Asha Completes Her Master of Education in STEM: Why a Teacher Who Keeps Learning Matters
A great STEM teacher for kids never stops learning. Asha Kripalani, Strive's Senior Coding and Math Teacher, has completed her Master of Education at the University of the People, specialising in STEM education. The university is accredited by WASC, the same accreditation body as UC Berkeley, Stanford and UCLA. For the students Asha teaches every week, the qualification matters less than what it has changed in her classroom: lessons designed to help children genuinely connect with mathematics instead of simply getting through it.
Asha's Master of Education in STEM
Asha already brought years of experience to Strive before she started her Masters. Parents and students know her as the teacher who turns hesitant learners into confident ones, which we wrote about in our first profile of Asha. She went back to study anyway, and her specialisation in STEM education meant her coursework connected directly to the coding and math lessons she teaches at Strive.
How the Programme Changed Her Teaching
When we asked Asha what she took from the programme, her answer was about her students: "A lot of what I studied has already been showing up in my teaching. The programme deepened how I think about lesson design and curriculum work, especially around building inquiry-based, real-world learning experiences that help students genuinely connect with mathematics rather than just get through it."
Inquiry-based learning starts with a question or problem that students want to solve, then guides them towards the concept they need. A child who discovers why a formula works, by exploring it in code or testing it against a real problem, remembers it far longer than one who memorises it from a worksheet. Real-world contexts give that question a reason to exist, so the math feels useful from the first minute.
That last part of Asha's answer is the reason Strive exists. Many children don't struggle with math because they can't do it. They struggle because nobody has shown them why it matters or let them experience it as something they can figure out.
What This Means for Students in Asha's Classes
You can see this thinking in the projects Asha's students take on. She was the teacher who guided Kyle, the 14-year-old who built a full booking platform for a real dog training business, through nine months of client work, feedback and handover. That project was inquiry-based learning at its most demanding: a real problem, a real user, and a student who had to work out the answers himself with his teacher alongside him.
The same approach helps in math, especially for students who feel anxious or bored. A lesson built around a problem that makes a student curious, where they reason their way to the method, gives them a reason to care about the answer. Students who learn this way tend to show their working, catch their own mistakes and attempt harder problems with less fear.
Why We Look for Teachers Who Never Stop Being Students
The best teachers are the ones who never stop being students. They keep asking how they can explain something better, they stay current with research and tools, and they model the curiosity they want to see in children. In coding especially, where AI tools and languages change every year, a teacher who keeps learning is the only kind who can keep up.
At Strive, that's the kind of teacher we want in every classroom. Whether your child is learning math through Strive Math, starting Python in Strive Coding, or building production software in Strive AI Coding, they deserve a teacher who takes their own learning as seriously as their students'.
Congratulations, Asha. We're lucky to have you on the team, and your students are lucky to have you too.
