Changing your career to become a teacher may be easier than you think. Many career changers have recently entered the profession of teaching and are positively impacting the lives of young people through the diverse range of transferable skills they bring from both their previous work and life experience.
Through the National Agenda 2021, the UAE has prioritised education as a key focus and the country strives to ensure that it offers high-quality education from early years and kindergarten through to primary and secondary education. A key driver for this is ensuring that inspirational, innovative and creative teachers are providing learning and positively impacting the lives of young people. In recent years, the exponential growth in schools across the UAE, the focus on raising standards of teaching and now with access to high-quality teacher training, make this an exciting time to become a teacher and truly make a difference.
The recent trend of career changers transitioning into teaching is due to a number of factors and reasons. Some have always aspired to be educators, inspired by a previous teacher, yet didn’t have the opportunity to embark upon the training. For others, their unfaltering passion for their subject area and a desire to share this expertise with young people, hoping to ignite the same passion in them, has been a motive. However, the most common reason that individuals state for a transition into teaching is a desire to make a positive impact on the lives of young people through raising aspiration and inspiring the love of learning.
Joining teaching as a second career can give you an employability advantage. Schools across the UAE and Gulf region are seeking adaptable, innovative and creative individuals who can demonstrate a unique perspective gained through their previous experience. With knowledge and skills gained through your previous career, you are ideally placed to offer a plethora of transferable skills to prospective school employers and indeed enhance the learning experience if students.
The University of Birmingham Dubai has seen two successful cohorts of students complete the post graduate certificate in education (PGCE) across both primary and secondary phases. Our student teachers represent the unique diversity of the UAE. With many having been resident in the region for a number of years, they bring an eclectic mix of cultural and emotional intelligence, creativity in abundance and the ability to be self-reflective practitioners, constantly striving to improve their practice.