Zainab Qureshi’s Post

Pakistani friends living outside Pakistan with kids: Beaj Urdu is starting a "Pakistan Ki Sayr Summer Camp" on July 1st! ☀ These are 1-hour live Zoom workshops, 5 days a week that combine Urdu learning with cultural exploration. The goal is to get kids excited about learning Urdu and speaking it with family and new friends! Details in link below. We'd love to welcome your kids this summer! #pakistan #learnUrdu #Urdu #summercamp

What does it take to get a Learning App to kids in a low-resource setting? EdTech:  “Guess what?! We created this awesome learning program for K-5 students and put it on an app that anyone can use! With only 10 minutes of practice a day, we’re seeing reading/math improvements!” Reality:  That’s fantastic, but… how are you going to get it to kids? Idea:  We’ll ask schools to make it a part of their curriculum! Reality:  Ok, but… most schools don’t have computers or tablets to support digital interventions. Idea:  Our app can even run on smartphones. We’ll take it directly to parents to use at home! Reality:  Ok, but… even in households with a smartphone, the device often belongs to one family member who’s out most of the day so kids don't have regular access to it. EdTech:  We only need 10 minutes a day! We’ll ask the parents to ensure the kid gets the device for 10 minutes a day. Reality:  Ok, but… here’s the parents’ reality: they’re busy, they’re stressed, they’re likely not very educated themselves, and they’re far removed from kids’ learning, which they’ve outsourced to school and often an after-school tutor, to whom they’re likely paying a huge proportion of household income. So after all that, when a parent gets back after a full day, we’re expecting them to: - Give kids access to a working, charged device, - Ensure access to internet or some kind of data package, - Remember which app to open and how to navigate it, - Know what lesson the kid needs to do each day, and - Get the kid to sit down, open the app to the correct lesson and supervise the learning session. The heavy lift expected from parents requires: 1) An intense desire to help their child learn beyond what the school/tutor are teaching;  2) Ownership of the messy, confusing learning process which they've paid a ton to outsource; and  3) The discipline to repeat this process everyday.  Huh. No wonder EdTech interventions struggle with adoption and retention, and so many fail to reach their target audience. Younger kids are the absolute hardest group to reach. Will do another post on the incentives of every layer of adults in this ecosystem. Using technology to augment learning at scale in low-resource settings is an incredibly tough problem to crack. Can you think of any large scale success stories? #edtech #edtechchallenges #education #pakistan #educationchallenges #lowlearning

Looking for a creative backend engineer who can think out of the box and help us develop some really cool new features!

Why English?  Inequality, Social Status & the Power of Language. Full article attached. TLDR: When I tell Western counterparts that our key initial focus is empowering underserved youth and teachers through #Englishlanguageproficiency, we’re often met with the confused question: “Why English?” Interestingly, this never happens with South Asian or African counterparts. From them I get excited nods and often the sympathetic question, “But that’s incredibly hard - how will you do this?!” What the difference in attitudes really reflects is the depth of understanding of how pivotal a role language plays in defining and maintaining unequal class divides and power structures in post-colonial societies. Here's an attempt to briefly respond to the question, “Why English:” 👑 Colonial Legacy Pakistan is plagued by elite capture, a legacy of 200 years of British colonial rule. Access to opportunity is largely limited to these elites, who are predominantly urban-dwelling English speakers with high socio-economic status (most people reading this, myself included, fall into this category). Unfortunately, English language proficiency is used as a key tool at a systemic level to exclude and perpetuate the class structure. 📚 K-10 Curriculum Requirement Confused national #curriculum policy requires teachers to not only teach English as a subject, but also to teach Math and Science in it. But only 6% of Pakistani teachers are English-proficient, and they teach the wealthy. For the vast majority, this leads to low student learning outcomes not just in English, but also in Math & Science. It’s no surprise then that 78% of 10 year olds can’t read a sentence and only half can do basic Math. 👨🎓 Higher Education Requirement Regardless of what language you learned in K-12, the language of instruction in higher ed is English. Pretty solid barrier to entry. 💰 Better Jobs, Higher Salaries Access to higher-paying white-collar jobs inside the country, and opportunities to tap global freelance and tech markets are heavily predicated on English language proficiency. A study in India estimated that hourly wages are, on average, 34% higher for men who speak fluent English and 13% higher for men who speak some English relative to men who speak no English! ✈ Migration  English is required for global mobility to many parts of the world, including the Middle East, where many of Pakistan’s 860,000 migrant workers went in 2023. 😎 Social Prestige and Self-Esteem This is the saddest of all - the colonial mindset is so deeply internalized by most of us, that inferiority complexes and insecurities that stem from not speaking fluent English are very real and permanent. Ask the kids who get made fun of in school or the workers discriminated against at work. Watch a Bollywood movie on the issue, such as ‘Hindi-Medium.’ So it’s safe to say that knowing how to speak English can be pretty empowering. The next question is, “what can we do about it?” Thoughts?

At a time when universities are in the spotlight and academia faces so many difficult, existential questions, few on the inside have spoken up. Kudos to Jishnu Das for writing this thoughtful, thought-provoking piece. Sometimes the world around us seems so insane and the magnitude of injustice so huge, it feels really difficult to read the news and still go about daily life. Perspective changes and things that otherwise feel important seem trivial in comparison. I've spent most of last week on Twitter instead of LinkedIn - it has felt more real and raw. Linkedin has felt like a bit of a silent bubble, removed from reality. Which I think has made me appreciate this piece even more. I think the luckiest people are those whose professional work aligns with the social impact they wish to have.

In a world that seems chaotic and grossly unjust,  Where action feels like a steep uphill climb, And the noise all around is really loud - to be more, do more, earn more, consume more..  It may be time to pause, breathe and remember the basics. The frantic hamster wheels we're all on are, by definition, never ending. It's Earth day today. Feels like a good reminder to nurture the important stuff. A compilation of some of my favourite Thích Nhất Hạnh quotes here: https://lnkd.in/e5TwyKDW. May this week be as peaceful and productive as possible. Happy Monday! #earthday #peace #bemindful #staycalmandbreathe

Does Gen-Z Struggle with Professional Etiquette? What I'm going to say will be controversial and may offend some people, but I’ve experienced it so many times I think it needs to be said. To expand the Beaj team, I’ve interviewed over a 100 people for various positions over the last year. We’re still a bootstrapped startup, so most of our target hires are bright young people with a spark, in Pakistan, looking for a launchpad that provides solid experience and the opportunity to grow. However, it has been a real struggle to find such people. So many candidates - even those with good CVs - are awkward, unable to carry a professional conversation and lack polish. The general caliber of human resource in Pakistan has long been lamented, but is unsurprising given how little we invest in our youth. What’s surprising is how difficult it is for candidates to carry a polite, formal conversation during an interview. And I don’t think it’s laziness or lack of care, I think many young people have just never been taught the norms of professional engagement. Maybe it’s because they entered the workforce during/after Covid, with less in-person interaction and more remote work. But candidates often get the basics wrong, such as how to: - show up on time - greet cordially and form a rapport  - answer questions directly, with a smile  - talk about experiences genuinely, without sounding stilted or arrogant - indicate “I’m not as interested in X as I am in Y” without sounding abrupt or rude - use facial expressions and body language to appear cordial but professional - say “thank you for taking the time” at the end. And this is just the interview. Written communication is a whole other struggle, whether it’s a follow up email saying, “thank you for the interview, I look forward to hearing back” (standard practice with international candidates), or a Linkedin message, or an attempt to schedule an interview. I get appalled every time someone responds to an interview request with, “I’m busy tomorrow.” Or, “I had guests over yesterday so could not respond.” ( 😳!!!) I have never said that to a prospective employer, or even a client or colleague. Nor has anyone outside Pakistan ever said that to me. Is this a Pakistan thing? Was I just sheltered by great shortlisters before? Or is it a Gen-Z issue? Maybe younger people just haven’t figured out how to communicate professionally yet? Is it truly a difference of priorities or the inability to communicate effectively? Are we failing this generation by not teaching them professional etiquette? Won’t this hurt their careers going forward? Is anyone else facing this? I think most Pakistani Gen-Z job candidates could use serious coaching on punctuality, tone, body language, and specific words to use/avoid when talking to a potential employer. If you’re a potential candidate who wants tips in a follow-up post, let me know! #interviewprep #jobreadiness #softskills #bettercommunication

Eid Mubarak to everyone celebrating! As many of us take some time off, let's use it to reflect, recharge, and think through how each of us can do our little bit to make the world we live in a little bit better.

We're looking for a social media whiz to help reach our target audience online. If this is you, please reach out! If you know someone who fits the bill, please pass the message on! #hiring #socialmediamarketing

Sharing Teacher Resources, in Urdu, Free for anyone to use: beaj.org/teacherleaders Super excited to share a library of professional development resources that Beaj Education has developed for teachers in Pakistan. They're bite-sized concepts, explained mostly in Urdu, that are intended to introduce a topic and serve as a conversation-starter in a training session or teacher community. They generated fascinating discussions in our 'Teacher Leaders' community! We cover multiple topics, including: - growth mindset - understanding vs. rote memorization - how learning happens in the brain - social, emotional and mental wellbeing - positive discipline - multiple intelligences Sneak peek below but check out the real stuff at https://lnkd.in/eT_ahr-w. We're hoping to collaborate with many others working in this space and to keep growing the repository. There's no reason each of us should have to reinvent the wheel every time we begin such work! If you're working in #teacherdevelopment in #SouthAsia, we would love to connect and chat! #education #pakistan #teachertraining #teacherprofessionaldevelopment #teacherresources #Urdu