Teacher's Biography

TEACEHR’S BIOGRAPHY
Perhaps, I didn't have any aspiration to become a teacher. All I wanted was to become a doctor or a pilot – Sultan Alam[1]
“I've been a Science Teacher, Science Coordinator and Principal in different educational institutions. When I started my career as a teacher, I had no idea where this profession would lead me to. I never have been motivated to become a teacher by my teachers”. Sultan Alam, a young energetic headteacher, now in first year of Masters in Education program at a prestigious university in Karachi, describes his journey of becoming an educator. His life history is full of diverse experiences to learn, as it can be used to illustrate the power of certain cultural convention (Arnold & Blackburn, 2004). Sultan Alam belongs to Hunza valley in North Pakistan. He started his schooling in his village Hussainabad at D.J[2] Middle School, while for SSC[3] he joined F.G[4] BHS[5] No.1 Gilgit. With a motivation to become a doctor he moved to Karachi for F.Sc.[6], but he could not get a chance to go for MBBS[7], so his motivation shifted towards financial management after B.Sc.[8]
Schools in Northern Areas today need additional efforts to find/hire the professional educators to keep schools competitive as frequent teacher vacuuming occurs. May be there are several reasons for the discrepancy, which is of-course, not the topic of this paper. In 1996, after B.Sc. examination, Sultan Alam moved back to his village which resulted to enter in teaching profession, he terms it as ‘un-intentional entry’. According to him it was a critical incident to lead his career to an unknown path. This is the practice of most of the teachers joining schools in Northern Areas without having theoretical understanding of teaching and learning (Khan, 2004). He describes that the school from where he had started his schooling, was now upgraded to high school and as usual there was discrepancy of Science teachers. The notables of community and school management approached him to handle Science classes. He was morally/emotionally attached with his school and community; hence he could not deny the offer. Despite his original goal and motivation, new opportunity presented itself as a career. He was not sure that he recognized the significance of this incident at the time but he says that he enjoyed the job as the subjects were relevant according to his content knowledge. He confessed that he was lacking pedagogical skills; however his students’ response was good. He emphasized that theoretical pedagogical knowledge is useless if teacher is unaware of the context as it is not just an important element in thinking about human learning but is perhaps central to our understanding (Merriam, 1993). It can be further referred to the ‘fit’ between the teachers’ culture values (Walkeer, & Shuangye, 2007).
Once home exam result of class 9th remained much low to 40%. It was a shock for the headteacher and staff. We faced criticism from community due to Community-Centered Environment (Bransford, 1999). We all took this situation as a challenge and initiated different measures like remedial/extra classes, group works, and parents’ involvement for cooperation etc. keeping in mind the cooperative and collaborative group work has positive effects on academic and social outcomes (Baines, Blatchford, & Chowne, 2007). When the board result announced, it was a sweeping change, securing 75% result, and then we realized that if we work like a team, we can achieve our goals. This was a motivating and learning impact.
Sultan Alam attended a week’s workshop on math and science teaching in the form of Learning Experiences for Practicing Teachers’ (Putnam, R.T. & Borko, H. 2000), where he learnt some basics of pedagogical skills and local resource management, which helped him for his teaching, as he tried to implement in classroom, the methods taught in workshop.
After serving 3.5 years in this school, he started his own assessment as the career was not giving him satisfaction in terms of finance and his static position. So, he decided to continue his education and resigned from the school in 1999 and moved to Karachi for mastery in Environmental Sciences with a motivation to become Government college lecturer.
Although, Sultan Alam had ‘un-intentionally’ got into teaching profession but now he had the experience of teaching, so while doing his masters from KU[9] in the evening shift, he joined a private school, because school teaching was feasible in terms of less hours duty and of-course to meet the financial needs. This exposure to teaching was once again a building on process for his teaching career.
In 2002 he completed his masters and once again returned homeland, where only ‘teaching profession’ awaits everybody. While striving hard to get into government sector education as a lecturer, Sultan Alam worked with D.J Community High School Sultanabad and with an English medium school in Gilgit consecutively.
Sultan Alam’s administrative journey began during his 7th year of teaching. Since he was a teacher, it seemed like a long-shot, when he heard about the vacancy and offer. His exploratory nature finally moved him towards the independent administrative position at a private educational institution Al-Sabah Sakura Academy Gilgit which runs under a local NGO. He became the headteacher of the school in 2006 and started some new initiatives keeping the experiences of different school practices in mind as new headteachers usually began organizational changes (Early, & Weindling, 2007). It was a new experience of leading a group of teachers and dealing with all the stakeholders. It was an outstanding and challenging exposure. He served this school till July 2007, from where he qualified the entry test/interview to get admission in the current course.
He shared a moral story of his headship period at Al-Sabah, that he was nominated SSC examination superintendent in a remote area of Gilgit. During English paper one student right after 1½ hrs of paper distribution solved the paper. Without any idea Sultan Alam took the paper and just skimmed through it and noticed that paper was very well written and was composed accurately, which he was not expecting from a student of such remote area. He become a bit curious and doubtful and asked him to show his admit card, but the student made an excuse of forgetting it in house. So, he went to next room, making student stand, to get copies of admit cards received from the board as a ready reference for superintendent. When he returned back to the room he noticed another boy standing, while the former one was not there! When he matched the picture with the boy, he was the original one, while the boy who was there solving paper, was counterfeit. He enquired. The newly appeared boy insistently told that he is the boy who wrote that paper. Sultan Alam become frustrated on this fake statement and marked paper as UFM[10] and recommended the board to cancel this paper. With this incident he became much curious that teacher should keep every aspect of the matters in mind and should not trust blindly as the invigilators of the same area were present around and they didn’t notify the UFM to him and favored the cheating. According to him, cheaters should face the penalty and now he always refers this happening to his students to discourage the UFM.
The ups and downs of teaching career of Sultan Alam were neither short nor easy. I found him during last 9 months being together for the same course, determined that he has many qualities prized as an outstanding teacher through his experience. He is energetic, enthusiastic, creative, and supportive, which are the loud-calls of his rich experience. His energy and enthusiasm can also be seen through different aspects apart from teaching like his active involvement in sports (volley ball, cricket, badminton, swimming etc.) I appreciate his way of enthusiasm to enjoy life to its fullest. He is desirous to be the kind of person that stands out, so by being creative and supportive, people will usually come to him for ideas or advice. Out of these qualities, I am optimistic that he has been effectively educating young minds. Now, his effectiveness and enthusiasm is being sharpened more through professional development course. After realizing that how much fun teaching is and how well he can do helping others, the ‘un-intentional’ decision through a critical incident he made to become an educator, changed to a confident statement, that ‘Now I am on the right direction’.
REFERENCESs
Arnold, D., & Blackburn, S. (Eds.). (2004). Telling Lives in India. Biography, Autobiography, and Life History: New Delhi. Permanent Black.
Baines, E., Blatchford, P. & Chowne, A. (2007). Improving the effectiveness of collaborative group work in primary schools: effects on science attainment . British Educational Research Journal, 33(5). 663 – 680.
Bransford, J. D., Brown, A.L. & Cocking, R.R. (1999). How People Learn: Brain, Mind, Experience and School. National Research Council: (Chapter 8: Teacher Learning)
Early, P. & Weindling, D. (2007). Do School Leaders Have a Shelf Life? Educational Management, Administration and Leadership, 35(1). 73 – 88.
Khan, B. (2004). Role of Portfolio in the teachers’ professional development and learning. Unpublished master’s thesis, Aga Khan University –Institute for Educational Development, Karachi.
Merriam, S. B. (Eds.). (1993). An Update on Adult Learning Theory: San Francisco. Jossey-Bass Publishers.
Putnam, R. T., & Borko, H. (2000). What Do New Views of Knowledge and Thinking Have to Save About Research on Teacher Learning? Educational Researcher, 29(1). 4 – 15.
Walkeer, A. & Shuangye, C. (2007).Leader Authenticity in Intercultural School Contexts. Educational Management, Administration and Leadership, 35(2). 185 – 204.


[1] Mr. Sultan Alam has given me consensus to disclose his original name and details.
[2] Diamond Jubilee Schools running under supervision of Aga Khan Education Services, Pakistan.
[3] SSC – Secondary School Certificate – Educational Standard of Pakistan.
[4] F.G – Federal Government.
[5] BHS Boys High School
[6] F.Sc. – Faculty of Science – Educational Standard of Pakistan.
[7] MBBS – Bachelor of Medicine and Bachelor of Surgery.
[8] B.Sc. – Bachelor of Science – Educational Standard of Pakistan.
[9] KU Karachi University.
[10] UFM – Un-fair means.