Welcome to the ACE Alumni Spotlight, where we highlight our alumni and share their stories.
Tasneem Babrawala serves as a middle school STEM and robotics teacher at Karachi American School in Pakistan. She graduated from American College of Education (ACE) in 2025 with a Bachelor of Arts in Education Studies. In addition to her teaching role, she is the NESA Virtual Science and Engineering Fair coordinator and team manager of Destination Imagination, supporting STEAM-based student competitions. We were thrilled to hear more about her impactful career in STEM education.
ACE: Tell us what you enjoy most about your role as a teacher.
Tasneem Babrawala (TB): I’ve always believed in a simple truth: When you tell me, I learn; when I do it, I remember; but when I apply it, it becomes an experience I carry forever. That philosophy lives in my classroom every single day.
My classroom has a particular energy with the buzzing sound of inquiry, students asking questions they genuinely don’t know the answers to, laughing off a small mistake and fixing it, and then suddenly going quiet when something works exactly the way they designed it. Those “wow moments,” where they realize they actually did it, are what I show up for.
What I value most is watching students build confidence through the process – the failed prototype that taught more than the successful one, the collaboration with a classmate they’d never worked with before, the critical thinking required to make something function as planned rather than just as imagined. I love creating hands-on, inquiry-based experiences where building, testing, failing and improving are all part of learning.
ACE: Tell us about your work in STEAM-based student competitions through the NESA Virtual Science and Engineering Fair and Destination Imagination.
TB: Every year, middle schoolers tackle a real problem facing Pakistan through a STEAM project. The process is rigorous as they must identify a challenge tied to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, develop a research question, brainstorm solutions, design and build a prototype on a budget of no more than $20, collect both quantitative and qualitative data, evaluate, and redesign. It sounds like a competition framework, but the real goal is interdisciplinary problem-solving and innovation.
Each year, the strongest five projects are selected to represent Karachi American School at the NESA Fair, and for five consecutive years, our students have secured top five placements on that international platform. I mentor them through every stage of research design, data analysis and scientific communication, but more importantly, I help them learn to defend their thinking and trust their process.
In all STEAM competitions, my goal is to inspire students to see themselves as serious innovators whose ideas and work matter beyond the classroom.
I mentor them through every stage of research design, data analysis and scientific communication, but more importantly, I help them learn to defend their thinking and trust their process.
Tasneem Babrawala, ACE Alumni
ACE: What kind of projects have stood out to you the most?
TB: The impact doesn’t always end at the podium. In 2024, a group of five students took on a challenge rooted in environmental responsibility developing eco-friendly feminine hygiene products for women in interior Sindh. They won the National Geographic Slingshot Challenge, traveled to Washington D.C. to present their work and then kept going.
Today, their project has evolved into Flow Essentials Pakistan, a social enterprise where local women manufacture the products themselves, turning a middle school prototype into real economic opportunity. In 2025, I had the privilege of presenting this project to educators at the NESA Future Learning Summit in Athens, Greece, because a story this good deserves a wider audience.
This year, I am preparing students for World Robot Olympiad® 2026 with a project that exemplifies creativity, communication and design thinking. It’s a NutriScan, which is an autonomous robot built on LEGO SPIKE Prime that performs non-invasive nutritional screening using three inputs: a diet and physical indicator quiz, a nail color scan, and a skin color scan. It is the kind of solution that makes you stop and think about how a middle schooler built this.
ACE: You recently earned a B.A. in Education Studies at ACE. What about this program made it the smarter choice for you?
TB: I chose the B.A. in Education Studies at ACE at the recommendation of my Teaching and Learning Director, Kelly Owens, who is also an ACE alumna. I already held a graduate degree from Pakistan, but as an international school, Karachi American School required a teaching certificate recognized by the United States. ACE was the right fit.
From the very first step, the experience was seamless. The transfer credit process, the application, the Admissions team and my Student Success Coach were all genuinely responsive. Every question I had was met with clarity and care, which made the transition feel supported rather than transactional. ACE provided me with unexpected international exposure, valuing my work, voice and perspective as a Pakistani educator equally with global peers. This significantly shifted my self-perception and teaching approach.
The transfer credit process, the application, the Admissions team and my Student Success Coach were all genuinely responsive. Every question I had was met with clarity and care, which made the transition feel supported rather than transactional.
Tasneem Babrawala, ACE Alumni
ACE: How has your experience at ACE impacted your approach to teaching?
TB: What the program gave me went beyond the credential. The feedback from instructors deepened my thinking and shifted my mindset towards a more international platform and pushed me to interrogate not just what I teach, but why I design learning experiences the way I do.
The program strengthened my understanding of learning sciences and equity-driven instruction while reinforcing the value of evidence-based, reflective practice especially in STEM-rich classrooms. Most importantly, it grounded my approach to innovation in research rather than trends. That distinction matters when you’re making decisions that affect real students every day.
ACE: How has your ACE program supported integrating technology into your teaching strategy?
TB: The ACE program gave me an informed rationale for choices I was already making intuitively, grounding my practice in research-based frameworks and peer-reviewed resources rather than trends. It pushed me to move beyond surface-level tool adoption and toward selecting platforms and strategies that make learning genuinely meaningful.
Most tangibly, my classes are now 60% paperless, a shift made with confidence because I had the instructional data and theoretical grounding to back it. That foundation led to acceptance of my proposal for the ISTE and ASCD Live Conference AI for Sustainability. I will be traveling to Orlando with three students during the summer to lead an interactive workshop on building artificial intelligence (AI) chatbots for environmental impact. From the classroom to the conference stage, this is what intentional technology integration looks like.
Most tangibly, my classes are now 60% paperless, a shift made with confidence because I had the instructional data and theoretical grounding to back it. That foundation led to acceptance of my proposal for the ISTE and ASCD Live Conference AI for Sustainability. I will be traveling to Orlando with three students during the summer to lead an interactive workshop on building artificial intelligence (AI) chatbots for environmental impact. From the classroom to the conference stage, this is what intentional technology integration looks like.
It pushed me to move beyond surface-level tool adoption and toward selecting platforms and strategies that make learning genuinely meaningful.
Tasneem Babrawala, ACE Alumni
ACE: What are your career aspirations now that you’ve completed your bachelor’s degree?
TB: Now that I’ve completed my degree, I am already building on that momentum. I am currently pursuing a Master of Science in Learning Design and Technology, because my career goal is to grow into a leader who can shape how STEM and AI-integrated learning is designed and delivered at scale.
On weekends, I am training teachers in underprivileged schools across Pakistan to introduce STEM programs because access to quality STEM education shouldn’t be limited to well-resourced institutions. Ultimately, my goal is to be a strategic thinker and designer leading STEM and AI-driven initiatives in Pakistan. I aim to shape the future of learning by influencing how schools and organizations approach these technologies, moving beyond mere participation to actively designing these transformative experiences.
ACE: What advice would you give someone who wants to become a STEM teacher?
TB: Start by building a strong foundation in both your subject area and how students actually learn because content knowledge alone isn’t enough. Seek out hands-on experiences early, since STEM comes alive through doing. Stay curious about technology but focus on using it purposefully to solve real-world problems and support learning rather than chasing every new tool. Most importantly, be patient and reflective, because great STEM teaching grows from experimenting, learning from mistakes and building strong relationships with students.
Being an American College of Education alum has its perks. When you return as an alum for another program, you receive discounted tuition with the Alumni Continuing Education Grant.
