[ELTWeekly Volume 10, Issue 10 | May 7, 2018 | ISSN 0975-3036]
* Published from Cambridge ELT Blog.
We interviewed Andria Zafirakou, the UK’s first Global Teacher Prize winner, to find out more about her work, as well as her views on the teaching profession, using questions from our World Teacher Survey.
First of all, congratulations on winning the Global Teacher Prize – how does it feel to win?
Amazing, incredible, honoured! I think mostly honoured – I did not expect this to be the case, that I was going to win. And honestly, hand on heart, there are so many other better teachers out there in this world, but luckily, I’ve been recognised.
We understand that you work in one of the poorer communities in the UK – what are the challenges of this?
It can be quite frustrating because you’re dealing with situations whereby sometimes you’ve got children that come in to school hungry, which means they can’t concentrate. You are dealing with children that have very hard lives, and what they’re experiencing at home is not the best situation for any child.