Dr. Saima Afroze Sajid
Recording her own chemistry lessons to improve them
- Teaches
- Chemistry
- Programme
- Suraasa alumna, batch eight
- Next
- To be a better teacher who keeps learning every day
Saima was already a confident chemistry teacher, and started the course while pregnant, unsure it would give her anything beyond the certificate she needed. She now records her own sessions and reviews them afterwards, and builds separate material for her students of determination.
Three things to balance.
When Dr Saima Afroze Sajid joined, her doubt was partly practical. She was not sure how she would balance her personal life, her teaching and the sessions. “Today I can confidently say that every technique that I learned from Suraasa is impactful,” she says. She uses them in her everyday teaching, in her words “starting from differentiated lesson plan to reflective teaching”.
Apps from a classroom before COVID.
She remembers one session in a physical classroom, before COVID, when the group talked about recent apps for holding a class’s attention, quizzes and podcasts among them. Later, she says, those apps came in handy and helped her modify her teaching strategies for the pandemic. They helped her design lessons with “fun, innovative, creative, hands-on activities”, and especially extra material for her students of determination. One of her chemistry students appears in the video. When there is no time to explain something in class, the student says, “she will take her free time to explain for me”.
Watching her own sessions back.
Reflective teaching, she says, is what led her to record her own sessions and analyse herself later, to sharpen her teaching skills. Her future targets, she says, are not only a dream job but “to be a better teacher who enjoys learning every day”.
I was a good teacher before joining Suraasa, but now I’m a very refined teacher.
