Our Vision
TFSL envisions that one day, all children in Sierra Leone will have an opportunity to attain an excellent education that will help them achieve their full potential, irrespective of their socio-economic status, geographical location or gender.
Our Mission
To expand educational opportunity by developing transformative future leaders that will lead systemic change to create a truly liberatory environment that will end educational injustices in Sierra Leone.
Our Approach
In order to nurture and sustain a growing community of leaders that will massively contribute to the eradication of educational injustices in Sierra Leone, TFSL will deploy short-term and long-term approaches to redressing the above problems within marginalised school communities.
Short-term
In the short-term, TFSL will recruit, train, place and support 100 graduate fellows in deep rural and underserved school communities across 6 districts in Sierra Leone to complement the existing numbers of fellows in these districts. These fellows will be supported throughout a two-year fellowship program to teach, lead, and impact children and school communities. Teaching and learning materials will be developed/provided adopting a contextualised approach to service the shortage of these materials within our operational schools.
The TFSL recruitment process will prioritise women in order to bridge the gender gap and provide role models for our girls within the school system. Female tutors serve as inspiration to other girls in school. They are better placed to provide the necessary advice or counsel to help guide girls to chart the right path in life. Priority will also be given to Literacy, Numeracy, Science, and Life Skills to promote innovation in schools. In order not to perpetuate the cycle of disadvantage in which the affluent get the best education and best opportunities, graduates from high-need rural communities will be strongly encouraged to participate in this fellowship, as we believe that the most marginalized communities need to build the leaders of their own change/liberation.
Long-term
In the long-term approach, TFSL will maintain a highly socially conscious alumni movement of fellows who will continue to fight and advocate for educational justice/equity in Sierra Leone and the world at large. These alumni will go on to build movements of social change in their preferred ecosystems, including law, commerce, politics, education, development, and more. Engaging and supporting TFSL alumni, and their growing communities, to become change advocates in their diverse ecosystems with a shared purpose of building a life-long movement for a truly liberatory systemic change in the education sector so that all children would achieve their full potential. A central component of our long-term theory of change is the role played by alumni in changing national attitudes, priorities and structures to expand educational opportunity for children. Therefore, we will prioritize recruitment efforts, at least initially, towards groups that we assume are more likely to feel they have a personal stake in the future of the country. The fellowship will not be open to non-Sierra Leoneans. However, recognizing that ultimately demographic designations are constructed and not necessarily reflective of a more complex reality in a globalized world, we commit to revisit these priorities over time, and make changes warranted by data and further research.
TFSL Contextualised Vision For Success
Our contextualised vision for student success and outcomes is built around 3 key leadership aspirations derived from deep engagement and conversations with educators, students, families, and community stakeholders, as to what they want to be true for children, fellows and communities.
Our contextualised vision for student success are as follows:
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1. World Class Education (Broad set of skills)
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2. Entrepreneurship (Financial Independence)
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3. Citizenship (Role Models and Change Agents)
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4. Resilience/ Perseverance
Student Outcomes
TFSL anticipates two broad student outcomes - Academic and Non-Academic Outcomes.
Our Academic Outcomes for students:
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1. Foundational Learning
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● Literacy
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● Numeracy
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2. Basic Science/Technology, creative arts, etc.
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Non-Academic Outcomes for students:
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1. Growth mindset
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2. Self-awareness
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3. Collaboration
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4. Communication
Fellow Outcomes
Even though subject to continuous review and update, TFSL envisages the following outcomes for our fellows:
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1. Collaboration and Partnership (being able to work with colleagues and communities)
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2. Growth Mindset and Resilience (stay positive and being steadfast to the TFSL course)
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3. Communication and Advocacy (engage communities and education authorities about education inequity)
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4. Self-Driven and Self-Motivated (focus on and pursue both personal and organizational goals)
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5. Creativity and Innovation (critical thinking and problem-solving)
Community Outcomes
Furthermore, it is anticipated that our school communities will pursue the following outcomes:
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1. Interest in promoting education in their community
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2. Participate in educational related actions and events
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3. Monitor schools and education system in their locality
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4. Support their children/ students and schools
At TFSL, we foster a vision for impact in our communities by elevating the voices of all stakeholders supporting children and their learning in these communities. We also upskill community members to co-facilitate the learning process and create a shared space for community leaders to emerge. With our shared vision with stakeholders that all students can learn; we are committed to providing quality education that is adequate and viable for economic and social developmentout.
TFSL will continue to foster a broader system change which will aid our plans to scale up to twelve districts by 2026. We continue to work with the Tertiary Education Commission to gain the necessary accreditation to formalise our training institute and make our resources available to educators and students across the whole country. We will ensure that student outcomes are at the centre of decision-making. Schools will “add value” to socially & economically disadvantaged students through highly effective teaching & school leadership as required. We are committed to making teaching a prestigious and attractive career choice and ensure that the education system has in-built mechanisms to adapt and improve.
Community Outcomes
- 1. Interest in promoting education in their community
- 2. Participate in educational related actions and events
- 3. Monitor schools and education system in their locality
- 4. Support their children/ students and schools
At TFSL, we foster a vision for impact in our communities by elevating the voices of all stakeholders supporting children and their learning in these communities. We also upskill community members to co-facilitate the learning process and create a shared space for community leaders to emerge. With our shared vision with stakeholders that all students can learn; we are committed to providing quality education that is adequate and viable for economic and social developmentout.
TFSL will continue to foster a broader system change which will aid our plans to scale up to twelve districts by 2026. We continue to work with the Tertiary Education Commission to gain the necessary accreditation to formalise our training institute and make our resources available to educators and students across the whole country. We will ensure that student outcomes are at the centre of decision-making. Schools will “add value” to socially & economically disadvantaged students through highly effective teaching & school leadership as required. We are committed to making teaching a prestigious and attractive career choice and ensure that the education system has in-built mechanisms to adapt and improve.
Our Model: Teaching As Collective Leadership (TACL).
We recruit and develop various cohorts of future leaders with a passion for ending educational inequity in Sierra Leone. TFSL has uniquely extensive reach throughout Sierra Leone with a nationwide team of over 30 direct staff, and an expanded network of over 350 highly effective Teacher-Leaders (Fellows) serving in high need schools in underserved communities in Sierra Leone. We are currently active in 100 schools, in 95 Communities, within 6 of the 16 districts of Sierra Leone. In 2021/22, TFSL trained over 8,000 system teachers in government schools - directly impacting 30,000 students, and indirectly impacting 600,000 students. TFSL has been working with teachers in Sierra Leone to improve their instructional leadership, principally in rural, low-capacity school settings with extremely limited resources and little to no access to external training, mentoring, or monitoring support. Since 2020, TFSL has been implementing its instructional leadership model across three principal areas: (i) Enabling Learning; (ii) Leading Learning; and (iii) Measuring Learning. In the last three academic year, all 10,000 teachers accessing training and mentoring via TFSL demonstrated improvements in teaching practice, tracked using a classroom observation tool which measures performance against the pre-defined criteria set out in our instructional leadership model.
RECRUIT and SELECT
We RECRUIT and SELECT Sierra Leone’s most dynamic, promising and talented transformational future leaders through a rigorous process to become part of a two-year fellowship programme, and a lifelong movement of Ambassadors for systemic change within and outside the classroom.
We TRAIN and equip
We TRAIN and equip fellows with knowledge, skills, values and mind-sets, to become effective teachers and lifelong advocates for educational justice and excellence in a six-week training institute taking place between the months of July and August. Fellows will be exposed to the Sierra Leone school curriculum, lesson planning, child-centred teaching techniques, student assessments and other modules that are critical and relevant to successful teaching.
We PLACE fellows in low-income schools
We PLACE fellows in low-income schools in underserved rural communities where they can experience first-hand the educational injustices that they will be addressing. We have placed a particular emphasis on recruiting Fellows with socio-economically disadvantaged, rural backgrounds to commit to return to teach in their communities for positive impact.
We SUSTAIN the programme by building an ALUMNI of Ambassadors with a life-long commitment to ending injustices in education and other sectors in Sierra Leone. Teach For Sierra Leone Fellows and alumni will become advocates for the communities they serve - having successfully taught and achieved transformational change in their placement schools. TFSL through its alumni movement will build partnerships with local authorities, civic societies, corporate and public sectors to ensure a clear path to systemic educational improvements by addressing the root causes of educational inequity across all sectors. Teach For Sierra Leone alumni will advance into key leadership positions to continue TFSL mission at various levels due to their leadership skills.
We RECRUIT and SELECT Sierra Leone’s most dynamic, promising and talented transformational future leaders through a rigorous process to become part of a two-year fellowship programme, and a lifelong movement of Ambassadors for systemic change within and outside the classroom.
We TRAIN and equip fellows with knowledge, skills, values and mind-sets, to become effective teachers and lifelong advocates for educational justice and excellence in a six-week training institute taking place between the months of July and August. Fellows will be exposed to the Sierra Leone school curriculum, lesson planning, child-centred teaching techniques, student assessments and other modules that are critical and relevant to successful teaching.
We PLACE fellows in low-income schools in underserved rural communities where they can experience first-hand the educational injustices that they will be addressing. We have placed a particular emphasis on recruiting Fellows with socio-economically disadvantaged, rural backgrounds to commit to return to teach in their communities for positive impact.
We SUSTAIN the programme by building an ALUMNI of Ambassadors with a life-long commitment to ending injustices in education and other sectors in Sierra Leone. Teach For Sierra Leone Fellows and alumni will become advocates for the communities they serve - having successfully taught and achieved transformational change in their placement schools. TFSL through its alumni movement will build partnerships with local authorities, civic societies, corporate and public sectors to ensure a clear path to systemic educational improvements by addressing the root causes of educational inequity across all sectors. Teach For Sierra Leone alumni will advance into key leadership positions to continue TFSL mission at various levels due to their leadership skills.
The TFSL Fellowship Experience
The TFSL Fellowship is a unique, internationally recognised, leadership development program. It is a fully paid, full-time commitment for 24 months. Fellows typically manage a workload of 60+ hours per week which includes instructional time spent in classrooms and in communities, as well as time spent on extra tutoring, lesson planning, professional development, training, and reporting.
Alumni Spotlight
After successful completion of the two-year leadership development fellowship, fellows are inducted into the TFSL Alumni Network – a pantheon of outstanding leaders. Our Alumni Network forms a new community of leaders – highly competent, passionate, socially conscious people, who share a powerful common experience in Ghana’s low-income communities.
Our Alumni Network program equips these leaders with the inspiration, skills and understanding to remain engaged with our mission to tackle educational inequity, from both inside the classroom and beyond. To this end, during their two-year commitment, fellows receive training, support and networking opportunities designed to prepare them for leadership roles in a variety of fields. While some stay in schools, others go on to work in wider education or business, mentor students, or become school governors/trustees.
We create a support system that nurtures and grooms alumni who seek to start educational social enterprises to achieve our ultimate vision of expanding educational opportunities to all Sierra Leonean children.
Many of our alumni who decide to stay in teaching following their two-year commitment, provide a new pipeline of middle and senior leaders to schools, Sierra Leone’s Education Sector local and national offices, and the Ministry of Basic and Senior Secondary Education. We work closely with the directors of education to recruit TFSL Alumni for leadership positions in the education sector.
Our partnerships with top employers in the private and public sectors ensure that we know what organizations are looking for in their recruits, and they know how valuable TFSL is as a personal and professional development opportunity. The problem solving, communication, people management, and strategic planning skills developed in the classroom are sought after by employers in all fields.