Ajab Abizer
Software engineer. Teacher in the making.
Leaving software for a classroom of her own.
- Now
- Software engineer and aspiring teacher
- Teaches
- Her own child at home, and students she helps with their subjects
- Programme
- PgCTL, six months in at the time of recording
- Next
- Hopes to teach at a reputed school in Dubai
Ajab was a software engineer teaching no one but her own child at home, and interviews kept exposing how little formal grounding she had. Study gave her lesson plans, classroom theory and, in a grade 5 student she tutors, a visible turnaround in maths and science.
Interviews as a beginner.
Ajab Abizer introduces herself as “a software engineer and aspiring teacher”. She was six months into PgCTL when she recorded her story. She describes herself as a beginner with no experience in teaching, and says she used to find interviews difficult. “Now when I walk in for the interviews, I am more confident because I have the required knowledge in my plate.”
She knows how to make effective lesson plans, which she puts down to the programme’s assignments, and she shows a few of them in her video. She has also learnt about Bloom’s taxonomy, managing classroom dynamics and teaching tools, along with a “few things which I never knew existed in the teaching field”.
A mother who knows the terms.
One place she uses all this is at home, where she homeschools her own child. She lists what has helped: Albert Bandura’s social learning theory, embedding ethics and values, and behaviourism, with its positive reinforcements. “These are the few things that I’ve learnt which helps me as a mother and not only as a teacher,” she says. The child psychology in the course has made her more aware of children’s growth and development, and of the part a teacher plays in it. “I apply everything very consciously now because now I know all the terms.”
When I joined Suraasa, I never knew that I would learn something beyond classroom as well.
Maths and science, grade 5.
She has applied the new methods with her students too. She says she has seen improved results and received words of appreciation from students and parents, and her video includes a few clips. In one, a grade 5 student describes studying alone and struggling badly with maths and science before taking help from Ajab. The student says the subjects began to make sense and became enjoyable, and calls her teaching techniques simple and easy to understand. Ajab’s own aim is specific. “I aspire to become an efficient teacher in one of the reputed schools in Dubai,” she says. Then she adds: “Hope so.”
