Located on an expansive estate overlooking the magnificent Qarat ad Dum mountains in Ras Al Khaimah, Al Rams School is deeply embedded in the local community. When we arrived, and after exchanging brief introductions with the vice principal at the entrance, we were shown, past a row of administrative offices, to a small conference room. Several people trickled in as we took our seats and congregated around the wide conference table. Although our meeting was scheduled with the principal, we were pleasantly surprised to find ourselves surrounded by various adult members of the school community: librarians, counselors, teachers, and administrative staff. However, it was unmistakable who the principal was when she entered – an astute and imposing lady who confidently took her place at the distinguished center seat of the table.
Once everyone was seated, a conversation quickly began about Al Rams School’s unique offering to its student body and the local community and its commitment to creating an inclusive educational environment that views parents as indispensable allies. The principal spoke about the various ways the school engages parents in making decisions that impact their children’s education, such as how to best utilize students’ free time when a teacher is absent due to illness. Parents feel engaged as members of the community—another staff member chimed in—to attend orientation sessions, share their goals and aspirations for the academic year, and share responsibility with the school for their children's education. Encouraged by this direct line of communication, some parents suggested to the school the idea of distributing surveys to collect feedback from parents to track students’ academic and behavioral performance. One of the librarians quickly jumped in to describe how the school had been using the feedback data to stock the library with resources that meet the diverse learning needs of students, especially targeting those who are underperforming.
The conversation pivoted from parent engagement to the Gardening Project. Launched some eight years ago, the project has earned the school multiple accolades, including recognition at the prestigious Ras Al Khaimah Educational Awards and a widespread commendation among the local community, comparable with its nationally recognized reading program. Before a soft-spoken educator with a keen interest in bioresearch took over the project two years ago, she maintained that the program was loosely organized and lightly attended. Since the program has garnered considerable interest from the school’s 600-plus students, as the teacher continued, two reasons for the program's recent success became apparent: first, introducing unique fruit-bearing plants that the students might not be familiar with. “I started using Gum Arabic instead of cotton plants,” she said, and the students’ curiosity was piqued. Second, besides gardening, she started teaching the students basic research and entrepreneurial skills and encouraged them to do gardening at home. Eventually, the school developed a scheme where students could sell their harvested plants to other students and parents, organically generating funds that they could reinvest in their gardening endeavors or dispense for personal use. These days, the Gardening Project isn’t just a pastime for students but an integrated part into the school’s curriculum to supplement students’ learning in the classroom. For example, when learning about soil types in a Science class, students frequently rely on their hands-on experience in the Gardening Project to identify the characteristics of soil suitable for growing specific types of plants.
An ostensible measure of impact has been the steadily growing number of students participating in the project despite being unable to earn academic or extracurricular credit. Students’ interest in the project peaked, especially after the school appointed 12 students as Sustainability Ambassadors to lead by example. The feedback from parents regarding the project has also been overwhelmingly positive. Parents appreciate the project’s role in expanding their children’s curiosity and helping them develop practical skills to complement the education they receive in the classroom. Via periodic surveys shared with parents, the school learned that parents were, in fact, actively involved in their children’s home gardening projects, demonstrating the project’s success in rallying the local community behind sustainability.
When it came time to unravel the secrets behind Al Rams’s school leadership, it was evidently clear without a word being said. The principal comes across as a kind yet defiant leader. As a schoolteacher of more than 16 years and a reformer of sorts, her passion for and commitment to sustainability is infectious, though not difficult to predict. As it turned out, her interest in the Sciences ran deep, having represented the UAE in a Physics Olympiad as a supervisor and taught Physics to high school students for 16 years before joining the Al Rams School’s leadership team. More notably, the principal was involved in the nationwide Smart Learning Initiative, tasked with redesigning the UAE’s public school STEM curriculum.
Often sitting back and pausing before responding to questions, she enables others to voice their opinions and perspectives before making the final decision. We wondered if the pauses were not intentional on the principal’s part to subtly prompt the participation of her team. Regardless, the dynamics in the room were one of inclusion and participation. Several people credited the principal for her empowering leadership style - encouraging and supporting them to reach their potential as professionals and educators. Two staff members, in particular, gave impassioned testimony about when the principal supported them through a medically induced remote work arrangement by helping them stay connected with their students. The principal followed up by reiterating the open-door policy she extended to not only parents, students, and the staff at the school but also to other principals and school leaders in Ras Al Khaimah. In the aftermath of the Ras Al Khaimah Educational Awards, the principal mentioned being inundated with phone calls from school leaders to inquire about the sustainability projects at the school and to forge potential partnerships. “I want to become an ambassador for sustainability,” she said, switching from her preferred language of Arabic to English to ensure her point gets across the room. She wishes more school leaders would visit Al Rams School to learn about the beloved Gardening Project. It is through exchange and collaboration that true sustainability can occur.