Teachers (5)

Like belly dancing, Arabic calligraphy (الخط العربي , sometimes known as  Islamic calligraphy), is one of the Egyptian arts that today is neglected by Egyptians but is enjoying great popularity among foreigners, as Egypt Today reports.

It doesn't help that Arabic word processing is now the norm for writing Arabic. It is not even necessary anymore to remember the different forms of the letters when typing them, as computers automatically produce the shape of the letter required by its position in the word.

However, learning Arabic calligraphy is still a good way to help learn and retain one's knowledge of the Arabic script. To this end, one of Arab Academy's teachers, Ahmed al-Sha'er, teaches study abroad students Arabic calligraphy. His lessons consist of the different styles of calligraphy and its rules. With his helpful guidance, students learn how to write each letter and simple sentences.

At Arab Academy, we believe that learning the Arabic language is enhanced by knowledge of Arab and Egyptian culture. Therefore, Arab Academy offers free weekly lectures (in Arabic or English) to all study abroad students. These lectures are given by instructors and staff on cultural topics about which they have a lot of knowledge. Not only do these lectures increase the cultural knowledge of students, but they also help develop students' Arabic listening skills.

This past week Ustaza Mervat (الأستاذة مرفت) gave a lecture entitled "Journey of the Egyptian Woman throughout Modern History" (رحلة المرأة المصرية عبر التاريخ الحديث). In this lecture, she spoke about the status of women in Egypt in the late 19th century and the beginning of the women's movement in Egypt during the 1919 revolution and about the leader of the women's movement, Huda Shaarawi.

The students are able to practice their comprehension and composition skills by writing essays the next day about what they learned during the lecture.

One thing that all our on-site students rave about is the friendliness of the teachers and staff at Arab Academy. Each month we’ll profile one here so you can get to know them too.

This month, we feature Ustaaz Sayed Ramadan (أستاذ سيد رمضان). Ustaaz Sayed has been with Arab Academy since its inception. Married with three children, he lives just outside Cairo in a quiet village, the perfect balance to his hectic work life in frantic-paced Cairo. Ustaaz Sayed is known for the rapt attentiveness with which he listens to students and his ability to help them communicate solely in Arabic regardless of their proficiency level. As lead teacher, he stays very busy managing all the other teachers, the content developers, and the technicians.

Heba and Maha are two of our very best teachers.  They are lovely young ladies who have joined our team 2 years ago making our Speaking classes in the mornings very successful.  Heba got engaged last year and Maha got engaged last week.  The surprise is that Maha got engaged to one of her former colleagues, Onsi, who used to work on our graphics design team.  He is a great young man as well.  He left us last year, but we count on Maha to bring him back to us :)