OUR WORK
OUR STORY
As a mother of a child with asthma, I experienced firsthand the challenges educators face in addressing the unique needs of their students. When my son was young, his battle with asthma led to frequent absences from school. I watched helplessly as he missed classwork, friendships, and the joy of simply being in the classroom. His isolation was heart-wrenching, and I realised how so many teachers were unprepared to support students facing even these common challenges.
During this time, the compassion of one teacher not only helped my son feel valued and connected but also ignited a passion in me to make this level of understanding commonplace in education. It highlighted the profound effect that compassion could have, creating an environment where students feel safe and motivated to engage, ultimately leading to better educational outcomes.
However, a few years later, I overheard a fifteen-year-old say, “My mom is just a teacher.” That struck me deeply, showing how misunderstood and undervalued the teaching profession has become. It prompted me to question the broader implications: Why has teaching lost the respect it once held? Is this why educators have lost their compassion and drive for lifelong learning? And how does this contribute to the quality of teaching in India today?
These questions fueled my determination to establish Tomorrowsmith Foundation. We believe that equitable, quality education for all children can only be achieved by investing in teachers. Our programs are designed to build the skills, motivation, and social capital of pre-service teachers, ensuring they enter the classroom equipped to create a sense of belonging for every student. By engaging with these educators, we address systemic issues at their roots, laying the groundwork for sustainable educational reform.
Today, our network of 200 educators supports one another through the challenges of their early careers, striving to make a real difference in their students’ lives. This journey is a testament to our commitment to change, and we are dedicated to elevating the teaching profession, rekindling educators’ compassion, and fostering a culture of lifelong learning.
Through our work at Tomorrowsmith Foundation, we aim to transform the educational landscape, ensuring that every child experiences the understanding and support that can profoundly shape their future.
Through our work at Tomorrowsmith Foundation, we aim to transform the educational landscape, ensuring that every child experiences the understanding and support that can profoundly shape their future.
Rashmi Sharma
Founder and CEO
OUR ENTRY POINT
Teachers are a key pillar of the education system. Quality education is unimaginable without addressing teaching quality. For achieving educational transformation in India, we use teachers as our entry point.
When the best, brightest, and motivated teachers enter the teaching profession, they create a safe, inclusive, and dynamic learning environment for students. They enable pupils to construct their own ideas, concepts, hypotheses and theories. This way, students gain skills that let them critically analyze the information, gain insights, solve problems, be innovative, and have a better understanding of their world.
Through our interventions with pre-service teachers, we strive to create a cadre of highly skilled and motivated teachers.
OUR INTERVENTIONS
We work with the pre-service teachers to help them build competencies and attitudes that will help them enter the teaching profession with confidence and a growth mindset.
We provide a public platform for teachers to practice their skills and showcase their teaching acumen to the prospective employers. Through building their confidence and self-efficacy beliefs, we improve their motivation to join the workforce and create a stimulating learning environment for their students.
OUR THEORY OF CHANGE
Our change model is based on the theory that an integrated program that builds skills, motivation, and social capital of pre-service teachers will cause an increase in the volume, quality, and value of teaching profession in India. This will address teacher shortage, thus improving learning outcomes for children in India.
The model strengthens four elements that are necessary for improved quality of teaching. They are: pre-service training, school leadership support and engagement, new teacher skills, motivation and mindsets, and parental demand for quality teaching. By improving the supply of quality teachers and increasing the demand for quality teaching, our approach will make a larger impact on the education system