Shaimaa is 12 years old and in grade 2 at Jusoor's center in Jeb Jennine, Lebanon's Bekaa Valley. She joined three years ago, starting in KG3, and has been working her way through the program ever since. For a child her age, grade two might seem like slow progress. But Shaimaa's story cannot be measured that way.
A Family Far From Home
Shaimaa's family has been in the Bekaa Valley in Lebanon since 2011, when they left their home in the Homs countryside, where they had lived raising sheep. Like so many Syrian families in Lebanon, they arrived with very little and found stability hard to come by. Her parents have no reliable source of income, and making ends meet has been a constant challenge.
Her mother, Feryal, wanted her children in school from the start. They joined a public school for a few years. When they came to re-enrol, they were told there was no space. Shaimaa spent more than a year out of school with nowhere to go. She spent her days helping her parents work odd jobs in the fields.
When Shaimaa’s family heard of Jusoor, they enrolled her at the Jeb Jennine Center. By the time she joined Jusoor's center in KG3, she was already older than most of her classmates, and she knew it.
A Student Who Believed She Could Not Learn
Her love for school did not emerge immediately. When Shaimaa first arrived at the center, her frustration had built into something harder to shift. She was convinced, with a certainty that worried her teachers, that she was simply not capable of learning English, her teacher, Mr. Khaled Maasarani, shared.
Her behavior reflected that frustration. She got into physical fights with classmates. She was rude to teachers. The language she used was not appropriate for a classroom. Her teachers could see that beneath all of it was a bright child who had never been given the right conditions to feel confident, capable, or safe.
The Turning Point
This year, Shaimaa's English teacher Mr. Khaled Maasarani, decided to try something different: lead with encouragement, not correction. Recognize her intelligence first, and build everything else from there.
The results were real, and they came faster than anyone expected. Shaimaa's English improved by around 60 percent across reading, writing, and speaking. She is not yet the top of her class, but she is firmly in the middle range, and for a student who once said learning was impossible for her, that is an extraordinary distance to have traveled.
Her teachers also gave her something else: responsibility. They began assigning her extra tasks in the classroom, treating her as someone whose role mattered. By making her “a little teacher,” they witnessed the effect on Shaimaa almost immediately. She started stepping in when disagreements broke out between classmates, offering advice, helping to smooth things over. The aggression faded. She stopped fighting. She started going to teachers when something was wrong instead of handling it with her fists.
She also started, for what may be the first time, to really like herself and carry herself with confidence.
A New Shaimaa
Today, Shaimaa is one of the most engaged students in her class. She takes on leadership roles naturally, looks out for her classmates, and follows school rules. The student who once could not imagine herself as a learner is now a role model, helping others believe they can learn too.
At Jusoor, we believe every child deserves a chance to discover what they are capable of. By approaching students with behavioral issues with compassion and understanding instead of punishment, they discover they have it within themselves to change for the better and give themselves a chance to learn.
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