What do you love about teaching?
Well, there are plenty of things, but what is worth mentioning is that, when I am teaching, I never stop learning.
Tell us about some of your achievements
I have won many individual sports championships, and I stood third in my education training college.
Tell us about some of the challenges you face in your job
Being a teacher is often just associated with teaching, but there is a lot more a teacher has to be and do, in order to achieve the primary goal of teaching. I have worked in India and now I am in the UAE. The working environment, culture is very different, to be able to change with changing times, to have an open mindset, to be flexible, are few of the things which are challenging for now. To be a teacher, a friend, and sometimes even a parent at the same time is the ultimate challenge.
To be a teacher, a friend, and sometimes even a parent at the same time is the ultimate challenge.
-Nawzad Rustom Patel
What inspires you?
Wisdom and hard work inspires me.
What would you like to tell someone who is new or trying to be a teacher?
There are many teachers, but very few are remembered as true mentors. So you decide which one you want to be.
Any interesting stories you’d like to share with our readers?
Since my school days, I have always been an average student, academically not inclined at all. I was good at athletics and sports, so I told myself that I would become a sportsperson. During the last few years of my school, I started liking science and somehow, I became good at it.
After school, I took science as my further field of studies and then decided to become a research scientist. I completed masters in science and started my internship in the Research and Development section of Lupin Pharmaceuticals- Pune.
Then, for some personal reason, I could not continue there and came back to Mumbai. I started looking for a job. I was so desperate to get the job and I started giving interviews for international call centers. I was looking for all sorts of jobs, but never even once thought of teaching.
There is an obvious reason for that; it was because I never wanted to become a teacher. One fine day, a wise man asked me to go for a lesson demo in one of the tutorials. I wanted to say no, but as that man was close to me, I could not refuse. I told my friends and they all started laughing. I laughed along. I went once, then again and again. I started to realize that it was not that bad around kids.
After a while, I started teaching full time in tutorials and fell in love with this profession. I wanted to formally take this up as my career, so I completed my bachelor’s and master’s in education. The reason why I am sharing this with you all is because I have learned a beautiful lesson from life; sometimes, you might not achieve or get what you want in your life.
But then there is always a God’s plan; that plan might not be what you want or what you like, but God knows best. So just relax, breathe and go with the flow; don’t be rigid with your dreams. Trust God and yourself.
