Global Teacher Prize Winner Andria Zafirakou on Legacy and Arts Teaching
“The biggest challenge I’ve ever had to experience was me telling my parents that I was gonna go into the arts. Cuz they didn’t want that.”
Andria Zafirakou is the latest Global Teacher Prize winner. In her youth, her peers and family saw that she would be a teacher. As with the last recipient of this Varkey Foundation award, she comes across as genuine and completely floored by the acclaim. Trevor Noah of Comedy Central’s Daily Show handed her the award in a glorious ceremony in Dubai. Prime Minister Theresa May held a special ceremony for her upon her return to England. Even though she’s still teaching students, she’s using whatever “extra” time she’s given to generate structure and buzz for her non-profit dedicated to students and the arts, speak at universities and non-profits, and giving interviews to publications large and small. Including this appreciative teacher. Yet, throughout our conversation, she couldn’t stop gushing over her students, her school, and her community, a testament to the authenticity of her work.
[Note: I edited parts of this interview for clarity and, while I’d love to share all the real moments, I know how important our professions are to both of us, so …]
“I’ve been teaching for 13 years now in the same school, which doesn’t happen in the UK. [But I’ve been promoted in the school] and loving it, just loving it because I feel like I’m part of the framework. When I started, it was a very rough school. I remember when I did my first interview, it was snowing in my classroom. There were snowball fights in my classroom, the windows wouldn’t close … there was no love in that environment, you know? There was no care, no inspiration. Kids were just literally put in a large, dirty, boring box.
“ … I gave my lesson [for the interview] and it was really difficult because they didn’t trust me. They were like ‘Who are you?’ I did my interview lesson and it went very well and the kids moved on afterward to the next corridor. Then, I had two little girls who sat in the corner while I’m putting away my resources. I was thinking ‘I’m not gonna take [the position], I’m not gonna take it, I’m not gonna take it,’ and they asked me “Miss, please, can you stay?” I think that was it.”
She aces the interview and stays in the profession for more than a decade. Throughout her time at her school, she found ways to make the curriculum relevant to their age group and cultures. She infused the cultures of her Somali, Caribbean, and Indian students, giving students ownership of the school. In her borough of Brent, there are about 150 languages spoken and in her school, there are about 45. [Note: Other articles written about her says that she’s picked up common phrases from about 35 of those languages, but I digress.] She at once acknowledges her status as one of the few white people in her school and appreciates the racially and religiously diverse staff members because that visual representation is critical to the success of her students.
All this to say, she ends up acing this interview, too.
Throughout her time outside the classroom, she’s heard people say that she’s the reason they’re going to the classroom or going back into the classroom. She’s using the skills she acquired in the classroom to engage folks outside of it. She sees how she becomes this symbol of hope for people who feel some sort of pain within themselves as well. When I ask her what she does to inspire so many people, she says, “I’m so … so … I’m just shocked that people wanna hear.” After I ask why, “Because I … there’s nothing different. What I do is what I do. I wake up, teach my students, I do what I do well, and I go home satisfied! For people to hear my story and want to hear it, I still find it hard to believe.”
She’s had years of teaching the arts. Through her newly-formed organization, she’s hoping to connect artists, musicians, and other creatives with students like hers. She already has a demand from numerous schools, but she doesn’t even have the staffing to accommodate yet. Even though she’s appreciative of STEM and all it has to offer, she sees how the arts give students enthusiasm about school and the future. In the UK, as in the USA, efforts to raise standardized test scores has come at the price of diminishing arts programs, especially for students of color who probably need it the most. While she understands the drive to get students ready for future careers, she wants everyone to notice that art is an option for the future and culture can’t survive without it. She’s seen how students learn collaboration, communication, and confidence through the arts, especially with her students with special needs.
If we are to have students “perform” better, we should let them perform, too.
“They keep on referring to the arts as a ‘soft skill.’ How dare they? What’s a soft skill?” she quips to those who critique the arts, especially to prestigious universities who only want STEM-leaning students. “Soft for me means weak or light.” To further her point, “Building someone’s confidence is not light. Building resilience is not light. Teaching someone to accept and learn from failure is not light.” When asked about measurement of these skills, she says, “Who says you can’t measure it? I get that it takes a longer time to measure than a 1+1=2, fair enough, but maybe we’re not measuring using the right systems or the right methods, and it frustrates me as you can imagine.”
As a teacher born and raised in NYC, I found myself resonating with lots of what Zafirakou sees with our own profession. As a math teacher, I readily question the idea of “college and career ready” when so much of what makes life sustainable lies in the arts, in music, in the ways that people creatively interpret the world around them. Also, some people never get the opportunity to speak to other educators across the street, much less across the proverbial pond. Around the world, especially in so-called “first world countries,” the struggle for the teaching profession remains grounded in student experiences and policies that affect the students. Many of these policies have left educators of all stripes baffled to the point where we combat teacher shortages by creating more strife and austerity in our schools and communities instead of less.
In Zafirakou’s case, she readily connects the dots between her own work as newly minted ambassador to the profession and arts director at her school. When asked about her legacy:
“I’d like the arts to be considered as important as every other subject so children want to take them up and they’re not afraid to take them up … Also, the actual teaching profession is not as valued as any other profession. That’s what I’d like to create. I want people running to become teachers, not people running away from the profession.”
This craft requires our hands and hearts. On our way out of the interview, Zafirakou’s handshake was firm and energetic. May we all have the same energy for our works.
