“Yes, I am a teacher – but I refuse to be labelled as just that,” says Tawsif.
According to him, having a chance to learn and absorb new things is what drives him and he hopes that drive never burns out.
Upon being asked why he chose to become a teacher despite being more invested in the business field, Tawsif replied that pursuing a teaching career was not his initial plan. He wanted to follow in his father’s foot-steps (Lt. Col. Nurul Alam Khan), who used to be a military officer. After completing his secondary education, he started preparing to get into military service, but decided against it in the last minute because he didn’t want to get stuck in the chain of command. When he graduated from Mastermind School, the authorities of the school offered him a position as a substitute teacher. That is how it all started. And the rest is history.
A picture of his father’s name tattooed on his right hand
After graduating from North South University with an undergraduate degree in Business Administration, Tawsif dove head-first into the professional world. He started off by teaching Accounting to a handful of students in a rented apartment in Dhanmmondi. That number soon grew from 3 to 30 to 300. However, when it became apparent that he wouldn’t be able to rent that apartment anymore because it was being sold off, Tawsif started to look for solutions. He got in touch with a few of his friends, Syed Muhammad Fahim(Business Studies), Sayem Rais(Maths-B and Pure Mathematics) and Ashraful Huda,(Physics) all of whom were teachers operating privately like he was, and decided to band together to build an educational institution which championed learning and growth. Thus, Vertical Horizon, named after the appearance of a T-account, was born.
It has been 10 years since the initiation of VH and it has indeed progressed fiercely in that space of time. However, VH’s main objective will remain the same forever – to give back to the society in any way or form.
Tawsif thinks that schooling is a culture. In his opinion, the environment in which we are brought up in plays a huge role in shaping an individual’s character. This, however, does not imply that, between students from different backgrounds, one set of students is better than the other – it simply means that they’ve been raised differently and in different atmospheres, which, to some extent does impact peoples’ personalities.
In terms of schools and coaching centers, he says that the only difference is that schools provide their students with an air of discipline whereas coaching centers build up their students in a much more relaxed fashion.
“But I’m going to repeat my earlier sentiments – none of the differences between the two institutions entail a difference between the qualities of students who graduate from these respective institutions,” acknowledges Tawsif.
Tawsif is currently involved with a lot of businesses and he says that he wants to continue on this trajectory by associating himself with more initiatives. As a big supporter of young entrepreneurs, he motivates his students to bring new and innovative ideas to the forefront and work on them, so that not only can they be monetarily successful, but also be contributing members of the society.
“Think about it this way – if we individually contribute a little bit of our knowledge and time to the welfare of our country, Bangladesh will soon start to flourish at a larger pace than it already is. That is my end goal,” explained Tawsif.
