UAE teachers become social media influencers to create classrooms with a difference

It's not just pupils, schoolteachers in the UAE are also finding their spotlight in social media, using online fame to educate children in another environment.

There is much more to their posts than just offering lessons, teachers are using the platform to support their peers, and motivate more people to join the profession at a time of a global shortage in teaching.

Teacher influencers go beyond the four walls of the classroom to ensure pupils engage with positive or educational content on social media in response to negative influences.

Thomas Blakemore, a British teacher who worked in Dubai for six years, posts videos to support pupils and teachers and has a collective social media following of around 250,000 people.

“One day, my class came in after a popular influencer had created a video that was very negative. My class were talking about it, and I thought that's not something they should be talking about or know about,” said Mr Blakemore.

He said he had always wanted to create videos for his class, but that moment made the difference.

“My first videos were about supporting my class,” he said. “I had a pupil in class who struggled with anxiety, especially around tests, so I created test videos, and, six years later, I still have children watching those videos.”

Keeping it positive

The teacher started posting videos in 2018, and said the fact that children still watched those videos, motivated him.

“I think the word 'influencer' has, unfortunately, negative connotations. But an influencer as a role can have both positive and negative implications,” said Mr Blakemore.

“When you think of an influencer in the world of education, especially teachers, it's through being a positive influencer to the greater world around them.”

He said he watched popular influencers to understand what pupils found engaging about the person, so that he could emulate their approach with a hope to engage children more deeply in lessons.

Influencers often address burnout and attract people to the teaching profession by showing the positive sides of as well as the reality of a career in teaching.

He spoke of the importance of being authentic on social media, and said: “Just like every other profession, teaching has some incredibly challenging times and I think it's important to talk about the challenges that we all face as teachers.”

He said burnout could come in the form of physical or emotional stress because of the amount of energy that you have to put in as a teacher, and there is misalignment burnout, where your goals and aims are not those of the school.

He said often when people did not address challenges, the situation peaked and they left the profession.

“In some ways, I think in the UK, I'd struggled a little bit. I was maybe on the cusp of burnout, and by taking on some social media and having that outlet gave me something else to work towards,” he said.

Unesco’s global report on teachers in 2024 revealed an urgent need for 44 million primary and secondary teachers by 2030. Global attrition rates, which measure employees' departures, among primary schoolteachers have more than doubled from 4.62 per cent in 2015 to 9.06 per cent in 2022.

Across the world, teacher influencers have gained popularity as they aim to help pupils navigate the social media space while also addressing the challenges of being a teacher.

American kindergarten teacher Jennifer Craft has amassed a following of 690,000 followers on Instagram by posting videos from her classrooms on promoting diversity and educating young children.

Growing in numbers

Rachel Accurso, famous as Ms Rachel for her learning videos for toddlers on social media, has two master’s degrees in education and has 13.3 million subscribers on YouTube.

Alex Gray, head of sixth form at Arcadia School in Dubai, said he initially started using social media for his own professional development during the coronavirus pandemic.

“Back in May of 2020, we were all at home and I was looking for ways to utilise my interests and passion, which is photography and videography as well as to upskill and share ideas,” said Mr Gray.

“I got into it by trying to just help myself to develop and then use my own passion and interests and post this to also as a support teachers who were looking for ideas.”

In 2023, Mr Gray set up a podcast called The International Classroom which has drawn hundreds of thousands of views. Through this podcast, Mr Gray talks to people across the world on a variety of subjects such as teacher well-being and the impact of technology and Artificial Intelligence on education.

“It allowed me really to have conversations with educators and thought leaders. I think it's about being able to open doors for educators to learn and hear from people around the world,” he said.

He posts his podcast on YouTube, Spotify, and posts videos on Instagram, TikTok, and LinkedIn.

“The aim of it is to really provide value to teachers, to inspire them, to support them, to provide them with professional development or ideas around topics that we all know are important, but maybe they're in an area or an environment where they're not getting the professional development opportunities,” he said.

One of the mini series he will be posting this year focuses on social and emotional learning from a student's perspective and from a teacher's perspective.

“We try to focus a lot on those things because it's really, really important. We can empathise still being in the profession and still teaching over 100 students a day and trying to manage having a family and all these other things that go with it,” he said.

For Olly Lewis, deputy head at Amity International School Abu Dhabi, the journey to becoming a teacher influencer started years ago when he worked in the UK and started creating revision programmes for his pupils which he posted on X.

When he moved to the UAE, he started writing newsletters about teaching and learning and started sharing these.

Asked about what being a teacher influencer meant to him, he said it meant using his experiences and insights to positive effect on the profession.

Mr Lewis, a founding fellow of the Chartered College of Teaching in the UK, he said: “I've always advocated that people should join the profession.

“No two days are the same in teaching and you get to share your passion and love for your subject with people. That's what makes the profession really appealing,” said Mr Lewis, whose videos on education have received hundreds of thousands of views across various social media platforms.

“Teaching is a hard job. It's a challenging job, but it's a mega rewarding job.”