What do you love about teaching?
I love the relationships you form with the students and the students’ expressions once they learn or discover new information.
Tell us about some of your achievements
I am sure many teachers would agree with me that completing every school day is an achievement. Jokes aside, when students achieve even the smallest of milestones, that is an achievement. I just want to be better for my students. I want them to have a great school life experience as this is what they will look back at once they are older. I love to see my students happy, communicating and respecting one another.
I have recently completed a course on school inspections and am a certified inspector.
Tell us about some of the challenges you face in your job.
It can be difficult at times to manage students’ behavior and get them to use English outside English lessons. Sometimes overcoming tech issues can be challenging as well when they are not in our control.. therefore it’s always wise to have backup for effective time management.
I love the relationships you form with the students and the students’ expressions once they learn or discover new information.
– Ruby Gurnani
What inspires you?
Their levels of curiosity as well as the joy it brings them when they have achieved their targets. I love it when my students ask questions and contribute to discussions. You will be amazed at the level of knowledge and ideas they bring forward.
What would you like to tell someone who is new or trying to be a teacher?
Flexibility is an important skill. Many times you are not able to stick to your lesson plans or topic, but it’s okay as long as the students are interested, motivated and encouraged to express themselves. You also need to work on relationships within the first few weeks as if you have a strong bond with the students, you earn their respect and that is crucial to having a smooth academic year. Lastly, SMILE! This gesture alone is a game changer.
Any interesting stories you’d like to share with our readers?
In one of my current classes, there is a student who is actually very intelligent but has a very limited attention span. He tends to mostly copy answers to activities from his peers. In order to maintain his attention span and keep him focused, I asked him to help me with proceeding to the next slides on my PowerPoint presentations. In this way he regained his focus and have since made massive progress
Another story I think all teachers can relate to is when the students don’t call you by the name but use the word “TEACHER” instead. This was a habit I was so keen to break as to gain respect knowing each other’s names is essential. Therefore, every time a student called me teacher instead of my name I would respond in the same manner using the term “Student” to address the child. They would all just laugh and honestly in the beginning they would not realize that there’s anything off about the whole scenario, but after a couple of days, they realized and most have started to address me by my name but it is still a constant occurrence.
