Meet the Team
Dedicated & Certified
Nabilah Alfaqih
Primary Lead Guide
Nabilah Alfaqih was born in Yemen and moved to Michigan at the age of nine. She holds a Montessori Diploma for early childhood education. She studied Sign Language Interpreting and graduated with a BA at Modanna University in Michigan. Nabilah has worked in different settings, such as hospitals, schools, community centers, and theater as an Interpreter. She enjoyed working in an education system. She has worked in school settings for 9 years. Nabilah had the opportunity to see the different teaching styles and was intrigued by the Montessori teaching philosophy. This motivated her to get a Montessori certification.
Razan Deghles
Primary Assistant
Razan Daghlas is a motivated engineer who holds a Bachelor degree of Science in Telecommunications Engineering from the Arab American University. She is a primary teacher’s assistant (ages 3-6) at IAWV elementary school. She was a programming teacher at Hassib Sabbagh IT Center of Excellence.
She was the Secretariat of Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE). She has two publications.
She looks forward to working together with you as partners in your child’s growth and development!!
She worked with various age groups and helped to improve their programming development, social, and motor skills, which is a challenge that she is honored to accept daily in a positive and fun environment.
She loves children and has a heart for supporting them on their educational journeys.
Eman Alberda
Upper Elementary Teacher
Eman Alberda have been an educator for over 20 years. She lived overseas for 27 years. She got her degree in Arabic Language and Islamic Studies from Saudi Arabia. She opened a language institute that taught students aged 3-30. She developed interest and gained experience in Montessori methods at a school that followed the Montessori philosophy. She moved to Charleston from California last year and now working towards getting her Montessori Certification.
Imam Nasirabdussalam
Islamic Studies Teacher
Imam Nasir was born in Chesterfield, MO, and raised mostly in Atlanta, GA. He accepted Islam in 2003 while attending Georgia State University, where he majored in English with a concentration in Rhetoric and Composition. He has been studying the Islamic sciences for over a decade, with nine of those years in Jordan, where he studied at the World Islamic Sciences and Education (W.I.S.E.) University for a Bachelor's degree in Islamic Law and Legal Theory, in addition to his traditional studies of theology, the Shafi'i school of law, legal theory, and the sciences of Hadith. He has taught privately and for Islamic American University, and is the translator of al-Ghazali's The Forty Principles of the Religion and The Foundations of Belief, The Creed of Mama Bayhaqi, and Ibn Kathir's Ikhtisar 'Ulum al-Hadith'. Imam Nasir is the founding director of Saladin Islamic Seminary. He is also an imam at the Islamic Association of West Virginia (IAWV) and continues to study, teach, and translate. He is the Islamic curriculum teacher at the IAWV Elementary School.
Sheikh Mostafa
Quran Teacher
Imam Mostafa Rawash Abdellatif graduated from al-Azhar University in Cairo, Egypt in 1995 with a B.A. in Comparative Religion and Islamic Culture. He also possesses a teaching license for the recitation of the Qur’an according to the reading of Hafs from the Institute of Qur’anic Readings in Egypt. He was a teacher for al-Azhar Institute at both the middle school and high school levels from 1996 to 2003. He also served as an imam for the Egyptian Ministry of Endowments from 1997 to 2007. In 2003, he was awarded certification to operate his mosque as a charitable organization. He visited the USA for the first time as a guest imam for the nightly Ramadan prayers in 2002. In Ramadan of 2006 he was sent by the Ministry of Endowments to the USA to serve as an imam and teacher for the nightly prayers. Thereafter he was sent to serve as a teacher for the University School in West Virginia from 2007 to 2010. He returned to Egypt for two years, where he continued his work for the Ministry of Endowments and participated in a number of religious conferences. In 2013 he came back to the USA, first serving as an imam for the nightly prayers of Ramadan in San Diego, and thereafter relocating to West Virginia to serve as an imam for the Islamic Association of West Virginia.
Ragda Foual
Arabic Teacher
Ragda Foual is a graduate of Tishreen University in Lattaika, Syria, where she obtained her bachelor's degree in English. Before immigrating to the United States, Ragda spent eight years teaching English at several elementary, middle, and high schools in Syria.
Ragda's experience as a teacher of Arabic goes back to 2000, when she joined the IAWV's Sunday School as a volunteer teacher. She has taught Arabic to generations of kids in the Charleston Muslim community. She has also offered private tutoring in the Arabic language since 2004.
As the Arabic teacher at our school, Ragda welcomes kids in small groups to her classroom, where she uses various age-appropriate activities and methods to teach the kids to read, write, and speak the Arabic language.
Nour has been a teacher of Quran, Arabic, and Islamic studies at the IAWV Sunday school since 2003. She is an experienced instructor of Tajwid and has offered private tutoring classes to local students since 2009. Since 2015, she has worked as a private Tajweed instructor with students in several countries, working with them on perfecting their Quran recitation, their pronunciation of Quran verses, as well as teaching them the various rules of Tajwid (the makharij and ahkam).
Nour holds a baccalaureate diploma from the Syrian Ministry of Education and has completed 30 credit hours towards an Associate Degree in General Education at Bridge Valley Community and Technical College. She has also received in 'Ijaza (certification) in Quran Recitation from Sheikh Al-Kurdi, and has completed training in the instruction of the Qaida al-Noorania method of teaching as well as completed training in the Bidaya workshop in Arabic and Quran reading instruction.
Islamic Studies Teacher
Nour Aboushaar
