Created in 1989, Teacher Plus is a magazine aimed primarily at the schoolteacher. It is a forum within which teachers can raise their concerns, discuss ideas, and share and update their knowledge. Teacher Plus discusses alternative ways of thinking and doing within the context of the Indian classroom, while recognizing the constraints that most teachers face, day to day. In addition, its aim is to foster a sense of community among teachers, of being a part of an important group of change agents.
Teacher Plus is published monthly from Hyderabad. It draws from a large pool of contributors from across India, persons with experience in varied aspects of education, from primary school teaching to tackling board exams to the place of art and craft in learning, to child development and classroom management. Each month brings the reader a mix of thought-provoking features and hands-on activities that can be adapted for use in most classrooms.
Teacher Plus is not a scholarly journal. It is a magazine for the practicing teacher who wants to keep up with trends in education and find ways to energise her classroom with new ideas and approaches.
The Teacher Plus Team
Teacher Plus is brought out, month after month, by a small but dedicated team assisted by a wide network of writers, photographers and artists from across the country. The team combines editorial and educational experience of several years and works closely with teachers and teacher trainers to ensure that the content is relevant to the Indian classroom. Our contributors have ranged from teachers taking their first hesitant steps into the classroom to seasoned educators who have seen a wide variety of teaching and learning contexts.
Usha Raman, the lead editor of Teacher Plus, is a writer, editor and communications professional based in Hyderabad, India. She has a PhD in mass communication from the University of Georgia, USA. Usha has over two decades of experience in journalism, publishing, science communication and teaching. Her areas of interest include writing and editing special interest publications, planning and executing communications campaigns, particularly those involving aspects of health, popular science and technology, and teaching writing and media studies. She has been part of the Teacher Plus team since its inception in 1989 and took over as editor in January 2007. For five years, she wrote a column for The Hindu entitled “Career Quest”. She is also involved with the Centre for Learning, an alternative education centre in Hyderabad. With this group Usha edits and publishes a journal on education concerns called Edu-Care.
Nirmala M joined Teacher Plus after almost two decades with The Hindu in Chennai and later Hyderabad. Her experience with editorial coordination and production has helped streamline the working of the magazine and her editorial eye ensures high quality, issue after issue.
Shalini B came to Teacher Plus with a few years of editorial experience under her belt. She works closely with the network of contributors in bringing both written and visual content to the monthly Teacher Plus package.
Rajendra Kumar S adds a special artistic touch to the pages of a magazine that might otherwise suffer from a surfeit of words. He brings many years of experience in publication design and layout and a knowledge of printing and production processes to help make the magazine visually attractive.
Sushma Rana worked for many years as a teacher at Centre for Learning, Secunderabad, and then had a brief stint with the eye NGO Operation Eyesight Universal, coordinating the administration of their India office. Her organisational skills, combined with her understanding of education at the primary level, provide a grounding to all the ideas that drive Teacher Plus.
Srinivas N is a B.Com graduate and has two years of experience working as Accounts Assistant. At Teacher Plus he takes care of subscriptions and circulation of the magazine.
Shruti Singhal is a content and communications professional with 8+ years of experience in writing, editing, and podcasting. She has written thought leadership articles for experts in various fields, authored in-depth features, and undertaken end-to-end operations for two podcast series. She completed her Masters from the Department of Communication, University of Hyderabad, and manages Teacher Plus’ social media accounts.
Teacher Plus has also been home to a number of itinerant students who spend time with us, figuring out important things about writing, about production, about education…and about being a community of learners and teachers.
Teacher Plus was started as a bi-monthly in 1989 by Orient Longman, mainly to reach teachers in schools with pedagogical tools and content that would help them keep in touch with new thinking in education. The magazine adopted a tabloid format, initially in two-colour and later (in 2002) graduating to part four-colour printed on glazed newsprint. In January 2007, the magazine was bought over by Spark-India and in June 2007, it became a monthly with a new design. The magazine now is a folio-sized, full colour publication with a glossy cover and each issue comes with a separate pull-out poster or a set of activity sheets.
From 2006 to 2010, Wipro Applying Thought in Schools (WATIS) funded Teacher Plus, underwriting development, production, and distribution costs. Local philanthropies including Saptaparni and Progressive Constructions also lent their support.
In November 2010, Teacher Plus separated from Spark-India and became a proprietary concern owned by Dr. Usha Raman. It is now supported by Azim Premji University, Bangalore.
Despite the many changes, the magazine has maintained its approach and editorial standards over the past 33 years. We have tried to remain connected to the classroom and to issues faced by teachers as educators, as professionals, and as members of a system that often has problems.
Past issues dating from 1999 are available. Please write to us for details.