I was slow at learning things that most kids seemed to pick up easily. Reading aloud was the worst. I still remember standing in class, dragging words off the page while everyone waited.
“Umm... maa... err...”
My chest would tighten as I felt myself falling behind in real time.
I did not understand ADHD or different attention patterns then. As a child, I only knew the private feeling that everyone else had received a manual I had somehow missed.
My grandmother refused to let that feeling define me. She had no formal education, but taught herself to read from her children’s schoolbooks. She went on to read anything she could find, from Bangla novels to old English books and bits of Arabic. She understood the value of education without needing anyone to explain it to her.
She also taught our house helps, neighbours, and anyone else willing to sit with her. With a book and pencil, she would begin at the alphabet. She treated literacy as something to pass on.
When I struggled with reading, she met me at my pace. There was no embarrassment or comparison. She simply believed I would get there. I did not realise how rare that kind of belief was until much later, or how deeply it shaped me until after she was gone.
As I grew older, I collected skills: robotics, 3D modelling, programming, game development, and film. From the outside, this looked like range. To me, it often felt as if I were circling something I could not name.
I found a clue while volunteering at the American Center Dhaka’s MakerSpace, where I taught children programming and 3D modelling. At the time, I treated it as another experiment. Years later, a former student posted that he had built a career from what he first encountered in those workshops:
It's been 3 years at Bioforge. 3 years of experience in 3D modelling. Alhamdulillah.
I can’t thank Abrar bhaia enough for introducing me to this awesomeness. I still remember making my first duplex building in his SketchUp workshop and building my room in the 3D environment. All memories :')
No award had affected me that way. His message reminded me of my grandmother and her instinct to pass knowledge forward. Some part of that instinct had survived in me, though I had not recognised it before.
Growing up, I learned differently because I had to. While many of my friends attended coaching centres, I relied on YouTube lectures, forums, and scattered tutorials. Some of my best teachers lived across oceans and never knew I existed. That experience gave me a lasting respect for digital education and the access it can create.
It also showed me its limits. Information scales easily, but competence does not. Watching someone do something is not the same as doing it yourself. Passive lessons can be especially frustrating for people who need interaction and timely feedback.
That is the gap I want EdTech to close. I want to build environments where people can practise, make mistakes safely, receive useful feedback, and try again. Struggling in a conventional classroom should not be mistaken for a lack of ability.
My scattered interests make sense in that context. Programming helps me build the underlying systems, while storytelling and immersive technology help me turn them into experiences people can enter and explore. AI can make those experiences more responsive to each learner.
EdTech is not a trend or career niche to me. It connects the classroom where I felt small, the grandmother who would not let that define me, and the student who showed me how far one lesson can travel.
I want to build the tools I needed as the child standing in front of a class, stuck between words. I also want to continue what my grandmother did in a small room with a few books and a great deal of patience: help people learn without making them feel lesser for needing a different path.