Portrait of a Nation: UAE teaching consultant strives to help others fulfil their potential

Rania Nasr founded Risalla Education Consultancy three years ago to help train Arabic teachers in modern methods of language instruction.

A desire to help others reach their potential inspired Rania Nasr to share her knowledge and start a training company. Pawan Singh / The National

As a former schoolteacher, Rania Nasr knows how important good educators are. So she's using her experience to help Arabic teachers to fulfil their potential.

DUBAI // A burning desire to help others to reach their full potential was the spark of inspiration that encouraged Rania Nasr to share her knowledge and start a training company.

She founded Risalla Education Consulting three years ago to help train Arabic teachers in more modern methods of sharing the language.

“There is a great appetite among Arabic language teachers to learn and improve their own abilities because at the end of the day they want what is best for their students,” says the 53-year-old Lebanese-Canadian.

“They want to be able to create a strong and challenging programme that the students can thrive in. They just need the ­resources and the attention.”

Born in Kuwait, Ms Nasr moved to Abu Dhabi in 1975 and graduated from Umm Ammar Secondary School in the capital.

She went to Beirut Arab University, gaining a degree in business ­accounting and split her time ­between Lebanon, Abu Dhabi and Egypt.

Her initial steps into education began in Egypt after her marriage there in 1987, when she opened a nursery.

She then worked as an elementary and middle-school teacher from 1989 to 1994 after moving to Jeddah in Saudi Arabia before emigrating to Edmonton in ­Alberta, Canada.

She completed a diploma in early childhood education because she wanted to open a daycare centre.

“I became very involved with the small Arabic Muslim community where we lived in Edmonton, and later in Toronto as I felt it was important to remain aware of our roots,” she says.

Ms Nasr and her family moved to Dubai in 2006, and within three days of her arrival she was offered a job at Deira International School, a British-curriculum school in Dubai Festival City.

She took charge of the school’s Islamic education programme in English for grades 6 to 12 and ran it for three years.

In 2009, she was appointed the head of the Islamic education department at Dubai American Academy, where she worked to find ways to engage students.

Her work got her noticed and she was asked to provide training for teachers at Gems schools.

“I got a lot of positive feedback from the teachers about how they benefited from the training and this was the spark that made me decide to start focusing on teacher training more seriously,” she says.

Risalla Education Consulting was created in September 2013 and since then has trained about 700 Arabic, Islamic education and social studies teachers in the UAE.

“We are facing the challenge of strengthening the Arabic language and sense of identity in students by improving our teaching practices, a familiar challenge I faced while I lived in Canada,” she says.

The company’s services include coaching teachers and ­offering workshops at recruitment events.

“What I try to get across to the teachers is that they aren’t the ones who drive the learning. It has to be the students,” she says.

Workshop participants take part in discussions and activities, then receive a model lesson plan for teachers to apply in the classroom. The company has a database of Arabic teachers in the UAE and region for schools to use when hiring staff.

Ms Nasr’s daughter, Roula Nasr, 24, works with her and pays tribute to her mother’s hard work and determination.

“She is such a compassionate person and that is something she instilled in us from an early age by encouraging us to volunteer in the community when we lived in Canada,” she says.

That compassion was the driving force for the creation of Risalla and the work Rania now does.

“Because she went through the same system that the Arabic teachers went through, she understands where they are coming from,” Roula says.