Stepping up: One reader at a time

editorial What does it take to put together a magazine? Well, it takes some ideas, a team to work on them, people who understand text and pictures and the way they play together in the reader’s mind, and a way to reach this to the audience. In this mix, the audience is key – without them there would be no magazine.

With Teacher Plus, this audience is spread across the country, in schools ranging from a small rural primary establishment in Karnataka to a large, sophisticated institution in a posh suburb of New Delhi. There are teachers who read it in their staff rooms, on the bus, and in their homes, before sharing it with other colleagues and friends in other schools. And there are parents who want to gain a bit of insight into how schools and teachers approach education, so that they can participate a little more fully in their child’s education.

Over the past year, after the magazine took on its present re-designed avatar, we have seen a steady growth in circulation, and the biggest spurt in circulation has come from schools that have decided that every single teacher in their institution deserves to have a copy of Teacher Plus. Small publications like this one struggle to reach their audience – in the media clutter, it is difficult to get noticed, and to compete with everything else that’s out there. Despite that, we estimate that the magazine has more than ten thousand readers; this means that we have ten thousand points of intervention in the education system, people who are willing to think and learn beyond their usual routine, who are willing to take seriously the ideas we try hard to put together in a way that’s accessible and interesting.

We recognize that the time spent on non-essential reading is limited, that teachers, particularly, do not have regular, everyday, dedicated spaces for self development activities, whether it is self driven like reading, or participatory, like workshops. So every reader of Teacher Plus is an important resource – and we hope that each reader in turn becomes a point of influence in the system she or he works within.

Thank you for seeing through the media clutter to pick up what we have to offer. Thank you for being an agent of change.

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