Izabella SmolinskaDubai, UAE
A hard year, used well. Then a team.
Settling into leadership of a Dubai kindergarten team.
- Now
- KG2 class teacher and head of the KG team at a school in Dubai
- Experience
- More than 20 years teaching young learners
- Programme
- PgCTL, completed
With more than twenty years behind her, Izabella led the kindergarten team at a Dubai school and was still teaching much as she always had. Her lessons became more structured and differentiated, her teachers said her guidance had improved, and senior leadership consolidated her position as coordinator.
A hard year, used well.
Izabella Smolinska tells this as the story of one year, 2020. “To some of you, year 2020 may have seemed challenging, and so it has been for me,” she says. It also gave her, in her words, “a lot of opportunities for improvement”. Izabella is from Poland, teaches a KG2 class in Dubai and heads the school’s KG team. She has more than 20 years of experience with young learners, and has completed PgCTL.
My success story does not come from me alone. I also owe it to my students, peers, family and Suraasa.
Lessons with more structure.
In the classroom, she says, her lessons became “more exciting, fun-filled, differentiated, and well-planned and structured”. Part of that was technology. She widened the set of online resources and tools she uses, naming quizzes, Kahoot, ClassDojo and infographics websites and apps. “This has enriched my students’ learning experience and helped me structure my teaching,” she says. The children’s progress and growing enthusiasm, she says, were noticed and appreciated by many parents.
What her team told her.
The other change was in her standing as a leader. “I have consolidated my position as a KG coordinator at my school,” she says, “and this was reflected in improved professional relationships with senior leadership.” They expressed greater appreciation of her performance as a leader, and her own team of teachers told her they were satisfied with her guidance.
She gives some of the credit to the lecturers and fellow teachers she met on the programme, who she says inspired her professional growth. Outside school she kept fit by running and walking, and found relaxation in growing what she calls “my mini garden on the balcony”. She closes simply: “It is a great thing to be a teacher.”
