How Dubai Schools Are Rebuilding Student Voice After Covid
A teacher in a Dubai school told me last spring — they raise their hands, but they do not raise their voices. This is the quiet crisis of the classrooms I walk into now, five years after the world went indoors. Children learned to mute. Now we are asking them, gently, to come back.
By Dr S Pujah · Founder, UNMUTE
The mute button that never quite lifted
For two years, a whole generation of children learned school through a small square on a screen. They learned that speaking was risky. That the safest thing was to keep the microphone off. That the teacher could not see the tears if the camera was down.
The children came back to school. The microphones did not. What we are seeing in classrooms across the UAE — from KG all the way to Grade 12 — is a generation who is bright, kind, connected online, and quietly terrified of speaking in a room of their peers.
This is not a discipline problem. This is not shyness. This is a wound in the collective throat, and it needs a ritual to heal.
What UNMUTE Youth is, and what it is not
UNMUTE Youth is a chapter format for schools. It is not a curriculum. It is not a counselling session. It is not a debate club or a leadership workshop. It is one hour, once a term, where a class of twenty to thirty students sits in a circle, an empty chair is placed among them, and a trained facilitator holds five soft questions that let each young person share whatever they wish — a joy, a heaviness, a hope, a memory, a silence.
There is no grading. There is no performance. There is one rule — we listen the way we would have wanted to be listened to when we were their age and no one asked.
Why the empty chair changes the room
In every UNMUTE Youth chapter, one chair sits empty. We tell the young people — this chair is for the friend who moved away, the classmate we lost, the version of you that you left at the door today. It is for the voice that is not yet ready to speak.
In fourteen years of holding rooms across five continents, I have never seen a ritual reach children faster. Within minutes, they understand. Within an hour, they are looking after each other in a way no assembly ever taught them.
How principals in the UAE are bringing it in
The schools we work with in Dubai, Sharjah and Abu Dhabi usually begin with one year group. Grade 8 is a common start — old enough to hold the format, young enough to still need permission to feel. The counselling team is trained alongside UNMUTE facilitators, so the ritual belongs to the school within one academic year.
By the second term, the same students often ask to run a chapter for their younger siblings' year group. This is student voice returning — not as a policy line in a strategic plan, but as a lived practice in the corridors.
Every child in every classroom in this city carries a story. Our only job as adults is to build the rooms in which those stories can be safely spoken. If you are a teacher, a counsellor, a principal reading this — the chair is waiting for your students, too.
— Dr S Pujah
Questions people ask
Is UNMUTE Youth aligned with the KHDA and ADEK wellbeing frameworks?
Yes. UNMUTE Youth maps directly onto the KHDA Wellbeing Framework and ADEK's student wellbeing indicators, particularly around voice, belonging, and mental health literacy.
What age groups is it designed for?
The format works from Grade 5 upwards. For younger children we use a shortened Story Circle variant. Sixth Form students often become peer facilitators by their second chapter.
How do we bring UNMUTE Youth to our school?
Write to us through the Partnerships page or call Dr S Pujah on +971 58 556 5111. We begin with a single free discovery chapter for one class, so the school can feel the format before committing.
Bring UNMUTE to your world
Host an evening, join as an ambassador, or share your story.