Disrupting Education: How iEducate is Transforming the Future of Teaching

Arun Gir grew up surrounded by educators. His grandmother was a teacher and teacher trainer, his mother taught at a university, and conversations about learning and teaching were a constant in his home. Education was more than important—it was instinctual. From a young age, every extracurricular he joined involved some form of mentoring or tutoring. “It’s very human,” Arun says about teaching. 

In middle and high school, he volunteered as a tutor, drawn to the connection of helping others learn. In college, while studying engineering, he started thinking about how to make that impact last. He joined YO! Baltimore, a student group that brought college tutors into underserved schools, hoping to spark an interest in STEM. The idea was simple: young people teaching subjects they loved to students who needed support. But there was a problem—volunteers came and went, and the program lacked consistency. Arun started wondering: what if tutoring was built into the college experience? What if students could get academic credit for mentoring younger kids, making it a structured, skill-building opportunity rather than just another extracurricular?

Upon his return to Houston, the opportunity to build something real emerged. iEducate was a tiny organization at the time—just Arun, his mom, and a handful of volunteers working with middle and high schoolers. But almost immediately, they saw a deeper issue with the schools. Students were struggling with foundational concepts they should have mastered years earlier. Middle school, they realized, was too late. They needed to start younger.

They began working with 5th graders at Crockett Elementary, employing college students from the University of Houston’s College of Engineering to serve as in-class mentors. At first, the work was purely charitable, with the wages of the college students funded by small donations. But after three years of slow growth, a school approached them with an offer: they wanted to pay for the service. That was the turning point.

In 2017, Arun left his job to focus on iEducate full-time. In 2018, he hired his first employee. Over the next two years, the program expanded from three schools to 28. And along the way, something unexpected happened.

The college tutors weren’t just transforming the lives of young students—they were transforming themselves. Engineering majors, business students, pre-med and pre-nursing degrees—all of them walked away with new skills in leadership, collaboration, and problem-solving. Principals began saying they wanted to hire these 19-year-olds as full-time teachers. The experience was building a pipeline of talented future educators, even for students who hadn’t originally planned to go into teaching.

That realization brought a new challenge: proving that this work wasn’t just about helping kids learn—it was about shaping the next generation of professionals, teachers or otherwise. If tutoring could be redefined as a real-world leadership experience, more college students would see its value. And if more young people could see themselves as educators, even for a short time, maybe the teacher shortage wouldn’t be so dire.

iEducate is now working to scale that vision. They’ve partnered with Sam Houston State University and school districts across Houston, proving that embedding college students in classrooms isn’t just a novel idea—it’s a necessary shift. The goal is long-term: to create a system where students who were once mentored by iEducate tutors grow up, go to college, and return as educators themselves. A cycle of giving back, breaking down barriers, and redefining what it means to teach.

“People aren’t trying things like this,” Arun says. “But we’re tired of watching the same cycle play out. If we can disrupt it—if we can create a world where every future teacher already has years of experience before they step into a classroom—everything changes.”

The next generation of educators is already in our classrooms. The question is not if they’re ready—it is if we’ll give them the opportunity to lead.