Teach First: Sugra

Sugra studied Economics at the University of Edinburgh before applying to the 2005 Leadership Development Programme. She taught Maths at Uxbridge High School and is now an Assistant Principal at the Harefield Academy.

I had done lots of internships during my time at university – with the Foreign Office in Nigeria, with JP Morgan, and two with the BBC, and over the course of those internships I still thought "I don't really know what I want to do". Teach First seemed like a really great way of building my skills up and doing something completely new and worthwhile - an opportunity to grow and develop. From my internships I discovered that sometimes you could be working in a corporate environment and think you're doing something very important, but actually all you're doing is the photocopying. Teach First felt like a way that I could do something very meaningful and have a huge impact from day one.

I feel really privileged because my family came to the UK from East Africa and always wanted for my sister and me to have a really great education and the opportunities that they didn't have. And being a very ambitious person myself, coming from a school where everybody was ambitious, and a community where everyone's ambitious, I wanted as a teacher to pass on that motivation – to show the kids that the opportunities really are there if you work for them.

The whole of my first year I said "I don't know if I'll stay in teaching." And what I loved about Teach First was that they offered me a coach to work through what I wanted to do after the two years. It wasn't a case of being pressured to stay in teaching. But I remember having this penny drop moment and thinking, "actually, I want to be a teacher and I love teaching."

Over the course of my first year, I developed a real respect for the profession and a love and pride in calling myself a teacher. And I also realised that in teaching if you're ambitious and motivated you can really progress. It's not like you have to serve a certain number of years at a certain level and then you can move up - things are very different now. I'm a Principal and I hope that within time I can progress even further and make as much of an impact on education as I can.