Hi! I’m Sumbella. Also known as Sumbal.

I am a Facilitator and Community Lead here at Well Teachers.

In my work as a teacher, there were things that kept me up at night:

Safeguarding.

I felt troubled by cases and ethical dilemmas that had me feeling triggered, powerless, and alone.

And I was never quite sure who - or if - I could speak about or approach the issues inside my school without spiraling consequences.

'Unreachables'.

There were students who I couldn't 'reach'.

No matter what I did to differentiate, and I couldn’t keep staying after school and eating into learners’ breaks to catch them up individually.

Burnout.

I had no energy and no capacity for life outside work.

I was trying to grow professionally, personally, but couldn’t pursue anything outside of teaching hours. It felt impossible to have a life.

Politics.

I found it claustrophobic trying to stick to rigid structures, bureaucracy, deal with disrespect, micromanagement + more.

This would often eat at my energy and become the majority of my job, stealing my best energy away from where it was meant to be focused: on helping teachers.

But it was strange:

When I chose to stop teaching in mainstream schools, I experienced a lot of shame and guilt.

While I'd often heard things like, 'those who can, do, those who can't teach', my experience left me confused.

I felt like I'd experienced an underbelly of education.

I'd seen what strength of character, dedication & resilience it takes to teach and lead the next generation through their formative years in mainstream schools.

It didn’t make sense why teachers, and teaching as a profession was so badly spoken about. Teachers, in the most practical ways, are foundational pillars of society. I’ve since come to understand that teachers are one of the most bullied professionals in our world today.

Fortunately, the education field is wide, varied, and needs all hands on deck.

And I am constantly surprised by how many different skills and jobs you can contribute to education.

I soon discovered training roles within education.

For me, that meant within education-focused corporate organisations like Cambridge University Press, Oxford University Press and GEMS. While some of these roles involved working in sales and marketing, I'd had a couple of people who had told me of a 'flair for facilitation' and 'learning design' that they'd seen in me. And with this, I began to take on roles that involved facilitation and learning & development, working to support hundreds of schools across the Middle East & North Africa.

Choosing to lean into mastering the skill of facilitation, I knew this would be a lifelong pursuit.

And as I began to move into roles where I worked as a facilitator supporting teachers, I noticed that the problems I'd experienced as a teacher were cropping up all around with teachers in every country I was working to support.

I'd also begun to experience the world of corporations.

This helped open my eyes to all sorts of related problems, that I now think stem from and are rooted inherently in schooling systems:

Hierarchical struggles, politics relating to distribution of resources and strategy, team dynamics, change management to name a few.

I later quit my corporate job as a Professional Learning and Development Specialist at Cambridge University Press and Assessment too.

And from there, I pivoted to begin following my hunches to start digging in to teacher well-being.

At Well Teachers, my work is about being part of - and bringing together - a community of education professionals who are interested in actually doing something about teacher challenges.

And I started creating different ways to support teacher wellbeing and professional development.

I hope you enjoy exploring these ways to get involved with nurturing your personal and professional wellbeing at Well Teachers.

I’ve shared more information about the main ones below.

I am so looking forward to helping you take action on your UGP (Unique Growth Plan)😉

Sumbella (Sumbal)

Community Lead & Facilitator 

P.S. I do currently use LinkedIn (for teaching, learning, & activism) and Instagram (for hobbies, outfits, fun, and more activism). For a long time I pooled my work over on my personal website too. I welcome you to explore and join in with me on those spaces.