Thirty years ago, an orange-bannered tabloid made its way quietly into the mailboxes of a few hundred teachers and the desks of a comparable number of principals and librarians. It got put into the folders of workshop-attending teacher-educators and book-buyers. It had a set of ambitious goals: to create conversation among a largely ignored constituency, to spark a sense of agency and a can-do spirit in a tired profession. Around twenty years ago, the two-tone masthead turned full colour, but the driving force remained the same. And a little over a decade ago, the tabloid morphed into a slick folio-sized magazine. Still the goal stayed constant.
From its point of origin in the Hyderabad corporate office of Orient Longman Ltd (now Orient Blackswan) to its rocky mid-years in the sun-filled home office of Spark India to its two-roomed operation in my home, some things about Teacher Plus have not changed. It continues to keep a focus on the teacher, that person who is responsible for driving the last mile in education, the individual who puts national and state policy on learning into practice, the only real interface between the target of education (the child) and the articulation of its hope (NEP ver.x. and all else).
From a scratchy beginning where contributions had to be sought out and persuasion and call-on-conscience were the only tactics we could use to get people to share their experience and expertise in the pages of our 16-page bi-monthly tabloid, we are now a 56-page monthly with submissions that back up over 6 months. But it still makes its way quietly, without fanfare, into the mailboxes of some 3000 schools and individual teachers, generating some conversation and we believe, a lot of reflection. Not big numbers, but when you do a web search of “magazines for teachers in India” Teacher Plus comes up in the top five to six, depending on which engine you’re using (and some of the others are aggregate sites or education portals). I’m willing to cautiously wager that it is the longest continuously running English language publication of its kind in the country. A few other publications do exist (Sandarbhin Hindi from Ekalavya, focusing on science education, or the more recent Progressive Teacher), but few have existed as long as Teacher Plus, and fewer take as broad a view of school education or cater to as wide a range of teaching contexts as we do.
I often talk about Teacher Plus as my oldest child. It was born the same year as my first daughter, just a few months ahead, and has taken just as much care and patience as any offspring. There are times when I’ve felt like giving up, and once I came close to it, writing off to long-time associates—contributors, subscribers, and precious few advertisers--that we couldn’t sustain it any longer. But the outpouring of support that came after that communication convinced us that we were doing something important, something valuable, that needed to be preserved. And after all, one doesn’t give up on a child. You keep hoping, and you keep giving, without question, and without expectation (hope and expectation are different things, aren’t they?), simply because you believe in the project in and of itself (if one may think of it like that).
In this sense, Year Thirty may be seen as something of a milestone. Young people feel both apprehension and excitement at the approach of the Big Three O. It’s a special party, and if we have to take apart the feeling, perhaps these are its constituents: the sense that the residue of childhood is finally spent, the notion that one has come into the adult self—the one that we are now going to inhabit, for better or worse, the idea that if there is to be change and growth, it must come mostly from within and be directed by one’s own choices. Eighteen or twenty-one might be legal ages of constitutional and legal recognition, but thirty seems to represent the emotional and psychological leave-taking of early youth, the formal end of notional “adulting” and the beginning of true adulthood.
So it has been with Teacher Plus. We’ve published over 100 issues since we went monthly in 2007 (and close to another 300 issues before that), so it’s about time we considered ourselves the adult on the block. Of the small team of 7 (4 full time and 2 part time and myself--present part time but involved full time), four have been with the magazine for over twelve years or longer. I have been a more or less constant feature, taking sabbaticals now and then but always connected by a long rope. There’s more on the history and evolution of the magazine in an earlier, somewhat wistful (and I thought final)post. I don’t want to repeat the details available there, or on our magazine web site, which gives you not only a sense of our journey but also the depth and width of our engagement with the many issues concerning school education in our country and the composition of the team.
This post is more in the nature of a celebration of our Big Three O, and a thank you to all those who have been with us through the years, believing in us enough to support us with funding (a few key people at Azim Premji University, Anuradha Prasad at Saptaparni, Srivani from Progressive/Rangaraya Technologies), ideas (Kamakshi Balasubramanian, Neeraja Raghavan, Geeta Iyer, and many, many, others) and of course infusing in it a spirit of can-do (Buchamma—always, and my partner-in-crime Sheel). The energy that keeps the wheels turning on a day-to-day basis comes from Sushma, Shalini, Nirmala, Kumar and from a clicking distance, Jamuna.
We keep an eye on the variegated landscape and multiple learning contexts that could impact the world of teaching, from new research in child development and pedagogy to government policy and technology and innovative classroom methods. Over the years, we’ve nurtured a large group of teachers-turned-writers who have given the magazine it’s unique theory-cum-practice blend, ensuring that we focus just as much on the teacher’s experience as on information drawn from the wider sphere of research, debate, policy and politics on/of education. We’ve learned a lot over the past thirty years, and have tried to put this learning into our own editorial and production practice, given the tight resources we have. But what we lack in material resources (despite the generosity of APU) is made up for by the wealth of expertise we continually get from our large pool of writers.
I must confess that now and then the magazine feels more like a burden than a joy (and I’m sure every parent will identify with that). While children go off and take care of themselves at some point (despite coming back for periodic nurturing initially and complaining later), not to mention the potential to become caregivers at some point, this magazine can do no such thing. Of course, I don’t argue that it possibly brings joy and stimulation to many of those who read it, and to some extent fulfils the professional and financial needs of those who contribute to it. But it’s unlikely to ever become self-sustaining in the manner of many businesses. While we have a small enthusiastic following, it’s nowhere near what is needed to make the magazine run on its own. It’s a vicious circle—you need money to gain visibility, and you gain money (in the form of subscriptions and advertising) only if you are visible. But one of the things that comes from turning thirty is the acceptance that this is the way things are. Not complacence, because we will still try to keep pushing the idea of a magazine for teachers as a valuable professional resource and a space for sharing experiences and talking through problems. The other thing that comes from turning the bend into true adulthood is the sense that you can do what you believe in and be what you want to be, despite the pressures of the outside world—as long as you do it with integrity and consistency.
That might seem a tad preachy and perhaps idealistic, but in the thirty years we’ve been around, we faced pressures of various kinds. We have had advertisers ask us to carry pieces that were promotional rather than critical. We’ve had contributors disagreeing with our way of approaching an issue (and we do carry a range of opinions, it’s just that we like them to be articulated well), and we’ve had to keep a wonderful group of writers going on very small compensation. I also realise that we’ve been tremendously lucky in at least two things: I have a wonderful team that works for far less than they would make in the market, and I have a wonderful funder who has complete trust in us and places no restrictions on our editorial judgment. But that has come with a lot of hard work and the willingness to keep going.
Every month, when I look at the magazine, and each time I see the aggregated content we’ve built over the past three decades, I am struck afresh by how much I love this work, how privileged I am to be part of this platform, and how much (and more) our teachers are worth every bit of work we put into Teacher Plus. Happy thirty to us!
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