Design+Team+Member+Bios

Utah Arabic Teacher Association Design Team Members:


 * Michelle Timothy Safadi- Lead Contributer and Writer ** is a certified Arabic teacher. She has a Bachelor of Arts in Middle Eastern Studies with an emphasis in Arabic. She also has a Master’s of Elementary Education, and a Gifted and Talented Endorsement. She is one of a few in the country who meet Highly Qualified status in her field.. Michelle has experience in Jordan, Syria and has lived in the Palestinian territories. She has also volunteered in Bethlehem at a k-12 school. She has been a teacher trainer for the last 3 years and has presented at teaching workshops at both UFLA and SWCOLT.

**Laila Lamani** is a certified Arabic teacher in the state of Utah. She is a full time Arabic language teacher with the Salt Lake School District, a program that she has been aggressively growing. She has an MA in Second Language Acquisition and Teaching from BYU. She also oversees instruction for the BYU STARTALK Arabic camps. Prior to that she was part of the reputable Middleberry Arabic intensive summer program. Laila has also been involved in national curriculum design projects such as AWW and the Atlanta Arabic curriculum initiative..


 * Belal Joundeya ** is from Amman, Jordan. He has a masters in Special Education. He taught students with mental disabilities and autism for two years in Jordan. He also taught 3rd to 9th grade English to hearing impaired students for one year. He is currently in his second year of teaching Arabic to 3rd -9th grade students at Renaissance Academy and has developed an Arabic language book for high school students, a high school culture book and he is currently developing a culture book for middle school students. Belal was an apprentice teacher at Brigham Young University's 2011 Arabic Summer Startalk program, has attended several professional development workshops in the US and is currently seeking certification to teach Arabic in the state of UTAH.


 * Tina Cannon ** studied Arabic at the Defense Language Institute in Monterey, California. After spending three years as an elementary music teacher, Mrs. Cannon is now in her third year of teaching elementary and middle school Arabic at Renaissance Academy in Lehi, UT. Mrs. Cannon participated in the Intensive Summer Language Institute in Alexandria, Egypt in 2010, and is currently serving as mentor teacher to Heba Houzaien, a guest teacher with the Teachers of Critical Languages Program. Mrs. Cannon is a frequent presenter at the Utah Foreign Languages Association annual conference, and has been selected to present at the Northeast Conference on the Teaching of Foreign Languages in 2012.

Kawkeb Said Ph.D., P.E. is a passionate, enthusiastic and dedicated Arabic Language / culture teacher. She has been working as an Arabic Language/ Arabic Culture educator for the last 18 months at the Park City High School, UT. Currently she is teaching Arabic level I and level II. Starting from scratch, Dr.. Said developed a curriculum for each of these levels at the high school, and constantly working on improving her teaching material and polishing her lesson techniques. She took an intensive summer course at Birmingham Young University in Provo for teachers apprenticeship during the summer of 2011. She attended classes at Utah Education Network, specifically designed for teachers in Podcasting and in effective presentations. She attends conferences and workshops for the Utah Foreign Language Association (UFLA) and Utah Arabic Teachers Association (UATA). Mrs. Said is currently working on obtaining her Utah license in teaching. Previous teaching experience also includes teaching college level science courses at Quinnipiac University in Hamden, CT.