Deepika Chhabra is a Secondary school mathematics teacher and Grade Level Leader for grade 6 at AISB. She has one simple and clear goal: Deepika has a passion for spreading her love for numbers to the students, and making them understand math.

What follows is Deepika’s story, in her own words:

Let me tell you, being a math teacher was not my first career. My first career was working in a corporation. I have an MBA and I was in corporate doing marketing. Finance was my major subject. So I’ve always loved numbers since childhood. Numbers are something that has stayed with me throughout. And when I had my first kid, which was now 11 years back, I figured out that logistically for my family it was very difficult for me to continue a traveling life. That was the first time I decided to switch a career and I went into school and I just put myself there in the classroom to see how it was to be in the classroom. I think I remember my first month being very difficult and I was struggling a lot. But I knew what I could do very well was to pass on my love for numbers, to educate.

So when I look at all of you [students], I think you all are so much more aware and you have so many more avenues to think about. I had very short term thinking. I think ambitions and what I want to do with my life and what were my callings came to me much later, maybe in college, not [during Secondary school]. The only thing I wanted to do was to fly. And I did take flying. So I am a trained licensed pilot. I think that’s something that I always wanted. Like a dream.

I have lived internationally in London, Singapore, Dubai, Moscow, and now Romania. Out of all our stays in these countries as a family, I believe we had a really good time in Moscow.

We didn’t think we could replicate the experiences that we created in Moscow, but I think in Romania, now two years into teaching here, we feel that we’re enjoying our lives here equally well.

I think I can make quick emotional connections with everybody, be it my colleagues, my students, or my own family. I see that sometimes as a strength, but sometimes it causes some difficulties for me.

[If I had to give advice to students] I think I would say just stay happy and healthy; that’s it, simple. We all have to find our own ways of finding happiness, so whatever makes you happy, find time to do those things. I am not chasing any big goal or achievements, I just want to be happy with what I am doing.