by Jen Myers

(Each month, Wellpoint,  Lowell Public Schools and InsideLowell honor a Lowell teacher for their exemplary work in the classroom and for going the extra mile to serve as a positive influence in the lives of their students)

It is the week before Winter Break, a time when keeping a classroom full of second graders on task seems a near impossible feat.

But, in Asiya Shaikh’s class at the Pawtucketville Memorial Elementary School things are just humming along. The students are fully engaged in their morning phonics lesson, playing a Headbandz/Guess Who style game where one student holds up a word they cannot see and gathers clues from their classmates to determine what it may be based on how many syllables, word sounds, definition, and more.

They move on to other exercises that reflect their growing understanding of language and some of the tricky letter combinations and sounds that make English so difficult. They celebrate each other’s vocabulary victories and help each other when they stumble.

Second graders are at an age where they are testing out their independence, but still need a lot of problem-solving and social skill support, which make them a fun and challenging group of students.

“It’s my job to walk them through it and develop the strategies they need to positively interact with others and grow themselves,” said Asiya. “Second grade is a huge year for growth, and it’s always satisfying to see how much they’ve changed from when they first came in to the end of the year.”

She uses timers throughout the day to keep the class on task and to transition between activities and gives them ample opportunities to talk to each other throughout the day, so they do not interrupt class time to talk to a friend.

Asiya said when they are engaged in long periods of work, they take brain breaks, pausing to stretch or do another activity to break up the work. When transitioning back to class work after gym or another special class, the students have 10 minutes to listen to a story or doodle a bit to get back into the right mind space. She sets the classroom expectations at the beginning of the school year, and reviews them after each break to keep everyone on the same page.

“Through her high expectations and strong routines, Asiya has managed to maintain a safe, respectful classroom culture and environment,” said PMES Principal Paula Jones. “She has openly taken feedback from multiple stakeholders and implemented suggestions to help her students succeed. She maintains high academic standards for all of her students. There is lots of learning going on!”

When she was their age, Asiya Shaikh could be found in the playroom of her family’s Billerica home – not playing with Barbie or crafting friendship bracelets – but pretending to grade papers and teach a classroom full of eager learners using her chalkboard easel.

She landed her first gig as a teacher’s assistant at the mosque her family attended when she was in 8^th grade, helping out in the Sunday School Kindergarten class. By the time she was a Sophomore at Billerica Memorial High School, Asiya was teaching the Kindergarten class on her own, became a member of the Future Teachers of America club at school, and was taking child growth and development classes.

Taking those classes gave her the opportunity to put what she was learning into practice in a preschool class at Project BEAM. That was when she really knew teaching was the profession she wanted to pursue.

“As I spent more time in classrooms, I knew that I was often these children’s first experiences getting to know a Muslim woman who wore a hijab,” Asiya said. “It was teaching them about my culture and showing them the pride I had in my beliefs that made me realize I was in a unique position to provide windows and mirrors for these students. I was a window into a new perspective and learning about the people in the world around them, while also being a mirror that reflected the identities of the minority kids who were often underrepresented. I could show them and the others in the class what they could dream of being and push them to dream bigger.”

After graduating from Billerica Memorial High School in 2017, Asiya headed to Lesley University in Cambridge, where she earned a bachelor’s degree in English and Elementary Studies with a minor in Global Studies.

When she first came to Pawtucketville Memorial in 2021, she was teaching third grade.

“Many of my students in my first year had not been back in school since their first-grade year was cut short in March 2020,” she said. “It was challenging, navigating both the stress of my first year of teaching but also having to reteach basic classroom expectations that students would have known by now. My colleagues were more than supportive and as the year progressed, my confidence as an educator grew.”

She was nervous at first when she transitioned to second-grade because the students were younger, but she has come to enjoy the flexibility with curriculum and scheduling she has in teaching second-grade.

“Since we don’t have the pressure of standardized testing, we can spend more time on the units we love and are teaching curriculum until May-June,” she said. “We also have an opportunity to pepper in other lessons throughout the year. I get to teach a lot of SEL lessons, and have time to talk about the different holidays celebrated throughout the year, which are often fun and creative lessons.”

One of the students’ favorite lessons, which incorporates reading and STEM activities, comes just before Thanksgiving break.

They read “Balloons Over Broadway,” by Melissa Sweet, learn about the history of the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade, and then spend a day making their own characters out of balloons and putting on a parade around the school.

One of the other things that makes second-grade so fun is that one of the reading standards is a unit on fairytales and fables.

“We spend the unit reading different stories and to celebrate the end of the unit students and their families create castles at home that are then displayed in the halls,” Asyia said. “On Fairytale Day, students dress up and do fairytale related STEM activities (build the pigs’ houses out of Legos, use the connecting cubes to make Goldilocks’ chair, etc.) based on some of the stories we read during the unit.”

While Ms. Shaikh enjoys those activities too, her favorite subject to teach is Math. She enjoys helping students break down problems and understand the concepts they are learning.

“Math is always a hard subject for students, so I try to stay positive and teach it to them as “these are different strategies for your math toolbox” rather than “this is how you have to do it” which makes students feel more successful,” she said.

And of course, there is always some hands-on fun activities to accompany those Math problems – they construct 3-D shapes using marshmallows and toothpicks – and then eat all the marshmallows.

“At the end of the day, I know that second grade is just a stepping stone in their K-12 learning journey,” said Asiya. “I try my best to teach all the standards to mastery, but more than academics, I want my students to leave second grade believing they did their best. I want them to feel like they tried, and I want them to know I am proud of them. I teach SEL (Social Emotional Learning) lessons and lessons on cultural differences because I hope that they leave second grade as good people; leave as people that are a little bit kinder, a little more understanding, and a little more accepting of the world around them.”

All About Ms. Shaikh

Hobbies: Reading, drinking bubble tea, doing henna
Dream Vacation: Singapore
Favorite song to sing in the car: APT by Rose and Bruno Mars
Favorite meal: Butter chicken with garlic naan
Favorite snack: Sour cream and onion Pringles
Favorite Movie: Princess Bride
Favorite Book: Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire
Favorite TV Show: The Artful Dodger
Favorite Fictional Character: Rapunzel from Tangled