Neeki Armani

1. Tell us a bit about yourself. Where are you from and what were you doing before arriving at THINK Global School?

Born and raised in and around London, Iranian by blood, with family scattered all over the world, I grew up traveling to different countries to visit family when I wasn’t in London’s multicultural melting pot. It’s probably why I learned to appreciate differences and the excitement of new experiences and meeting new people. I loved learning but moved schools a lot along with all that change and started to feel like mainstream schools only saw me as a potential grade for their rankings. I started to lose my enthusiasm for school, so I took a year out of the classroom and homeschooled myself for my GCSE exams while exploring what I wanted my learning to look like. That year of reflection and my initial experience in teaching in mainstream schools similar to those I had attended myself got me into alternative education and, most importantly, project-based learning. I took that love to Edinburgh, where I found an opportunity to build the first adolescent Montessori program in Scotland and design the STEM curriculum, which I did with a project-based spin and really confirmed to me that it’s what I want to do…. So when I found TGS that combined my passion for travel, project-based learning, and student-led learning journeys, I simply had to be a part of it!

 2. If you could make one major change to global education, what would it be?

I would love to live in a world where everyone has access to education. Not only to give them the skills to work but the opportunity to find what they are passionate about and follow that path to contribute positively to society. I want to remove subject bias and the concept that someone can be called ‘less intelligent’ because their natural talents lie in a different area than what society dictates is “important.”

3. Which of our core values do you feel you most embody, and why?

求知欲 Qiú Zhi Yù is the value that resonates with me most as I have a constantly growing list of skills and topics that I want to learn, and spend most of my free time learning/reading/practicing those things. I know some people would use the phrase ‘Jack of all trades, master of none’ as a negative, but I love having capabilities in a broad range of things, in a variety of depths/skill levels. Having said that, Pixki is very important to me as I have spent a lot of time in the UK trying to live as low-waste as possible and practice pro-environmental behaviors…. this is something I have to navigate differently as I travel and is still a work in progress for me, but something I am very conscious of.

4. What is your most memorable travel experience thus far?

I did a long road trip over a winter break in Iran from Tehran (the capital city) to the south coast. Not only did I connect strongly with my heritage, the lovely people, and the delicious food, but I stopped off at some of the most amazing places and discovered the variety of landscapes and weather across the country. I went camel riding over the sand dunes after spending the night under the stars in the desert on Christmas Eve, went water skiing and scuba diving on the tropical islands in the Persian Gulf, and then the following day returned to the north to snowboard in the mountains of Tehran.

5. What is your favorite book, and why?

Although I have read many more informative and complex books in my time, my favorite book to this day is one I first read when I was a preteen, Stargirl by Jerry Spinelli. It’s a very short book about a girl who is completely true to herself, quirks and all, and how she impacts a community she joins. I have read it so many times as I can finish it in a few hours, and it always just resets my positive mindset and reminds me of the positive impact we can all have by staying authentically ourselves. If a book could be a happy place, this would be mine.