Teaching, to me, has never been a fixed set of strategies or steps. It’s something living — intuitive, emotional, and deeply relational. Over time, I’ve come to see it as a form of design: not the design of slides or lesson plans, but of experience. Each lesson is a space to connect, explore, and co-create meaning. And every student brings their own world into that space.
Learning is holistic. I’m always drawing connections between what I see in the classroom and what I experience beyond it - a conversation that shifted my perspective, a book that reframed something I thought I knew, a rhythm I felt while playing music or walking through a forest. These moments aren’t separate from teaching - they are teaching. Everything connects. Everything informs how I show up in the room.
I approach education through an ontological lens — the belief that multiple realities, perspectives, and truths can exist at once. Each student sees the world differently, shaped by their background, emotions, and needs. As a teacher, I don’t see my role as delivering the one right answer. I see it as holding space for those different lenses to be seen, heard, and understood.
Good teaching doesn’t flatten complexity. It honours it.
The longer I’ve taught, the more I’ve come to understand it as an exchange of energy. Teaching is not just a transmission of knowledge — it’s an emotional, even spiritual, process. Some days, it’s about presence. Others, it’s about silence. The real skill is in attuning: sensing what your students need and responding without force.
Meditation has been my greatest teacher in this. It’s helped me slow down, see things more clearly, and let go of the need to perform. I try to bring that same clarity and stillness into my classroom — not as authority, but as invitation. When I’m centred, students feel safe. And when students feel safe, they take risks. They light up.
Much of my thinking comes from the natural world. Nature doesn’t rush. It adapts, responds, regenerates. It’s made of interlinked systems — and so is learning. Every lesson is shaped by context. Every interaction has ripple effects.
This systems thinking is what drew me to machine learning, too. Not because it’s trendy, but because it offers tools to understand and address the biggest challenges of our time — from climate change to conservation, communication to justice. Kaya ML grew from this convergence: my passion for the environment, my curiosity about technology, and my desire to make meaningful education accessible to all.
A great teacher, I believe, is someone of quiet wisdom - not defined by answers, but by their ability to provoke thought, hold space, and let others shine. Some of the most powerful lessons I was ever taught still unfold in me today. Years later, I’m still peeling back their layers, finding new meanings where I thought I’d understood everything.
I’ve always learned best by doing. Teaching has never been something I perfected - it’s something I’ve been taught by the students themselves. Every group shows me how to speak more clearly, how to listen more deeply, and how to design more thoughtfully.
Each class is a conversation. And like any good conversation, it requires openness, responsiveness, and humility.