There's a saying Sir Adeel Paperwala came across somewhere that has stuck with him for years. A teacher may not be a king — but a teacher has the art of making kings.
He paused when he mentioned it in his conversation with Tabani's School of Accountancy. Then he pushed back on it, just a little.
"I sometimes think this is not entirely right," he said. "Because the kind of recognition a teacher receives — I don't think even a king gets that."
Twenty years of teaching. Eight institutions. Thousands of students. A student who recognised him outside a restaurant in the United States and asked him to stay at his home. Former students whose children now introduce themselves to him. His own mother being stopped in the street by people who ask: Are you Sir Adeel's mother?
This is not a story about exam grades or syllabus coverage. It is a story about what a career in teaching actually builds — and what it costs — told by someone who has lived all of it.
1. How Teaching Changes Over 20 Years — Three Stages Nobody Talks About
When Sir Adeel started teaching in 2004-2005, immediately after completing his A Levels, he had one priority: knowledge. Get as much of it as possible and deliver it to students.
"My early years were all about expanding what I knew. I used to read a lot of books. I was always hungry — if something seemed difficult, I wanted to solve it, understand it, add it to what I could give students."
He was sitting in CA and ACCA classes at the same time he was teaching. While other students focused on passing exams, he was paying attention for a different reason — studying how his teachers explained things, so he could take their examples, modify them, make them more relevant, and deliver them better to his own students. Some of his most-used classroom examples still trace back to teachers he had two decades ago.
That was Stage One: knowledge-hunger.
Stage Two came later, when the knowledge was no longer the constraint. The question shifted from what do I know? to how do I deliver it in a way that actually lands?
"It became about making lectures more relevant, more interesting, more engaging. And that's when I realised — teaching is not about knowledge. Teaching is an art. It's the art of getting what's in my heart to reach your heart."
Then, in the last three or four years, something shifted again. Stage Three.
"Teaching is not about knowledge. It is not even about the art of delivery. Teaching today is about facilitating your students."
This is not a semantic distinction. It reflects a real change in what students need — and what the world has done to their attention.
2. What Happened to Students — And What It Demands of Teachers
Sir Adeel is honest about this shift in a way that a lot of educators are not. Modern students are distracted. Their attention spans are shorter than they were when he started. And rather than complaining about it, he has adapted.
"When I started, I used to take three-hour classes and students wouldn't make a sound. Now, if I go even slightly over an hour, I can see them losing interest. That's just the reality."
But here's where his thinking gets more interesting than the usual 'phones have ruined students' narrative. He doesn't blame students for this. He sees it as a structural change in what teaching requires.
"Content has no value anymore. You go to YouTube and you'll find thousands of explanations of anything. A student who is stuck on a question takes a photo and sends it to the teacher on WhatsApp and gets a voice note explanation back. We didn't have any of that. We had one textbook — H. Randall — and if your answer didn't reconcile, you'd sit with it for two or three days trying to figure out where you went wrong."
The students who came up in that environment — including Sir Adeel himself — had to develop a tolerance for sustained difficulty that today's students simply don't need to develop. The tools have changed.
So the teacher's role has changed with them. It is no longer enough to be knowledgeable. It is no longer enough to be a compelling lecturer. The question now is: can you facilitate? Can you solve this specific student's specific problem, in a way that is convenient for them, in the time they are willing to give you?
"The teacher who understands how to cater to what students actually need will always be relevant. Technology can change, generations can shift — but if you know how to connect with your audience, you stay."
3. The Student He Still Thinks About
There is a classroom story Sir Adeel shared in the podcast that says more about his teaching philosophy than any abstract description could.
He was assigned to teach A2 students at a college — picking them up after another teacher had handled AS. When he entered the class and started getting to know them, there was one student the others treated differently. He was slower than the rest. His classmates made jokes at his expense. This was years ago, Sir Adeel noted — before anti-bullying culture in Pakistani schools became as developed as it is now — but even then, something about it bothered him.
He sat with the student one-on-one. What he found was this: the student hadn't cleared all his O Level papers. He had failed AS. He had real learning difficulties — not in understanding concepts, but in executing under exam pressure. He understood things when they were explained to him. But in the exam room, it fell apart.
And yet. He loved accounting. That much was clear.
"When he would say anything in class, the other students would start laughing. I sat with him, and I told the rest of the class: everyone in this room has been given an opportunity to be here. It doesn't matter how fast or slow someone is. We take everyone along."
His parents came to a parent-teacher meeting. Their expectation was not that their son would pass. They just wanted him to feel included. To feel like part of the class.
He passed.
Not with distinction. But he passed his A Level accounting exam in his second year — an exam he had already failed once.
"Today he works in his father's business. We talk regularly. He wasn't an excellent student. But he was an excellent human being."
Sir Adeel paused after saying this. Then:
"You give a student an A grade, they'll remember you for a certain time. The things that stay in a life are the small moments, the memories, the connections. I've forgotten that he was even my student. He feels like a friend."
4. Kindness Is Not Soft — It's the Whole Point
The conversation took a turn toward something broader after that story, and it's worth quoting almost directly because it lands harder than any paraphrase:
"Identify the people around you who are a little slower. Identify the ones who are struggling in their studies. The ones who hesitate to communicate with you — because maybe you've built a wall around yourself that makes people afraid to approach you. Be kind. Talk to people with respect. In my view, this is the most important requirement in life."
"Grades, career, success — after 20 years in any profession, when a person looks back at their life and asks what actually mattered, it wasn't the money. It wasn't the wealth creation. It was respect, love, care, peace."
This isn't vague advice. It comes from a specific place — from a man who has watched students grow up, get married, have children of their own, and still find him in a crowd somewhere in the world to tell him that he mattered to their life. Not because he got them an A. Because he treated them like a person when it counted.
5. Why He Chose Accounting — And Why He Almost Didn't
This came out almost accidentally in the podcast, and it reframes something important about how Sir Adeel talks about the subject he teaches.
He was a science student initially. The cultural pressure at the time, as he described it, was toward medicine and engineering. He picked up biology. And he genuinely could not grasp it.
"Diffusion and osmosis — I could never get those concepts straight in my life."
When he switched to accounting, something changed. He fell in love with it — not grudgingly, not strategically, but genuinely. He sat his O Level papers a year early because he was so engaged with the material. In A Levels, he gave his accounting paper in the first year rather than waiting.
"I loved solving these subjects. There was a real interest. And when I moved into teaching, I assumed all students felt this way about subjects they chose. Then I realised — no. If you love something, you can understand it in two minutes. If you're studying it as an obligation, the same concept can take an hour."
This is why he is so insistent, when talking to students, that accounting is not the rigid, number-heavy, unapproachable subject its reputation suggests. He is not making a sales pitch. He is speaking from personal experience of what happens when a subject actually clicks for you — and how different learning feels when it does.
6. Running 90 Kilometres in South Africa — What It Actually Taught Him
Nobody who has watched Sir Adeel teach would immediately think: marathon runner. But in 2020, during COVID lockdown, something shifted.
He had never been particularly into fitness. He went to the gym occasionally, the way most people do — inconsistently, without conviction. Then he fell in with a running group. Genuinely by accident.
They invited him to a 5km run. He joined, half-expecting they'd eventually ask for a fee. Instead, one of the group's founders said something that stayed with him.
"Fitness is not for sale."
From 5km to 10km. To a half marathon. To a full marathon. Then internationally — Istanbul, Berlin, Manchester, Dubai — representing Pakistan. Then, in 2023, a 90km ultra-marathon in South Africa.
Anything beyond 42.2km is an ultra. He ran more than twice that distance. In South Africa. For Pakistan.
He has been dealing with a fitness injury for the past year or so and had to pause. But he plans to be back on the track by December, representing Pakistan again.
The reason this matters — and why he brought it up in a podcast about teaching — is what the running journey gave him that teaching had not. A mentor.
"I started teaching at a very young age. So I became a guide for others very early. People took advice from me. But I was young myself — I also needed someone to guide me. That never really happened for a long time."
The founder of the running group became that person. Not a teacher. Not a professional contact. Someone who, when Sir Adeel described himself as a teacher, asked him: I'm not asking about your bread and butter. What do you actually do?
"And I realised that most people answer 'what do you do' with their profession. But a life is not just a profession."
That conversation led to a realisation he describes as one of the most important of his adult life: he had been burying everything outside of work. The passion, the personal goals, the parts of himself that were not the accounting teacher.
"A truly successful person is someone who pursues their passion alongside their profession. You have responsibilities. You have a family to provide for. But you also have things your heart wants to do. Don't bury them."
7. The Advice He Wishes Someone Had Given Him at 20
The host asked him directly: if you could go back to your twenties, what's the one piece of advice you'd want someone to give you?
His answer was personal in a way that you don't often hear from educators.
When he was doing his CA, he was also teaching — at peak tuition hours, during March-April, right when his CA examinations were scheduled. He kept choosing his students over his own studies. Students who needed him, who had hope in him, who he felt he couldn't let down.
The consequence was years of exam results he's not proud of. Papers referred. One module lapsed entirely. He passed his September sittings — when tuition was lighter — but struggled every March.
"I compromised my own education for my students. And professionally I have grown, alhamdulillah. But I think about what I could have achieved academically if someone had told me: draw a line."
He was direct about the implication for young people today:
"I know students who freelance, who tutor, who earn decent money while they're studying. That financial independence is genuinely good. But the moment your earnings start pulling focus from your studies, you have crossed a line that will cost you later. Short-term money is not worth a long-term sacrifice. Never compromise your education. Not for any amount."
The Question Worth Asking Yourself
Twenty years in, Sir Adeel Paperwala is still standing in front of a whiteboard. He said this himself in the podcast, with a directness that wasn't self-deprecating — just honest.
"I was here yesterday. I'm here today. I'll probably be here tomorrow. But you — you're here right now. In a few years you'll be chairing a board meeting, running a department, building something. Your teacher stays in the classroom. You move forward."
He doesn't say this with bitterness. He says it with the specific kind of satisfaction that comes from knowing exactly what your work is and choosing to do it anyway. He has found a mentor through running. He has found balance, after years of not having it. He is trying to get back to racing. And every time a former student recognises him somewhere in the world, he says it feels better than anything money or status could offer.
"In these 20 years, the most valuable thing I have earned is the respect I get from the people I taught. That is not something you can buy. And I am not sure even a king has that."
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Source: Based on Sir Adeel Paperwala's conversation with Tabani's School of Accountancy, hosted by Ayesha Ahmed on "Mentoring Young Leaders."
Original video: youtu.be/Rkbm3kxt_es
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