School Psychologist Professional Practice Rubric: Fill & Download for Free

This is a long post.If you care about your life, both personally and professionally, take sometime out and read the comments below. I’m going to share from the perspective of a fellow, who was with Teach For India for two full years.Firstly understand, that Teach For India is part of a global network called‘Teach For All’. There are 40 partner organizations across the world under the Teach For All umbrella, and Teach For India is one of its partners.Pros:1) You will enjoy a great deal with children and your class will become home for two years. You’ll truly understand what it takes to handle 25–40 children in a classroom.If you enjoy teaching, you’ll get ample chances to become good at it.2) You get to meet a variety of people from diverse backgrounds. TFI has very aggressive recruiting targets.3) If you want to get into MBA/MPP programs after your fellowship, this ‘might’ give you a leg up. There is no guarantee. I say this because, just like you, fellows from other partner organizations across the world will be competing with you for the limited seats in the prestigious schools. You don’t particularly stand a chance, just because you have TFI on your resume. However,because it is a non-profit experience, schools like to look at it with some respect.4) Your opportunities to teach as a teacher, post the fellowship, dramatically increases.Cons:1) You’ll get names like McKinsey, Goldman Sachs, eBay, Deloitte and many other fancy names, thrown in your face. Don’t take things at face value. Teach For India loves to show how people left their prestigious jobs and came to TFI, because they wanted to change the world. Not true in majority of the cases.Don’t buy what you hear. You don’t know their story. Maybe, those people were horribly bored from their work in the corporate world or had plans to study further and TFI seemed like a good non-profit experience or some other reason. Question and think for yourself.The media is full of such stories that TFI plants in famous publications to drive greater application numbers every year.2) The need for greater applicants is driven by the money, big investors put into TFI. Teach For India needs to justify its spending. The more money TFI gets, the more applicants it can get every year which can be showed in media that TFI is doing well (Again not true), the more it can spend on marketing and advertising and other logistical costs of running the organization.3) If you would’ve studied TFI’s social media growth, you’ll understand that they’ve spent heavily on buying followers. It spent a lot of money on these platforms, because this is where the youth hangs out. Youth is the primary target group of TFI’s recruitment.4) TFI understands the younger generation very well. They know exactly where they are, what they do, what their aspirations and desires are, and it feeds into that system very well.You ask how?Possibly, every youth today wants to serve the country. The youth has become socially conscious. This is actually fantastic for our country. However, TFI knows this pulse can be used to get them locked in their organization for two years.5) If you are young or a fresh graduate, do NOT come to this organization. TFI will make you believe with its fancy presentations and social media posts, that people get placed with amazing organizations and people are having the time of their lives after the fellowship. I’m positive, people with greater work experience can decipher for themselves, what is right for them after reading below.Let me break that down a bit.Finding decent post fellowship work opportunities is probably the last thing on the minds of the TFI’s management. The people who get placed in bigger firms:a) Already had strong backgrounds before joining TFI and could offset the teaching experience b) Knew people within the firms who could recommend their friends.These are just one off cases, not the norm. Question the management when you consider applying for the fellowship. Ask them for honest numbers and not some garbled version of ‘company policy to not disclose such information’. Ask what type of firms and salaries are offered to fellows. Dig deep. Get real.Many are struggling to find jobs, a year and in other cases, almost two years after leaving the fellowship. Their careers are in a limbo. I know of fellows,who with 4-5 years of experience, excluding TFI’s 2 years, were offered jobs of Rs.10,000, internships of Rs.4000 and some free internships in Kenya/Africa etc,after the fellowship. Fellowship offers approx. Rs.16,000 as a monthly stipend.You’re better off staying as a fellow in that case.Read this again. It’s after the fellowship.You’ll hear silly job terms like ‘Teacher Leader’, ‘Teaching ninja’, ‘Marketing Czar’ and many other, which have zero relevance in real life. By real life, I mean life outside TFI.TFI creates a bubble around you.Post the fellowship, serious employers rejected to even consider our resumes, as according to them, we built no hard functional skills in the process. TFI does a hard sell of explaining you about ‘transferable skills/leadership skills’,you gain during the two years.It is absolutely misleading.You gain teaching experience, some experience of using Microsoft excel and a bit about networking. If you were into coding, finance, HR, marketing or engineering roles, or any other functional role prior to TFI, none of these will be used during the fellowship. Those skills will rust.There are special sessions in which you are taught, that the terms used within TFI ‘may not’ be understood outside, so you refrain from using them in your resume.You will also hear TFI management say, people start enterprises here. True.But, not the kind you think. Majority of them are again non-profits. They feed off each other for resources and money.TFI also offers fellows a chance to interview for jobs to join its staff, post the fellowship. But in this case, TFI already has its picks. They will be aggressive after who they want to rope in as a TFI staff. They already have their eyes set on who can join the organization.Many of the fellow friends have regretted joining the fellowship, as their careers are in total jeopardy.Which brings me to my next point.6) TFI is a highly politically driven organization. Favoritism is a very normal practice. Arrogance runs rampant. Your program managers(PMs), Senior Program Managers (SPMs and higher level executives are all part of this younger age bracket. After seeing and working under them, you’d wish you could work under someone who could actually add value to your so called ‘leadership experience’. In many cases, you’d wish you could go back to your former boss. Most of these managers are theoretical in nature, who studied TFI’s rubrics and thought people work according to them. You’d think people working in an NGO are driven by noble intentions. Here, you’ll be proven wrong. Very wrong. Information about opportunities stays within a few networks. If you’re a part of it; good for you. If not, you’ll hear about them much after it’s already gone.Your time in TFI is going to be judged by your social media profile presence, your closeness to senior staff members, how well you speak, your financial status,your previous work ex (if any) and your education background among other things.7) There is intense competition between fellows to be seen and acknowledged by senior managers. There were fellows who used to literally daily write mails about their class updates and good things ranging from their program managers, right upto the CEO. The culture is very amateur, although you’d be asked to think otherwise. Fellows used to go drunk and sleepy to their classrooms. Children have been manhandled. There were cases wherein managers had relationships with fellows and these were very public issues. Not rumours, but facts.8) There were fantastic people who were a part of the organization, but slowly left the organization after they saw what was happening inside it. I know of women,who had severe hormonal problems and had to consult therapists/psychologists. Sadly, no one is taking cognizance of this fact, that their good people have left and the organization is in severe shortage of good talent.9) Everything in TFI is a numbers game. You are a number on the management’s excel sheet. Children’s performance is a numbers game. Data can be conveniently fudged, everyone knows it.10) Most people who’ve continued to stay with TFI, will all be speaking in superlatives about the excellence of the organization. Think before you buy that. If a public organization has its employees talking ill about it, how will it generate good press and greater funding?It takes a certain type to be able to gel in an organization like this.11) If you really want to serve and do good, volunteer in a classroom few times a week. You’ll be good. It is not necessary to join the fellowship and prove your commitment to the country. But, if you think you are cut for this experience, by all means do the fellowship. I enjoyed the kids I taught. But, that was that in terms of experience.Many like me, were misguided and eventually were a misfit in this firm. Many like me, fought against the wishes of our families and joined the fellowship, only to be setback by 2 years in our careers.I hope you make a wise choice.Question everything you see and hear from this organization.