Having responsibility for the next generation is a challenging and demanding ask. A teacher has to balance being a parent, psychologist, friend, health advisor, role model and much more whilst also needing to teach! Teachers are truly underappreciated!
We are delighted to be having a Q&A with Farhana Choudhury who was not only the head of education for FOSIS but also a Junior Nobel Prize winner! Find out more about her previous positions and awards as well as her current role as a primary school teacher below.
1) My first question is usually around the path someone takes to get to their position. Could you explain how you began your career as a teacher?
I have always had a flair for teaching. At every level of my education, I always ended up becoming a peer mentor and I absolutely loved it. I chose my undergraduate course as it was delivered by amazing tutors at the fore of educational research.
After my undergrad, I had intended to go straight into a PGCE and had even been accepted by every university that I had applied to and everything was looking great! But at the last minute, something just didn’t feel right so I changed my mind and pursued a Masters instead.
Alhamdulillah, this was one of the best decisions I have ever made. I enrolled in a Masters degree in Psychology of Education and was able to spend another year at my beloved University of Manchester.
During my Masters, I had applied for the TeachFirst programme and had got in Alhamdulillah. All was looking great until my Master’s dissertation and the TeachFirst Summer Institute collided. It was a challenge, to say the least, but alhamdulillah it was also a time where I was able to grow and develop myself in many ways too. I’m currently at the last step of the TeachFirst programme. Alhamdulillah.
If you’re interested in finding out about another TeachFirst graduate – have a read of our interview with Sanna Shariff who now works at a private equity firm.
2) Along the way you’ve achieved some unique positions and accolades! Let’s start with becoming Head of Further Education for the Federation of Student Islamic Societies (FOSIS). FOSIS is probably familiar to a lot of readers – what would they have experienced as a result of you and what was the experience like?
FOSIS will always have a special place in my heart. The people I have met there are astonishing. There is so much talent within its membership, subhanAllah. I had only become the national Head of FE as a result of being the FE representative for FOSIS North, a regional level role. When I joined FOSIS North, FE was something which wasn’t as established as the other areas within the organisation. My main goal was to put FE on the map and really showcase the amazing work Muslim students within the FE sector are doing.
The Islamic Societies (ISocs) within sixth forms and colleges can give university ISocs a run for their money! I can’t say I made much tangible impact as the development of FE is one which requires a lot of time and effort invested into it to see ‘results’ and my time was rather short, but I can say that FE is definitely on the map! The current FE team are making miracles. S/O to them. There’s a long way to go but progress is being made alhamdulillah.
3) You’ve mashAllah won the Junior Nobel Prize Winner for Education – I’m leaving this to you tell us about it. Sounds like it was an amazing achievement and I’m sure everyone wants to know more!
Honestly, it happened on a fluke. Alhamdulillah. It’s part of the annual Undergraduate Awards (UA) and one of my lecturers encouraged me to submit an assignment I had written for her module (she currently has my picture in her office haha).
The way the UA works is that winners for each subject are categorised into three tiers. You have the highly commended candidates, then a regional winner (an example of a region being the whole of Europe!) and at the top, you have a global winner for that category. Alhamdulillah, Allah SWT had willed the top position for me. I cannot thank Him enough.
As part of the UA, they held a ceremony in Dublin. I loved every minute of it! The amount of brainpower in the room was actually leaving me winded. I met so many incredible people there. They are the future leaders of this globe. These people are going to change the world. There weren’t many Muslims there, unfortunately, just me and a person who coincidentally was on my undergrad course.
I mention this because finding somewhere to pray was incredibly difficult. We were moving from venue to venue, including state manors and bougie cinemas. Finding somewhere appropriate, hidden and away from everyone was just impossible.
I remember one instance where it was dhuhr time and we were in a building which was just an open room. I was really stressing out as I thought I would end up missing salah if I couldn’t pray here. So, I was making so much dua asking Allah to give me somewhere to pray, I was very conscious about being in the minority and was a bit scared.
I then thought ‘you know what, I’m going to pray anyway and Allah will help me deal with the consequences but right now, I NEED to pray’. I just went to the corner of the room, got my cute little FOSIS travel prayer mat out and just prayed. If people wanted to stare, they could. But for me, this is my meeting with Allah and I can’t miss it.
“I just went to the corner of the room, got my cute little FOSIS travel prayer mat out and just prayed. If people wanted to stare, they could”
SubhanAllah, immediately after I prayed, a journalist came up to me and asked me for a few quotes for an article she wanted me to be featured in The Guardian. I want to share this because this was the most important thing for me out of the whole UA. I didn’t miss my salah even though I so easily could have and Allah helped me when I made an effort for Him SWT.
4) How do you think primary school teaching has changed over time, comparing to today?
This is an interesting question. I would say that the curriculum has diversified but the teaching methods haven’t. A lot of today’s pedagogical strategies were in use back when I was in primary school eons ago.
The curriculum definitely includes a lot more now than it did before. Content has been brought down from older years. I remember learning about the different types of rock erosion as part of GCSE Geography but found myself having to teach the same content to my Year 4s before lockdown.
Unfortunately, we aren’t more tech-savvy (you’d think we were!) as we don’t use devices much in lessons but this is something I’m adamant on changing within my classroom as lockdown has proved that technology deserves more recognition within the classroom. It’ll be a challenge as some aren’t as convinced or confident with tech use themselves but it really is the way forward.
5) Children are more exposed than ever to all manners of life in the modern-day. How do you manage children’s curiosity and perhaps false beliefs in certain topics?
This is quite a tricky area and not something which a teacher can tackle without the involvement of parents/carers. As a teacher, I discuss e-safety regularly and this has been continued within remote learning too. Before lockdown, we talked about fake news and the whole Deepfake technology which is becoming increasingly popular.
I can say that MY class are aware that not everything on the internet is true or trustworthy, but they’re quite mature anyway compared to the other Year 4s in school. They’ve had a go at creating their own websites, blogs etc. so they can see just how easy it is to upload (mis)information on the internet. We’ve discussed what viruses are as well as the concept of clickbait.
The issue here is when children go home and use their devices alone, without adult supervision. That’s when issues have become apparent and it really does affect the children’s day-to-day life. To illustrate, a child in my class was having a hard time concentrating on his work and was noticeably yawning quite a lot. I spoke to him to find out what’s happened and how much he’s slept. Turns out, he was playing a scary game online the night before and was too scared to sleep and was awake all night. This is where the adults from home need to step in and supervise. In my opinion, it’s not safe for a child to be alone in a room with a device that can access the internet. Adult supervision is obligatory.
6) What qualities in your opinion make a great teacher?
A great teacher is someone who listens to each child in his/her class and makes every single one of them feel valued and that they belong to the class. To do this, you can’t just be patient, you have to master it.
Knowing each child individually helps in so many aspects of the classroom e.g. the most obvious – building relationships, lesson planning, knowing the situation at home and so on. I’d say the best teacher has a great relationship with their students and continuously works to maintain this.
7) What are some of the tasks teachers do that many people wouldn’t be aware of?
I’m a general practitioner! I have a lot of parents coming to me for medical advice (I do direct them to professional services) but find myself spending a lot of time on the NHS website after school-hours trying to figure out what’s happening to my kids and how I can help.
That’s just for the parents. To the children, I’m anything and everything. Most things parents do, teachers do the same. That includes feeding them – bringing snacks on Tuesday as the kids have just had a swimming lesson, making sure they finish their lunch daily but before that, trying to convince them to choose something from the lunch menu as they are incredibly picky, clothing them – getting them to get changed within a reasonable amount of time after P.E./swimming lessons and sometimes even fixing their clothes for them e.g. collars etc. The number of times I’ve had to look for lost socks after a swimming lesson, ya Rabbi!
One thing I have to remind a few of my kids to do is to blow their noses and wash their hands after they’ve used the toilets. They’re getting there but I do have to remind them constantly. Just listing these acts really makes me miss them.
8) What goes into lesson planning?
In my class of beautiful Year 4 children, generally, each lesson is differentiated five ways. It is an absolute myth that all children can work from the same task. It takes a considerable amount of time planning for each lesson. In my class, I have the following abilities/needs: age-related expectation for Y4, Y4 higher ability, Y4 lower ability, Year 3 age-related expectation and individualised resources for children with additional learning needs e.g. special educational needs. Children with additional needs may need more physical resources to help with their learning.
That’s just the differentiation in terms of intellectual ability. The content needs to be presented in a way which is clear but also not too informative. For example, if I’m using a PowerPoint for my lesson, I can’t have images alongside text as it will be information overload. I also can’t read out text that is on the slide as that defeats the purpose of the text and, again, is information overload. Backgrounds need to be neutral so that they’re easy on the eyes. There also needs to be active learning embedded within every step of the lesson so children have the opportunity to discuss their thoughts and ideas with either myself or their peers to solidify their understanding.
In Primary, we are always ‘doing’. We don’t have the children sat for any longer than 15 minutes or concentration goes down the drain and behaviour is then affected. Double planning really helps with keeping things active. Essentially, each minute is accounted for in a double plan concerning the following: ‘what will I (the teacher) be doing?’ and ‘what will the children be doing?’.
9) What’s your view on academies?
They really are hit and miss. Some are great, like the one I work in alhamdulillah. Though some are…not so great. It really depends on what the priorities of the leadership team are.
Luckily for me, the leadership team before the conversion of my school to an academy are still leading today so they are well aware of the needs of the school and the local community. They work really hard listening to the views of their staff, children and parents. I really do believe in their leadership alhamdulillah, it’s like a family.
For us, converting to an academy gave us more freedom about what we teach, as the National Curriculum is somewhat constraining. However, for every successful academy, there are a hundred that aren’t. My school really is the anomaly, alhamdulillah Allah SWT has placed me here.
10) With schools closed during the covid-19 lockdown a lot of parents suddenly became teachers. What advice would you give to parents when it comes to teaching children?
My advice to parents would be to establish a routine and create a behaviour management system. Take this forward and implement it within your parenting. It’ll solve so many problems! I’ve had many, many parents asking me for advice on how to ‘control’ their kids at home. It is exhausting and I really feel for them. SubhanAllah, I’ve learned more about effective parenting through teaching than I have from anything else. As much as we love the kids, they need to remember that the adult is in charge and we only make decisions for their benefit.
In my opinion, if you have a good relationship with a child, you can honestly teach them anything. But that’s the tricky part, you need to nurture this relationship. It’ll take time and effort but once you have those children, you’ve got them for life. How many adults can remember a certain teacher from their primary experience? It’s not because they taught them how to convert fractions into decimals, it’s the relationship that they cultivated with that child.
From my observations, as an ummah, I really do feel as though this is where we are struggling in raising the next generation. It’s a sad state of affairs when parents rely on the class teacher to teach their child basic manners/morals because the connection just isn’t there. This is the job of the parent but I find myself taking it on because the absence is just so noticeable.
To any parents reading this, ask your children questions, lovingly, even if they don’t open up. Keep asking them and show them that they are important enough to be known about. This will help so much inshallah.
11) Final Four
12) LinkedIn Profile
