Who We Are
We are two lifelong friends and educators living and working in the Gulf. Having experienced primary and secondary schooling in Bahrain and Saudi Arabia, we often lament that there was little done to engage our cultural identities. We left high school knowing little of the brilliance of our communities and instead looked to the West for answers. After continuing our education in North America, we yearned for the validation of our own funds of knowledge and community wisdom.
These experiences have driven us to strive to give new generations of learners what we didn’t have: affirming opportunities to strive for excellence from within.
Holly O’Neil, a creative journalist, anthropologist, artist, and storyteller, has graciously illustrated many of the drawings on Athl’s website. The featured illustrations are thoughtfully commissioned with Athl’s ethos in mind and present authentic symbols, places, and artifacts of the SWANA region.
TALA
Tala has a Bachelor’s in Psychology and received her Masters in teaching in 2013 in Portland, Oregon. She has primarily been teaching kindergarten since 2014, and more recently second and third grade. She is passionate about ancestral wisdom, community building, storytelling and of course, teaching and learning. An educator who inspires her is her jiddo (grandfather), Abdulmohsen. He was one of the first primary school teachers in Al-Hufoof, Saudi Arabia despite his lack of formal education past elementary school.
Ranya
Ranya received her Masters in English in 2015 from Boston College. She received her Bachelor’s of Education in 2017 in British Columbia where she taught grade 5 PYP for three years. Ranya is currently teaching grade 5 PYP at Dhahran Ahliya School in Saudi Arabia. She is passionate about environmental science, inquiring alongside young people and building relationships. An educator who inspires her is her mom, Rima, who cared for other’s children as her own for more than a decade. Rima brought joy, dance, laughter and art into her classroom everyday.