“Why would you want to become a teacher?” Is what many ask when I tell them that I want to become a teacher. Many people look at me as if I was absurd to want to deal with kids every day as a carrier, or why I would like to do something that does not pay that much, and others think it is a good thing to want to teach because there are not enough teachers in the world. However, the truth is non of that matters to me. Becoming a teacher is more than about the pay, the environment, or becoming another number; it is about becoming what I wished I had when I was younger.
I was born in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) in a small town outside Abu Dhabi called Al Ain. When I was about five years old, we moved to Abu Dhabi because my Father got a job. I am the youngest of four, and while my siblings were in school, I spent my days with my mother. Growing up, I never attended daycare, Pre-K, or kindergarten because my parents never found the need to enrol me in any since my mother was a stay-at-home mother, and I stayed with her. However, that took a big turn since I got put into first grade soon after we moved to Abu Dhabi.
When one looks at me with my fair skin and slim tall fit, they can never guess or believe my ethnicity. I am half Swiss and half Sudanese and never saw myself; through that, I was different. This is when I discovered how people get treated differently nit just because the colour of their skin, but simply because of their ethnicity. Facing that much discrimination at a young age put me in a headspace where I didn’t want to attend school, because when I went to school I would be treated horribly because I am part African; which to many teachers it meant that I was less then anyone els. When attending school back home it was normal for educators to humiliate and yell at me simple because I didn’t know of understand something. Facing that on a daily basis convinced me quite quickly that I was just dumb, which just made me stop trying all together.
Summer of 2010 in Sudan, where we usually spend our summers. My auntie owned a daycare and took me, my sister, and my cousin when they would have events. The daycare was like a dream; she had a sandpit, play stricture, and a trampoline. Every classroom had a door leading out to the daycare. Furthermore, they had many animals all over the place, like turtles, a baby goat, bunnies, and a fish aquarium. I remember how the kids lit up when seeing my auntie and the way she was with kids. Gradually I realized how more and more kids started gravitating toward me; I was eight years old and still a kid myself, but I felt so much joy being around the little ones. After that day, I always said I wanted to be a teacher like my auntie. I wanted kids to have that level of joy around me that they did around her.
I moved to Canada at the age of twelve. I moved from an Arab country mixed with diversity to a predominately white country in 2014, when diversity was still starting. I was an outcast again, a Muslim kid wearing a hijab in a classroom with only two other people of colour. Other kids in my class did not know how to act; they were scared and weirded out. Eventually, they got used to me and started talking and letting me in. it finally clicked to them that yes I do look different but I was just a normal kid like them.
Growing up, I never had the best interactions with educators, and having many take me down and embarrass me instead of helping, made me hate school for years convinced me that I would never do good. My goal as an educator is that I will never let another child in my care feel anything less of themselves. I want to create a safe learning environment where one can make mistakes without embarrassment. To create a space where a child can come to escape their home lives for a few hours.
I want to be the educator I wish I had when I was younger.