Aisha Ilyas

I am currently working as an IB Maths teacher at Headstart School Islamabad where I take classes of both MYP and high school mathematics. My experience here is more inspiring as compared to what I had done in my previous schools while teaching only IGCSE. IB truly gives you high quality professional development that encourages critical thinking, self-reflection and dedication to continuous improvement.

Before Headstart I worked as a Maths coordinator (Secondary) and subject teacher for O’Levels and IGCSE in Roots School System. For past five years, I have had an opportunity to experience and share the responsibility for the development of numeracy across secondary syllabus of IGCSE and O’Levels students and have been helping to improve standards of education. I had excellent results of our outgoing IGCSE students from Cambridge University from our last two batches.  I have been delivering my services for the regular review of whole school numeracy policy in consultation with Curriculum development staff and the Chairperson of our school system. Moreover, we regularly organize training based INSETs Workshops for all Maths teachers from all branches to facilitate them with useful numeracy activities and resources. This has greatly helped me enhance my own experience of working with adults in a larger organization while working with a team of highly experienced staff.

Apart from teaching mathematics curriculum, I had many opportunities to get involved in extra-curricular activities within and out of school which included organizing school assemblies, sports days, culture days, 14th august, Defense Day and 23rd March (Pakistan Day) celebrations. Apart from conducting these events in school, I participated and organized them with the ISPR for these functions in Parade lane and GHQ along with our students. These activities gave me experience to learn and to organize activities at a larger scale in collaboration with other institutes. It was also great to see our students’ performances as compared to others and observe their strengths and weaknesses as well. In addition to that I worked as a volunteer with Oxford University Press (OUP) to organize Islamabad Literature festival, as Literature appeals to me and I take enormous interest in literature and am always enthusiastic to get involved and be the part of such events and to learn about advancement in past and present literature of Pakistan. It gave me the opportunity to meet and see work of some great writers like Anatol Lieven, Quratulain Haider, Mustanser Hussain Tarar, Zehra Nigah including politicians like Khursheed Qasoori and Hina Rabbi Khar as well.

I also worked for a year at Saddleworth High School as a Teacher of Mathematics which was a milestone in my professional development as a teacher. During this time I have gained a great deal of experience that has helped me to develop professionally as a classroom teacher. I have learnt how to maintain classroom standards to promote learning during the lessons and help pupils achieve their targets by focusing on their individual learning by implementing various strategies. I have regularly attended workshops on how to improve learning and teaching during lessons and have implemented those strategies in lessons. I have also attended some ICT workshops on resources available on the school’s intranet and have successfully used them in lessons for e.g. Clipbank, Mathswatch and E-Voting Kit.

In UK, one of my teaching contract was as a one-to-one maths tutor in Cedar Mount High School in Manchester. Each student on this programme was entitled to have 10 teaching sessions. In that given time I was expected to identify the gaps in their learning, secure their new learning and understanding, help them learn basic numerical skills including misconceptions which were  holding them back from achieving their targets and make further progress. All the pupils on my list were under achievers i.e. they had failed to achieve their targets set by their class teacher or have not made any progress at all from key stage 3 to key stage 4.

Being an international student myself, I know how to take practical account of diversity and promote equality and inclusion in my teaching. This has also been reflected in my teaching practices in different schools e.g. I have taught EAL pupils in Abraham Moss High school as well as in Matthew Moss High School and help them in their learning. Therefore I would take into account their special needs during the planning and teaching of the lessons.