CAIRO – Teaching for thirty years, an American Muslim educator has become the first parochial Islamic school teacher to receive a prestigious Golden Apple Award for Excellence in Teaching, raising the spirits of her students.

“She’s just such an amazing woman,” Dania Odeh, an Aqsa High School junior who has studied Arabic with El-Amin for three years, told Chicago Tribune.

“My sisters had her; my mom had her. So, my whole family has had her. And without her in this school, I don’t think we would even have a school.”

Laila El-Amin, the head of the school’s Arabic and religion departments, is one of 10 Illinois high school teachers being honored this week as 2016 Golden Apple recipients from a pool of more than 400 nominees.

El-Amin, known as “Sit (Arabic for Mrs.) Laila”, is a native of Sudan who has taught at Aqsa for nearly 30 years.

“At first, she’s very intimidating,” Odeh said, “but her intensity is what made me want to get into higher classes and push harder.”

As a freshman, Odeh said she contemplated dropping out of El-Amin’s Arabic class because it was so rigorous.

“I almost cried because I was so nervous,” she said. “I was like ‘I can’t do it.’ But she encouraged me.

“She would always tell me to push hard and to always want to do better, even though it might be easier to go to a lower class.”

El-Amin’s firm but supportive approach was appreciated by grateful students and parents.

“When she teaches you in class, she’s not just teaching a subject, she’s teaching you life lessons, too,” senior Reem Odeh said.

“Every lesson she’ll relate it to something we can apply in life. And I think the biggest lesson that all her girls have learned is to be stronger, and be more outspoken and learn how to show their opinions.”

Compassion

El-Amin success with students was a result of treating them with compassion and showing them you care.

“All the mothers tell me, ‘What do you do? You work them so hard and they still love you,'” she said.

“I said, ‘Because I love them too.’ It comes from the heart.”

The Muslim educator, El-Amin, a chemist and biologist by training, left her Ph.D program in the 1980s to focus on raising her two daughters.

Joining Aqsa School in 1987, she quickly grew invested in the school’s young women.

“From my raising and from my religion, we know the importance of women. And education is the most important thing in women-raising,” she said.

“Some communities, they maybe don’t believe in letting girls go far in education, but I believe in that. So I wanted to be here so that I can advocate for that — to educate the girls and let them go wherever they go — to the university, do their master’s, their Ph.D, whatever they want to do, and become leaders in the society.”

Illustrating El-Amin’s lasting impact on the school community, many students still return to Aqsa years after their graduation to meet Sit Laila.

“She wants to make an impact on her students and she has,” said Berjamin Beituni, a former Aqsa administrative assistant whose daughters all attended the school.

“In the front office, there are so many former students that would come in and say ‘Oh, can I see Sit Laila, please?’

“These are young women that are professionals that come back to see her — teachers, doctors, lawyers, educators. They still come back. They’re married with children and careers, and they still come back to see Sit Laila.”

Receiving the award, El-Amin will receive a $5,000 stipend and a tuition-free spring quarter sabbatical to study courses of her choice at Northwestern University.

She plans to pursue courses in leadership because, as she tells her students, “I believe that you have to continue to learn until you die.”