From Wounds to Light: Finding Purpose in Education
| by Hannah Sparling
Hamed Ghaheri’s first plan was to work with animals. He finished his master’s in animal physiology in Iran and had a chance to do the Ph.D. program in South Korea. But it didn’t feel quite right.
So Ghaheri moved to the United States instead, where he worked for retail companies for a few years. That wasn’t right, either.
He went to carpentry school — his dad was a home builder, so it came naturally — and then started his own home-inspection business in Seattle. He was working for himself. He was making good money. He was helping people buy houses and serving his community. Still, something was missing.
“I started to think about, ‘OK, is this something I want to do for the rest of my life?’ I don’t like to just focus on earning money, so I needed to find something more meaningful.”
Hamed Ghaheri enjoyed his work as a home inspector but still felt something was missing.
‘Moreland Opened a Gate’
It was a gradual process that involved lots of research, traveling, and reading, but Ghaheri eventually found his way to education. He earned his TEFL certificate, Teaching English as a Foreign Language, and that led to an internship in China, teaching English at the university level.
Ghaheri started as a teacher on March 3, 2024. And finally, he felt complete.
“Teaching is something I can share with others,” he said. “It’s wonderful. … I see these young faces, and this young generation, and it just gives me a lot of hope. It’s very inspiring to me.”
Ghaheri strives to be the kind of teacher he wanted as a child.
Ghaheri didn’t necessarily need to earn his U.S. certification, but after talking with other teachers at his school, he realized a U.S. license would open new doors and opportunities. He was initially leaning toward a school in England, but then a colleague told him about Moreland University’s TEACH-NOW Teacher Preparation Certificate Program.
Ghaheri liked that TEACH-NOW is online, so he could do it from anywhere.
He liked the global nature of the program: His cohort includes teachers from South Korea, Thailand, and the United States. Math teachers, English teachers, and phys. ed teachers.
“Every person brings something to the table from their different experiences,” Ghaheri said.
And he especially liked that he could earn his teaching certificate through Moreland and then go right on to earn his master’s degree.
“In one year, I can get both,” he said. “The price was affordable compared to other programs I found in the U.S. And honestly, Moreland opened a gate for me to follow my dreams.”
Wounds and Light
Growing up, Ghaheri had a dismal experience with school. It was all about control, he said. Girls were separated from boys, and there was no freedom of speech or creativity. Even the decorations were dull.
“I just remember a gray place,” he said. “Scary, and everything was controlled.”
As a teacher, his goal is to build something different. He wants his classes to be fun and full of laughter. He wants to connect with his students and tie his lessons to their interests and goals.
He talks about a quote from the Iranian poet Rumi: The wound is the place where the Light enters you. That resonates with him. He’s learned a lot from Moreland about student-centered learning, he said, and he uses his own experiences as a student to inspire his work as a teacher.
“The part that was broken in me, from this educational system and the control system,” he said. “I felt like, OK, that’s the place I need to get back to and try to change.”
A State of Flow
Ghaheri did a lot of exploring before he found his way to teaching, but he’s confident he’s where he belongs. Some nights, he actually has trouble falling asleep because he’s so excited about the next day’s lessons.
He remembers a recent class where he was doing his prep, about 5 or 10 minutes before students arrived, and he noticed a small headache. It wasn’t a big deal, but he definitely noticed.
The students came in, he started teaching, and then he realized: His headache was gone. To Ghaheri, that was him finding his zone. When he’s teaching, everything else disappears.
“I guess they call it a state of flow,” he said. “I didn’t pay attention to anything else, just being in that class, in the here and now, to teach them.”
Ghaheri is in his second year as an English teacher in China.
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