Amman — In Al-Khalidiyah, in Mafraq Governorate, where limited resources pose challenges to school and community work, the professional experience of Samira Al-Khaldi, principal of Al-Khalidiyah Mixed Secondary School, stands out. She seeks to turn challenges into opportunities, driven by her belief in the school’s role in creating change, fostering creativity, and opening wider horizons for students.
اضافة اعلان
From a career that began in teaching, progressed through administrative roles, and eventually led to managing a vocational secondary school, Al-Khaldi’s passion for education and desire to serve the local community have motivated her to improve the school environment, encourage student participation, and build bridges of cooperation with the surrounding community.
Her work extends beyond the school itself to include volunteering and community initiatives, reflecting an approach to educational leadership that goes beyond managing existing conditions to improving them and making an impact that reaches beyond school walls.
Community assistance and awareness initiatives
Between empowering students and teachers, providing them with the resources they need to excel, and supporting health, social, and community awareness initiatives, Samira Al-Khaldi has built her own story.
In an interview with Al-Ghad, Al-Khaldi explained that women face challenges in every field they enter. She said she overcame them through training, practice, experience, and participation in courses and workshops, as well as extensive engagement with the local community.
Al-Khaldi noted that she is not only a school principal. She also served two consecutive terms as deputy head of Al-Khalidiyah Municipality through appointment and is a member of the local community health committee in Al-Khalidiyah.
Engagement in volunteer work
Al-Khaldi said the community health committee was one of the most significant experiences that enabled her to work with local residents and women through awareness lectures, health education, and school health initiatives. These activities helped build their capacities and empowered them to pursue opportunities in other fields, including municipal and political work through the municipality.
She described the experience as unique, explaining that she had no prior background in this area. As a school principal, her work had focused on education, teaching, and upbringing. Working through the municipality, however, allowed her to engage more closely with the local community and learn about problems she had not encountered in the education sector.
“I really love volunteering, and I enjoy engaging with the community in different fields and places,” Al-Khaldi said. She noted that she had participated in numerous initiatives, but health-related work was closest to her heart because it offered many opportunities to connect with the community.
Building bridges between schools and parents
Al-Khaldi said these initiatives included promoting healthy nutrition, measuring blood sugar levels, raising awareness about diseases and prevention, strengthening immunity, and maintaining good health. Because these topics are closely connected to everyday life, she said, health-focused initiatives were among those she valued most.
As a school principal, she has also prioritised building strong communication channels between the school and parents, who make up a large part of the local community.
Al-Khaldi believes that when communication between schools and parents is clear and open, it becomes easier to work together. Parents are encouraged to visit the school whenever they encounter a problem, while school staff also contact them when issues involving their children arise.
“Parents at my school are very cooperative, whether through donations or by helping with various needs. For example, if the school needs one of its walls painted, a parent may volunteer to help,” she said.
She stressed that the relationship between a school and its surrounding community should be one of partnership and mutual support, adding that schools cannot operate in isolation from parents and the wider community.
“If they are not our partners in the educational process, we will not be able to strengthen and develop it as required,” she said.
Contributing to a better learning environment
Al-Khaldi said parents are among her school’s key partners. Even when preparing the school’s development plan, the administration distributes questionnaires to parents to gather their feedback and identify areas they believe need improvement or further development.
Al-Khaldi began her career as an Arabic-language teacher before becoming a school librarian, then an assistant principal, and eventually a principal. She believes this range of experience is one of the reasons she has become an effective leader.
She explained that moving through these roles allowed her to become familiar with various laws and regulations, understand the school’s needs and how to meet them, and gain knowledge of financial matters, including revenues and expenditures.
Her work as an assistant principal also gave her practical experience in successful school management. Drawing on all these previous roles, she moved into leadership with a broad understanding of different stages of education and the many aspects of school operations.
Al-Khaldi said that when she took over as principal in 2019, her primary goal was to improve the learning environment and ensure that students had a safe place to study. She also worked to provide training courses and workshops for teachers.
Maintaining and improving school facilities
Al-Khaldi explained that whenever she identified an area in which a teacher needed to improve their performance, she sought to provide suitable training to help raise students’ achievement.
She also focused on maintaining the school and improving its facilities. The administration worked to overcome obstacles and facilitate training programmes, particularly after the school opened its vocational stream, when she sought to ensure that the necessary resources were available for smoother operations.
As a result, Al-Khaldi said, the school ranked first nationwide in the Arab Reading Challenge and received the award for best school at the district level in 2025.
She stressed that these achievements were not the result of a single effort or isolated event, but of sustained work over time. No one person could claim the credit alone, as the accomplishments were the result of a collective effort in which teachers and students played major roles.
According to Al-Khaldi, the school had participated in the Arab Reading Challenge for several consecutive years, with the goal of reaching the advanced stages of the competition. Through repeated participation and continuous effort, the school eventually secured first place nationwide.
Providing students with the support they need
The school also qualified to participate in the competition in the United Arab Emirates. However, it did not reach first place at the Egypt and Arab world levels, and the team hopes to achieve better results in future competitions.
Al-Khaldi said the achievement was made possible by the efforts of ten teachers, along with a large number of dedicated female students.
She acknowledged that, at first, they believed reaching the top positions would be difficult. But through continuous encouragement, ambition, and equipping students with knowledge and information, they began to make gradual progress.
Over time, students developed clear ambitions, a desire to excel, and confidence in their ability to reach their goals and achieve success.
Al-Khaldi noted that the school has also participated in competitions across the Arab world and internationally, including one in Tunisia, where its participants received numerous certificates and honours.
She added that most teachers and students take part in activities, and many students are driven by a desire to achieve and excel. Students who enter competitions, she said, have a clear goal: to compete and strive for a high ranking.
One particularly meaningful example involved a visually impaired student who transferred from another school under an inclusive education programme. The school had limited resources, its buildings were not adequately equipped to accommodate a blind student, and the necessary facilities to meet her health-related needs were unavailable.
Despite these initial challenges, the student managed to overcome her difficulties and became one of the school’s outstanding students. Al-Khaldi explained that when the student first arrived, she struggled to integrate with her classmates and adapt to the school environment.
The school made a concerted effort to support her, and a specialised teacher was assigned to monitor her progress and help her overcome the challenges she faced. The student became a genuine success story, taking part in the Arab Reading Challenge and winning at the directorate level.
Although she did not advance to the later stages at the national level, Al-Khaldi described her as an exceptionally creative student who wrote her own success story through determination and hard work, despite the difficulties she had faced from the beginning.
Organising awareness lectures at school
Al-Khaldi said her approach is based on constantly striving for improvement and achieving the best possible results across different fields, including health, municipal affairs, social work, volunteering, and school management.
At school, she works to strengthen students’ character, develop their skills and self-confidence, and encourage them to maintain close ties with the local community. She explained that when students graduate, they enter the labour market better prepared to engage with it and participate in community events.
The school aims to develop student leaders who can take responsibility and contribute actively to their communities.
Through this approach, the school creates future opportunities for students and gives them the confidence to rely on themselves and start from wherever they are, even if that means starting from scratch.
Al-Khaldi aspires to make her school one of the best in the Kingdom and seeks excellence in everything the school does. She noted that activities take place at the school every day.
“I like to deliver outstanding work. Whenever I organise an activity, I make sure it is presented in the best possible way and leaves a clear impact. I also want to see the change we are working to achieve within the school and the surrounding local community,” she said.
At the community level, the school is an essential partner in local initiatives. The health centre regularly organises awareness lectures at the school, while community police and the local security centre also conduct activities and events there.
Al-Khaldi concluded by explaining that, through her work, she seeks to highlight the essential needs that every community should have access to, whether related to health, nutrition, or volunteering, while strengthening partnerships between educational institutions and other community organisations.
Teacher’s Day, observed on October 5, serves as a reminder that teachers’ roles extend beyond school walls and classroom boundaries. Their impact is not limited to imparting knowledge; they also help develop students’ personalities and strengthen their self-confidence. Their work can extend into community initiatives that serve local areas and help create meaningful change.
Source: Al-Ghad. Reporting: Rasha Kanakrieh
