do this together. [00:09:02][91.5]

Tulaine: [00:09:03] India became one of the first countries that would come to form teach for all. [00:09:07][4.1]

Wendy Kopp: [00:09:09] I really did believe conceptually, even from that start, that we were all going to learn from each other, that Teach for America would learn as much ultimately from Teach for India, how quickly that would happen. It was a shock. I think it wasn't even a year in when we realized that they had and a number of the other network partners as well, launched in that first year had kind of taken all the great lessons and examples from Teach for America and from Teach first in the UK and just made them better. And so really, we weren't even one or two years in before we were realizing, you know, we need to get the Teach for America people over to India to see what's happening here. And that was just the beginning, really. The last 15 years have convinced all of us, from all these now 60 countries, that we really can move so much faster when we're learning from each other across borders. I think I've become even more obsessed with what happens to the teachers and how it kind of produces the leadership effects we see over time. Once we launched into the global effort, because it was just so surreal to see the same movie playing in all these very different places, I mean, down to the same data points, right? One of the things shaking was pretty clear about was she really didn't think we would see the same effects. She thought India is just different. Like, people will not be able to stay in the social sector. Many of them will leave, but at least we will have created equity minded business people and such. And yet it's like 77% of the alumni of Teach for India full time, all in in mission related work. And that's almost exactly the data point in the US and in all these other countries, right. The people who do these organizations end up first of all, they come to be much more in their students. They come to be much more in their own potential to make a difference. They completely change their assessment of the nature of the problem and the solution. Like they go from thinking it's technical. Like funding is the number one issue, that that's what people think all around the world. And of course that's a big issue. But they come out thinking, Oh, this is a deeply complex, systemic, adaptive challenge. And so essentially they become the leaders we meet and their priorities change. So they never support. [00:11:36][147.8]

Tulaine: [00:11:39] This idea of collective leadership is something that strongly resonated with Shaheen. [00:11:44][4.5]

Shaheen: [00:11:45] As I looked around my country, I said if we had leaders at all levels committed to our children, everything would change. The early learning came a lot from Teach for America and a lot from Teach first. [00:11:59][13.7]

Tulaine: [00:12:01] Teach First in the UK is the first international adaptation of Teach for America. [00:12:05][4.6]

Shaheen: [00:12:07] Of course, there were only like four or five countries in the network at that time. But I think being older countries that had had their share of challenges and successes, there was just a lot of learning. And I think the most salient thing I remember from the early days was just how open people were, like staff members that Teach for America, that teach us not just in sharing what was going well, but in really sharing their challenges and failures with us. I think we're so blessed that we're just here to have a network of nonprofit leaders who are so incredibly open, supportive, connected. I think COVID, interestingly, gave that a very big boost when all of us were just hit so badly by the pandemic that we very naturally started interacting a lot more with each other. So I think collaboration has improved even more close to that. But at any given time, there are ten people that I can call from different organizations for any form of help, support, advice and very much value that. [00:13:14][67.1]

Tulaine: [00:13:17] Today, Teach for India is present in eight cities across the country. They have 1000 fellows teaching 34,000 children and a movement of 4000 alumni. [00:13:26][9.5]

Shaheen: [00:13:28] Our alumni today are directly serving 100,000 children, but indirectly reaching about 50 million children across India. Where we're trying to go, it's a bold and ambitious dream. We want to be a movement of 50,000 leaders, and that's our ten year Northstar So we're working towards 50,000 leaders who work collectively with love, which is the driving value that we operate with here to actually transform the lives of one in ten children in the regions that we serve. And beyond my understanding of what it's going to take to change the system is very closely linked with the idea of investing in leadership. I think ultimately leaders can do great things or they can do very damaging things. And I think our best shot at shifting the needle on education is to say at all levels of the system, let's truly invest in the leaders that we need who are going to care about that problem and work relentlessly to solve that problem. And I think when I say leaders, I mean, how do we build a diverse movement of people who are all leaders working collectively towards this problem? So we think of student leaders, fellow leaders, alumni leaders, partners outside of Teach for India. But how can we increasingly create spaces for honest and rich dialog for people to work together in spaces that feel safe, where they can make mistakes, where they can celebrate each other, and where they can really help each other to progress towards that goal of educational equity. [00:15:10][102.7]

Tulaine: [00:15:12] Teach for All unites dozens of partners around the world through the same principles. Wendy believes that these are essential to collaborate and learn from one another. [00:15:20][8.2]

Wendy Kopp: [00:15:21] We worked with Teach First, which was the first international adaptation of Teach for America. And we defined these unifying principles, the kind of shared purpose and vision that would bring us together a set of programmatic principles and organizational principles. And that still to this day, we've now refined them and kind of co-created them with most of the partners who are now part of the network over time. But those are really crucial, right? Because anyone who's working to live in to those principles in their countries, we want to be contributing to their success. We want to be learning from them. But those really have to be true to give us enough in common that we can learn from each other. So that was really the first step. But one of our values is locally rooted and globally informed. And, you know, we believe so much that the path to transformation and system change is ultimately locally rooted leaders who are steeped in local contexts, history, values, who have trust in their communities. And at the same time, we just believe local leaders can move a lot faster if they're exposed to what's working and evidence of what's possible in other communities. And we don't initiate these organizations in other countries. We really wait for people to come saying, I really want to pursue this in this country. And then we come behind them. We never get out in front of them. So we do a lot to help expose them to how people in similar contexts or different contexts have kind of adapted those unifying principles in their countries. We do anything they want us to do as they work to build governmental support, build the organizational capacity to launch, find the funding to do it, but they really own it and drive it from the very start. [00:17:20][119.1]

Tulaine: [00:18:05] Besides being locally rooted and globally informed, Teach for All promotes a set of values. These include diversity and inclusiveness, constant learning, a sense of possibility. And last but not least, interdependence. [00:18:18][13.3]

Wendy Kopp: [00:18:20] We do put a lot into essentially surfacing insights from the network and spreading them and fostering kind of the connective tissue and the relationships among the staff members and in our case, also among the teachers and and the alumni. Those teachers become so that ultimately we're building this deeply interconnected learning kind of global community. I think the clarity of that strategic framework does so very much work for us. So that's a piece. And then I think we have put so much into just the relationship building across the network and at least prior to the COVID years. I mean, we built the whole thing on Zoom, but we also would have 25 in-person gatherings a year of different people. We have the big global conference that brings lots of folks from all these partners together. But we also have events for heads of like functions or people taking on similar challenges or brought together by similar interests. And I think those personal relationships, it's really hard to imagine how this whole thing would work without them. I mean, I think that has been really significant and there's just a huge value that I think people feel like there's so much energy to learn from each other. People are so excited to travel to each other's countries and understand how other people are tackling really the same issue or very similar issue in a very different context. [00:19:59][99.0]

Tulaine: [00:20:03] Through their Global Learning Lab, Teach for All captures lessons from communities across their network By sharing experiences from many different contexts, it's easier to see what is universally true. [00:20:14][11.5]

Wendy Kopp: [00:20:16] We've really missed co-created with our whole network of 60 partners strong at this point, a new teacher development framework that is rooted in lessons that we've learned by essentially visiting classrooms around the world where we're seeing the kind of transformational outcomes that we're looking for. When you see that kind of teacher, no matter what country they're in, the patterns among those teachers are so striking. Great. And it's what's led us to realize that we can all be stronger if we're working together. So I'm obsessed with this particular teacher development framework because I think we've really come to an insight that isn't reflected in posts teacher development efforts, and certainly wasn't reflected in ours until very recently, which is that we really need to start with teacher mindsets. I mean, most teacher development efforts start with teacher actions, but the reality is that all of us adults and all of our teachers went through the old system. That isn't what we want in the future. And as a result, we have a lot of unlearning to do. We've learned that if we can start there, then it's much easier to develop teachers who pursue the actions that we see in the most transformative classrooms to measure progress holistically and all. So that's just one example. But it's hard to imagine that we would have come to that so quickly without the advantage of being able to see all these patterns across such diverse contexts, which were really being generated by people who were sort of a product of diverse cultures. And I think the diversity of the learning journey really advanced our thinking. [00:22:06][110.6]

Tulaine: [00:22:08] Through their experiences across continents. Teach for All has learned the value of treating students as leaders. [00:22:13][5.6]

Wendy Kopp: [00:22:14] We're also thinking increasingly about students themselves and how much faster our schools will improve if the students decide that they're going to work together with the adults to shift the way their schools operate. That's our latest thought across Teach for All. And I have to say, that idea did not come from me or really any one person, but it's just bubbled up and spread. And I would attribute shaking. That was her thought initially. We're going to all be retired and we're still going to have this system unless we enlist all that energy that sits in our classrooms every day. And that idea has also just gone viral across our network. [00:22:56][41.4]

Shaheen: [00:22:57] Teacher. India was very, very passionate about the idea of student leadership. [00:23:01][4.0]

Tulaine: [00:23:02] That's Shaheen again. [00:23:03][0.8]

Shaheen: [00:23:04] And I think when Teach for All came behind that idea and really helped that idea blossom. It was very beautiful then to see student leadership emerge in countries all around the world. We've always thought about leadership in our fellows. We build it in our fellows, and then there's leadership in our alumni. Today, what we're really seeing is the real multiplier is going to be when our students go out there as leaders. And so we're really now starting to think that actually the movement is not just the alumni that graduates from that classroom and goes on to serve, but the multiplier of those 30, 40 children that that alumni was able to teach during the fellowship. And so we're now seeing that education is not something that is going to build a future leader. But how does the child today, how ever all the child is, whatever background the child is from? How can the child be practicing leadership today so that ten years of practice, of leadership, we're really building an unstoppable movement of leaders? [00:24:09][65.0]

Jeff: [00:24:10] Of that, the key common aspect of the Teach for All network, it seems to me, is not only student focus, but also creating these educational leaders that can improve education across the countries over the long period of time. Can you talk about what kind of leadership you teach and what they get out of it and what kind of retention you have people staying in the educational field? [00:24:33][22.8]

Shaheen: [00:24:34] Yes, I get very excited by this question of what our alumni do, because I think that truly is where the power of this Teach four model is in terms of how we teach leadership. We teach five big strands of leadership. We teach our leaders how to connect, how to envision, how to plan, how to execute and how to reflect. And our model is built around that. We also teach our leaders that education needs to expand beyond what it currently is in our country, which is very self and individual focused to being about how I interact with others in the world and how I actually build the country and build the world into a better place. So that's just a very headline view of what our leadership program is. What happens after the two years is incredible. We have alumni today in India leading networks of schools. We have alumni staying in the classroom. We have 135 organizations in the education sector that have been started by Teach for India Alumni. We have alumni working across 23 state governments on large scale statewide reforms. So we're really seeing our alumni at all levels of the system and increasingly seeing them coming together to collaborate as well. [00:25:57][83.0]

Tulaine: [00:25:58] The Teach for All movement continues to spread beyond their programs. Wendy believes that it all begins with the shared vision. [00:26:05][6.7]

Wendy Kopp: [00:26:06] There's this new educational research that's out, and I'm very obsessed by it because I feel that it's very affirming of this work of ours. But it looks that this is this is the project called the Rise Program that Pritchard, the development economists, led for almost a decade out of the school. And it looked at the education systems across low and low to middle income countries over the last 50 years to try to figure out what was differentiating the systems that were fastest improving and the big. Headline is that actually the differentiator was what they call it, a shared sense of purpose that is felt within the education system and also outside of that sort of a societal level. But what works is when there's a shared sense of purpose towards the purpose of students learning and where everything is aligned to that, and you build the capacity over time to continuously improve towards that purpose, like that's what works. We should start looking at how, how do you build purpose driven systems? And when I think about what I've seen play itself out in communities across the US over now 30 some years to now, increasingly communities all across the world finding resonates so much like when you can reach the point where enough people are on an absolute mission and they are in fact working at every level and they are working inside and outside the system. So they're advocates pushing out the system. They're social innovators working outside the system and showing that a different way is possible. There are people in classrooms and school leaders and people in the district administration and people in the federal government like you get enough people on the same mission with the networks in all relationships to coordinate learning together and in fact, everyone else. That's how you build system. [00:28:05][118.7]

Tulaine: [00:28:08] And now our Rapid Fire with Wendy. [00:28:10][1.8]

Jeff: [00:28:12] What's one word to describe your journey as a system catalyst? [00:28:14][2.5]

Wendy Kopp: [00:28:16] Energizing. [00:28:16][0.0]

Jeff: [00:28:18] What's been one of the most gratifying moments along the journey? [00:28:20][2.2]

Wendy Kopp: [00:28:21] There have been so many, but one moment that comes to mind is our zoom enabled virtual 15th anniversary celebration. And I say that because there were hundreds of people, such an incredibly diverse group, so many different cultures and languages. And to hear such passionate, authentic voices, essentially advocating for for what does bring us together, you know, for the shared values, the purpose, the vision that unites us all. And that was just a moment when I felt like, wow, this is it really is working. We have such a strong foundation to to build from. [00:29:05][43.8]

Jeff: [00:29:07] What about your organization keeps you up at night? [00:29:08][1.5]

Wendy Kopp: [00:29:10] Maybe this is predictable. Spoken like a true social entrepreneur. I would say resources. Just the question of will we be able to find the resources globally to do justice to this mission of ours? [00:29:24][14.0]

Jeff: [00:29:26] You know, for the listeners who aspire to be a system catalyst, where do you think they should start? They want to be like you. They want to be like the CEOs. They're running your countries. Where do they jump in? [00:29:35][9.5]

Wendy Kopp: [00:29:36] The first step is to really get close to the problem you're working to address and then really asking yourself where you can make the biggest difference. And it may be through contributing to initiatives that are already there and already started. Or maybe you see a gap in the system and needs to be filled and you're the perfect person to fill it. But I do think gaining proximity to the big challenges is what we most need. And that's why I think so much about this next generation of promising leaders out there, because we need their energy and leadership tackling all these issues. And I hope that we will do more as a society and that our universities will think all the more critically about how we can foster real intentionality in this generation that's more committed to diversity, equity, sustainability than anything that has come before, and yet whose career choices look eerily similar to those of the generations 30 plus years ago. So I'm hoping we can help this generation find their way to true fulfillment and well-being, which takes congruence between their values and where they put their energy. And I just think there's a lot more we can collectively do to enable that. [00:30:53][77.3]

If you want to learn more about Teach for All, head on over to teachforall.org.