Manar Ihmud, Writing Center Tutor Alumni Profile

1/31/25  Interview with UIC Writing Center Tutor ‘17 alumna, Manar Ihmud

Your pronouns: she/her

Your major/s/minors at UIC: double major Math and Computer Science with a Concentration in Statistics
What term did you take 222, with whom, and what years did you work as staff tutor?Second semester 1st year spring 2013 with Vainis, tutored 2013-2017

Year of graduation from UIC and undergrad degrees (BA/BS?): BS 2017

Current job: Math teacher at Universal High School, and Director and founder of IQ Tutoring Center

Link to Video of Manar and her husband at the Grand Opening of the IQ Tutoring Center

Where are you and what are you doing these days for work?

So I live in the suburbs. I’m in Burbank. I moved here seven years ago, a few months after graduation.

I work at a school called Universal, a private Islamic pre-K to 12 school in Bridgeview. I’m a high school math teacher. I teach ninth grade, freshmen, and I did also start a pull-out program here for fourth and fifth grade math intervention. I started that last year and we’ve been going strong with the fourth and fifth graders. So I do that during my free periods.

And then in March of 2023, I opened up IQ, a tutoring center in Palos Heights, Illinois. I’m the Center Director over there. We have about 15-20 tutors that work with me—some Bachelor’s students, some Master’s students, and some actual licensed elementary school teachers that tutor with me. We do afterschool tutoring and on Saturdays.

What ages do you tutor?

We have Kindergarten through higher ed. So we actually accommodate for all grade levels, all ages.

We have set it up as classrooms. So we have our elementary school classrooms, our middle school classrooms, our high school classrooms, and then we do have an event room also where we host community events.

This is quite a lot that you’re doing as Center director, on top of classroom teaching during the day. How do you juggle both?

Right after school, I open up the center and I have my kids with me there. My husband’s there also helping out. So we pick up the kids and we open up the tutoring center at four. So right after school, we’re there. It’s four to eight. Those are our hours. And then Saturday, we are also there, 10 to 4. So I do both.

So my kids are always with me. I do have two kids, a seven-year-old and a six-year-old. They’re either in a session or we have art club or reading club or science club. So they kind of pick and choose what they want to go in.

If they want to skip, if it’s a big center, I’m grateful for it. So we have our kitchen area. They have their little coloring station where they can stay entertained And my husband is there with me helping, of course. So we do work together there.

I heard you say art club, science club. Is that part of the center as well?

Yes, we do have afterschool. We are also licensed by American Red Cross and American Heart Association where we do CPR and BLS classes every Saturday.

And then we host a book club for the community And we give out the space. So anytime I run into someone who has an idea to bring to the center, I’m grateful for it. And I share that space with them. They’ll host nonprofit events, fundraisers, anything we can. We’ve done ladies’ paint nights, game nights in our event room. Anytime someone has an idea, we’re open to using the center. So they’ll just schedule the room with me and we love to do it at no cost to keep serving the community.

I’m curious, what was it like getting funding to open the center? Did you have to apply for grants? How did you start it up?

So the thing is we are for-profit for the tutoring, of course. My husband and I, we saved up, and we started off smaller in the center in terms of hiring. And as we grew, we hired more.

The back room is what I meant that we love to share with the community [pro bono]. So that one, I honestly, I’m not looking for anything for that, I just want to fill any gaps in the community. Why not bring it in? It was even one of our volunteers who started off the CPR and BLS classes.

How did you get here from undergrad? Was this the path you knew you wanted to be on all along? Were there any challenges or twists along the way?

Yeah, it was always there. While I was at UIC, I had an internship that stayed with me for my senior year at RMB Capital.

But then after I graduated, I did have my kids and then COVID hit. I wasn’t doing much so I started tutoring online; even before COVID, I was tutoring from my house  and at the library, or back and forth so

After COVID, then my husband and I just had that idea. We’re like: We have the time. We’ve been waiting to do this. Let’s just do it now.

Is he also an educator?

No, he’s not. He has a business background.

Does it feel like that’s a nice coalition or you have complementary skills? How does that work?

It does. It helps with management. So it really helps when sometimes I do tutor; though I try not to tutor. That way I’m not stretching myself thin in terms of managing the center.

But if we have finals week or an influx in midterms week, any last minute students, I’ll take them on if they are math. And then that’s when my husband’s taking on the role of watching over the center and managing.

What grade did you say you teach currently at Universal?

Eighth and ninth grade.

For you, is there a sweet spot in terms of the ages you like to work with?

I love Algebra 1. And I told them when I came in for my interview—this is my second year here—I told them I really wanted to teach Algebra 1. So I do teach the ninth grade, which is the level for Algebra 1. And then the eighth graders, if they are at the Honor track or the fast track, they are qualified to take Algebra 1. So I have those two honors classes.

And I love sticking with that group. I really love working with them as a group and I always like to work with setting up the classroom in terms of everyone’s working together. So I offer incentives for stronger students to be sitting with weaker students and going over the material. I always give them those options for catching up work.I feel like if they show that initiative that they need that help, there should be so many resources in front of them to help them.

So I do work with those, but I also really do like the fourth and fifth grade age. And that is why I also I started that pull-out program, because I feel those are very essential years for setting up a strong foundation for continuing in middle school. Fourth and fifth grade is when they really take a hard, strong hit on fractions, decimals, long division, and they’re still, of course, not using a calculator. And that’s where that mental math pickup happens, number fluency, the confidence with math overall. So when I suggested the pull-out program for the school, we based it off MAP scores. So we took the [bottom] 25th percentile And then this year when we went to go look at the 25th percentile to see who’s going to get included, we could not find many, which was such a great relief—so we actually took 40 percentile and lower. Usually public schools are only sticking at that 2th5-30th percentile, but we’re grateful that we didn’t have many students who qualified, so we just pushed up to now only taking 40 percentile and lower.

What are your favorite parts of this dual career you have, of being a high school teacher and a center director? What parts are challenging?

They’re all so favorite.Of course,I have to be honest, it can get stressful in terms of just making sure I’m managing my time wisely. So I don’t have much room to slack. I grade in my prep periods or I’m grading on my desk at the Center or I’m lesson planning Friday night when the Center is a little slower.

I really do have to manage everything and stay on top of things in terms of my workload. But I do love it. And that’s the thing. I genuinely love being there [at the Center] and I genuinely love teaching at the school. There isn’t one that I would give up. I love being here at the school. And I love the work that we’re doing at the Center. I love taking on and seeing the reward of putting in that effort. At the Center, we try to focus so much on accommodating students who are struggling, whether in terms of they have a learning disability or just their attention wasn’t there or they didn’t have a good foundation because of either moving around or COVID.

When I went to go set up the Center, I [wanted] small classrooms. We don’t have that one big open space like regular tutoring centers.

And we really do focus on foundational build. I always tell parents: homework help—of course, if you need it, we’ll do it. But our focus is fixing our foundation and bridging those gaps that students have. That way they gain that confidence, that independence, and they can leave the Center and implement what they learned outside of school.

So we do a balance of both.

We just finished winter MAP [“Measures of Academic Progress”] testing. And every single one of our students enrolled at the Center showed growth, every single one. And it was such an amazing feeling to see not a single student stayed either the same or dipped.

You’ll usually have those dips in the fall because of the summer break. So to see that growth is— honestly, it makes everything [feel] rewarded.

I can imagine. And did you say your own children also go to the school where you teach?

Yeah. Yes, they do. They’re in first grade and second grade.

They’re at a different floor than where I teach. I teach upstairs, but I do run into them in the hallway and that itself—coming to school with them and seeing them and participating and watching their assemblies whenever they have an event or anything, I’’m still able to watch it. I don’t have to take off. I can take my students or I’ll see them in my prep periods.

And then they’re with me at the Center. So I don’t feel like I would have been able to do both of these things if I wasn’t seeing my kids or if I had to put their kids in after school care or hire help or anything, but it makes it easier that they can be with me in both jobs.

And I imagine too the culture of your school supports that closeness? It sounds like there’s a kind of a familiarity both in terms of having your own kids there, but also a close-knit community. You said it’s an Islamic school specifically.

Yes, the private school is.

I’m curious—you know, back when I was in school women were underrepresented in math.

All my math teachers were men, and girls were not encouraged to pursue it as a major. Do you feel like that’s shifting—is there less gender segregation?

Yes, of course. I do see that. I did notice that, being in UIC, and a math major, very rarely I would have one or two or three other female students with me. Even during graduation, when we were all sitting together, it was barely anyone. I remember there being one [other] girl.

But I do see that differently. So our math department in the school that I’m at, we’re all women. Every single one of us is women, and they’re teaching AP Calc, AP Stats. Of course, you’ll find all the higher math classes. They compete in STEM competitions over here and it’s all led by females. So that is amazing to see.

And then at the Center, we did have a Girls Who Code (club).

The first summer we did a regular coding club and it was run by a Google engineer, a software engineer, also graduated from UIC. So I had met her there, and I asked her hey, would you like to do this at the Center?

And then the same thing, the Girls Who Code (club), that’s about to start next month at the Center—that is also run by a UIC graduate. So she’s starting a Girls Who Code chapter.

So am I right in thinking that unlike the UIC Writing Center which is staffed by peer tutors, your center is staffed by graduates largely?

Yeah, graduates. We do have a few bachelor students in their last years. A lot of them are at UIC.

When I first had that initiative to open up the Center, I did reach out to Dr. Aleksa and I’m like, Remember that handbook that you taught us to prep for tutoring? I was like, Can I get the name of that? I needed to refresh on training tutors. He sent it over. Gratefully, I did base a lot of how I train my tutors from the handbook that we were taught.

And then there is some things that Dr. Aleksa would always tell us like, “no handwriting on the students papers when you’re editing.” And that’s something I always tell my tutors, of course, we’re keeping track that this is their honest, true work.

Scheduling, too,  was something where I remember Dr. Aleksa offered a lot of flexibility to tutors (to choose their hours). And when you had that flexibility, it took off a lot of stress and toll from the actual tutor, so she felt like it was on her time. So that’s what I always tell my tutors. We’re not on a structure on the weekend. Text me your best availability. And I want to accommodate to that.

If there aren’t tutor hours that work for the students, I’ll offer a Zoom session. I’ll offer a late hour that they can both meet. So we have that relationship. We do want to match tutor with student, so that everyone is coming in relaxed and stress-free.

We do also do post-tutoring forms, which was something Dr.. Aleksa had implemented very strong on us [the Client Report Forms]. And I remember, it was always like you had to write them and get it in last minute but now when I see how parents look forward to them—I see that, and we do share those post-tutoring forms with the parents. So it’s like an exit ticket for the students.

And the tutor writes what was hit, what still needs to be covered, how the session went, emotionally. We do have a little emotion to pick from, if you felt like they were anxious, worried, nervous, happy, tired, whatever it is. So sharing that with the parent [offers] relief—they’re always feeling confident that the session was used to the best of their ability, but it also gives accountability to how expectations of the sessions are.

Am I right in hearing you do a couple different modalities? Is it primarily one-on-one, in-person tutoring or are you also doing online? Is it all scheduled or do you do drop-ins?

So we do 1:1 or 2:1. Those are our packages. I don’t do more than 2:1  in the [Center] classrooms, I do want to keep that ratio. It is the lowest ratio for all the centers in the suburbs around us so that was one of my hard yeses: Keep it 2:1 or 1:1. Of course, there’s a price difference for parents to choose from.

But I do always give them that honest accountability of: if it’s 2:1, I make sure that the students together are very comfortable with each other. Sometimes we’ll get students from the same classroom. So if they’re studying for a test, I’ll put them together, if I see that they’re there at the same level, just to make sure everyone is benefiting as much from the session.

We do offer online. We do have students who are far [off in] college that started with us in high school. And now that they’re at a different college, they can’t commute easily. So we still offer online Zoom sessions for them. And then we do do drop-ins also. And I always tell parents, if you’re okay with a drop-in, I will always accommodate. It will just be at a later hour in the day. So maybe at seven o’clock or sometimes we’ve stayed till 8, 9 p.m. during finals week to accommodate. So if they’re okay with that, I do take them on as a drop-in.

And are students coming for tutoring in math and science, or  also writing? Is it all disciplines?

Yes, we do have a reading curriculum we follow for our middle school. For our elementary, we use our own curriculums. We use a few curriculums because being in so many villages and towns around us, everyone uses a different curriculum; every single one of them. So I always ask: for which teacher, which class? Because I am familiar with the schools around us, specifically math curriculums. English is pretty standard across the board, except when it comes to the writing. Some middle schools implement writing into their reading curriculum. Some have their own reading curriculum.

Some districts expect paragraphs by third grade, some at fifth grade. Math is the biggest difference. Every single school around us uses a different curriculum. So I’m very familiar with those and which school they’re coming from because there’s some that have adopted like the more modern math. Some are still using Khan Academy, Delta, IXL There’s Savis and Vision. Eureka is also a big one over here. So we have to be comfortable and I have to make sure that the tutor is comfortable showing them those methods and that technique.

So generally, they’re getting help with tutoring on their existing homework for their schools—sort of like at UIC where people say, I have this assignment due. Can you help me?

Of course. And then when they do enroll by us, I do ask for any teacher’s email. So we do open up that communication from day one with the teacher. Parents would usually sign a communications release form for the school district. And I asked teachers to send me standardized test scores. The teacher input is the most essential because she’s seeing the student most. So she’ll tell me they were struggling with this concept or can you teach them this way? I’ve had teachers who send me video links of how they want the session to be taught or the specific division method. So I share that with that tutor and we really try and tailor it to how the teacher’s expectations are. So that brings a lot of benefit to students’ learning.

That’s a lot of complexity when there’s so many different curricula and you’re serving students from all the private and public schools.

Oh, yes, yes. We do have a lot. Most of our students are in the public schools.

How many clients do you have enrolled at a time typically and how many staff?

Well, we are eight stations. Sometimes I’ve had to make a ninth station in the far side of the center Each session has two always and then we’re open for about four to five hours. So it’s very different. We have students enrolled in our twice a week package. Some are enrolled in a three times a week package. And then our high schoolers aren’t enrolled in a package. They buy hours and they use them to their scheduling and their availability, so when they need.

They’ll come in right before a test to review an assignment due. It rolls over the next year if they haven’t used all the hours—so it’s not expiring, those sessions. And it’s also across siblings and even parents can use them. So I actually had a family package that had been purchased last year. It was across the siblings. And then when the last kid graduated, the mom decided to go back to school. So the mom also started using those hours. And that was a good feeling to see someone older going back into the school system and training them for that.

So we do offer different types of packages. So it’s hard to give a number, because they’re in and out.

When you say nine stations, you mean you have sort of nine tutors who are more or less full-time employed?

Yes, that’s in a day. But we do have about 15 to 20 tutors for different specialties. I have one that does coding and she’s only working with the coding students.

I do have some for the help with resumes, personal statements, applications, financial aid, more college advising. She helps with that.

Each of my tutors usually give me their strengths for which grade and then which specific subjects and anything else. So I’ll have a tutor that can do ACT prep and she’s very good at that. Or SAT prep, PSAT.

And then especially going into those higher classes, Calc 1, Calc 2 or you have to handpick which tutors are working.

There’s a good amount that work with us. And like I said, everyone is working to their flexibility.

If we have tutors who are looking for jobs out postgrad, do you feel like having worked at UIC’s Writing Center would be a good preparation?

Yes, of course. I can say more than half my tutors are from UIC. More than half either graduated from there or are in their senior year or they’re back there for their Master’s.

And I’m grateful because a lot of them are from my personal UIC connections, being at UIC.

Those connections grow with you and they benefit you. And it’s a good feeling that we’re all growing together towards a more successful lifestyle.

Are you hiring at the moment and should I publicize that to our tutors?

Please do. Yes, we’re always looking because, like I said, our tutors also, they run their ideas [by me]. It was a tutor who started the coding club. It was another tutor who started the science club. We’re in the process of starting a multiplication boot camp, again, run by a tutor.

I feel like the Center can always take on more in terms of community events or extra ideas that they have to share.

If graduates have something they want to pitch to you, they could reach out and say, you know, I’d really love to offer this—whatever it is—a film class or something like that?

Of course. Yes. Thank you.

I mean, you’ve sort of answered this, but one of the standard questions I always ask people is how has your experience as a writing center tutor come into play in your current role? And you said how you’re using even some of the Handbook and its philosophy. So some of that’s quite clear. Are there other ways in which you feel like your experience as a tutor has informed how you designed the center?

Yes, the Writing Center was one of the first centers that I worked at and everyone around you was at the same age level. And sometimes as quiet as everyone’s sessions were, even though we are spaced out at the writing center, you would still tune in or hear other comments.And for some students that’s okay. They know how to filter and they know how to focus and keep their attention with the tutor and with their current workload.

But that was one of my first exposures to how sometimes there are students who don’t know how to filter out that noise. And  I saw my own kids, and how, they also as little kids can get distracted. So when we were looking into a space for the center, that was our top priority. It had to have small classrooms or we had to do the construction to set up these small classrooms. And we did do a lot of the construction.

It used to be a senior health facility during COVID so they had small check-in rooms. [So] we kept those rooms and that’s what we did the construction on to accommodate for our tutoring rooms.

And then the back room was like their equipment, their x-ray machine. So that is our event room. So that was our top priority, to look for something to keep that focus in each session.

Is there any advice you would give tutors who are interested to pursue a similar field of work, either a high school math teacher or doing more private tutoring Anything you wish you could go back and tell your younger self?

So top priority is you have to be willing to accommodate to different learning styles, learning methods, and familiarize yourself with those methods. I feel like that is my biggest thing that I have to focus on, those different learning methods.

In terms of starting a tutoring center, is there anything you learned in the process that you would tell others interested to start their own to bear this in mind? Anything you’d recommend?

Yes, I wanted to grow at my own pace, if that makes sense. So I took slowly. We started off with hiring three tutors and me, and we grew with that. And I feel like if I had hired more or if I had gotten that influx of students from the beginning, I would have been overwhelmed. And in terms of success, I feel like I would have not known how to accommodate [that many clients].

We’ve been open for almost two years now and we are so different from how we started off with. I switched curriculums. I looked into different learning methods. I’ve also had to familiarize myself and made these connections of talking to OTs and speech therapists, in terms of helping me look over an IEP. And that’s something that we do. I’ve attended our own students’ IEP meetings at their public school districts to give my input. And that’s something parents ask like, Hey, can you come with me to our IEP meeting and give your input because you’re more familiar with the terminology or you’re familiar with how the student is growing?

So I feel like I myself am so different from how I was two years ago when I opened up the center in terms of how much I knew how to run things.

Don’t expect to know everything from the beginning and that’s okay. You learn with the students that are coming in. You learn with the tutors that are coming in. You learn through experiences and You take everything as a learning situation and a learning experience and you grow from it.

You will have tough days where you feel like maybe you stretch yourself out too thin or maybe you should have prioritized something before another thing, or you slacked on something in terms of the business aspect, renewing a license, insurance, going into that. So of course the business section of it—learning how to send checks or even to the point of ordering the furniture and choosing sizes, what tables, what fits, what doesn’t, construction itself.

So I feel like I took on so many roles that you learn as you go and you do this research and you talk and you make these connections and they grow with you. And I feel like my best advice is everyone you meet is a connection and can benefit you in a way that you didn’t know. So learn from everyone that you come across.

Learn from every student you come across and always be open and aware that you don’t know everything; everything can be something that comes back as benefit to you in ways you did not expect.

When you talk about how sometimes parents ask you to go to IEP meetings, I could imagine you you at some point having to set boundaries on your work because you’re wanted for so many things. At the same time, parents are your clients, so you want to be able to nurture those relationships. How do you establish boundaries? How do you decide what am I going to say yes to? What do I say no to? And how do I charge fairly so that my time is remunerated?

Yeah, so I’ll be honest. I’ve never taken [money] for actually going to an IEP meeting. I genuinely love—I can’t explain how much I love the students I’m working with at the center. I always tell my husband, I was like, We literally get the best students, the best families, the best experiences, the best parents to meet with.

At the center, of course, we have our set packages and parents are very professional in how they pick and choose When they know they’re running low, they repurchase. I’ve had parents who just pay on auto pay. [I didn’t offer autpoay at outset, and they insisted:] I want to do auto pay. I trust you guys. You got it. So that itself at the center is different.

My own time when I connect with the teachers, I genuinely do that [pro bono], on my own time. So there have been times where I haven’t been able to attend an IP meeting because I was at my school.

Then I’ll have parents send me the meetings, the notes, and they do, like I say, sign those communication release forms where the special education teachers or the service coordinator send out an email to me prior. I’ll review it and you know how parents, they do have that time length before they go back in and approve what’s going into the IEP and not. So I’ll give them little notes on it and I’ll read it over.

And I’ve referred students in terms of going to a more neurological path for learning disabilities. And again, I’ll ask other families, I was like, Hey, could you share who you went through or which speech therapist you went to? There’s so much that goes on [behind the scenes] in terms of referral to actual therapists or children therapists or behavioral therapists

Like I said, you make those connections as you go and you share them with these families and you do it in a way where when they approach you, that means they are really genuinely looking for your help.

Of course, it’s very hard. And I will mention the connections or resources that I feel that they should go through. But you are always doing that internal battle of:Am I doing too much? Am I stretching myself out too thin?

Honestly, whenever someone asks me, I say I take it day by day. It is genuinely a day-by-day lifestyle.

It sounds like you’re building a network of people so they can eventually help each other out as a community.

Yes. And whenever I feel like I really do need that mental health day, I’ll  take out my kids after school and not go to the center. My husband, like I said, he is very well qualified to run the center when I need a break. The  majority of my tutors have been with me since I opened so they know what’s going on. They are very on top of things at the center. They know how to manage. They know what to do.

And are the tutors hourly workers?

They’re hourly workers. Yes, they’ll tell me their hours of availability. Usually it’s four to seven, four to eight.

And they’re there. They do have their classrooms; the  majority of our full-time tutors, they have their (assigned) classrooms. One of the things we did with our center, we’re called IQ. So one of the things we did was name our classrooms based off schools—Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Stanford, and Cornell.

So our classrooms are based off that. So one tutor knows she always works in Yale. Another always works in Cornell because the learning materials and resources in each room are different. So they’re used to that routine. Building those routines for them makes everything run efficiently at the center.

Are there tips you would share with tutors about how to survive the post-grad transition?

It can be a time of uncertainty, where you don’t right away find the perfect job or thee perfect grad program.

My experience was a bit different. I was at a place (employed at RMB Capital) before graduation and then at graduation, my first-born was 10 days old. And I had my daughter not long after that. And so then I had two under two at home.

Then, like I said, COVID hit and everyone was at home working.

But what I do recommend from what I hear from our tutors when they graduate or the tutors that I’ve spoken with at the center is— and all of them say the same thing:

Get your foot in the door and work your way up. You’re not going to find the position you want or the salary you want.

Don’t say no to everything. Keep saying yes. If you feel like there’s potential in this position or potential in this work field, get your foot in. Connections matter, even if it’s a beginner or entry level job, it matters.

And I’ve always seen that if you commit to the role you have and you’re not looking or comparing to others, there is so much room for growth in your own position and people notice that. People notice how seriously you take even a beginning or entry-level job and people notice how you treat others in a workplace and all of that comes back into memory when these higher positions open up that are looking for [someone with capacity for] growth.

RMB Capital was a marketing/financial institute in downtown that I worked for starting the summer after my sophomore year at UIC. I stayed there until I was almost due with my baby. At RMB, I started off in an office position and it grew; I remember by the last month I was there, I was sitting into some of the meetings when they wanted to change their software.

So they were like, Hey, well, you’re a fresh new student. Come sit in. Give us your input. That’s all we are asking. So they notice and you make these connections and they see that you’re qualified and they will remember you when it’s time for yourself to be called up.

Don’t take anything for granted.

That’s good advice. It sounds like this is your chance to prove what you’re capable of and how much responsibility you can take.

You said your first-born was 10 days old when you graduated. What was that last semester like?

It was actually my easiest. I only had nine credits left and they were all gen eds. I had already finished all my math requirements my fall semester.

I never had to take summer (classes). I stayed meeting with my my (advising) counselor even till graduation. I just wanted to make sure that every class I took there’s a reason for it. It’s not something that’s going to waste not meeting a requirement, or something that isn’t going to matter to my degree. So I met with my the math counselors and the LAS to make sure I was hitting my requirements because I knew there was, I was praying that there was, a child coming soon.

So by senior year, I only had nine credits left, all Gen Eds. Some of them were online gen eds that I finished the first month of the semester and I was like, you’re done, go away, this is done.

So by graduation, I didn’t have anything. I was actually off the few weeks before graduation because I’d finished everything, yeah.

Great. And had you met your partner at UIC, I may ask?

Before, before UIC. We got married right before I started college and we were together all throughout college.

Then the last question I like to ask people is as a general life update is what is making you happy, these days? I imagine you don’t have a lot of solo downtime, with family. But what does fun look like for you right now?

So that’s the thing. I always tell my husband, you’re lucky that you married to probably, lik, a very boring person. My fun—I really do love the community I’m in, I love socializing. I do go to weekly social groups at the local mosques. I’m involved in a few sister groups. They’re more social plus religion/faith groups. I do that. I have a Wednesday afternoon one. I have also a Saturday morning one that I’m in.

Family, of course, we make sure that we’re seeing their grandparents and my in-laws and my mom as frequently as we can, whenever we can.

And then the kids know that the weekends are for them. So we always try and go out, even if it’s something’s going out for ice cream, walking around in the mall, anywhere, going to like a game. I think we’re so used to being all four of us together that we know how to make fun with whatever is in front of us.

That’s great. So your family’s pretty close. Everyone’s here in the Chicago area?

Yes. Except my siblings, they’re scattered around, Arizona, California, and then one’s back home in Palestine. And we do have family in Palestine too, of course.

But we do try and just stay in touch with everyone as frequently as we can.

Is there anything I haven’t asked about that you feel would be important to share?

I’m trying to think. I feel like a lot of my work, of course, goes back to my religion and my faith, which teaches us that when you’re working–when you have a job, it is your responsibility. Your children are your responsibility. Your relationships, your work relationships, your students that you take on—and the expectations you can’t perfect everything but you’re doing it to the best of your capabilities.

My intention is that I am working with the best of my capabilities. You’re grateful to everything and you do your best and the rest is out of your hands. So this is the best I can do and I can’t do more than that. And that’s it. And the rest is not in your hands. There’s a bigger picture going on around you.

Whenever I do work, I do make sure that my intentions are for bringing benefit to myself or to my children or to my marriage or to my work or to my own students. And keeping up with that intention.

And I can see how that connects your faith in your work and your family are all intertwined then. And they’re all producing meaning for you in a very important way.

It sounds like a very good life, Manar. It sounds wonderful.

Thank you. I appreciate it. Thank you. There’s hard days. And of course, after hardships, there’s always ease and there’s always something: there are doors that open up when you least expect it. So just stay positive and take every day, like I said, [with the intention] that you’re working your best and you’re doing your best and just keep going.

It sounds like having that network of supportive relationships and that matters a lot. For you, it’s not just the nuclear family. You said you have sister groups and you have your your mosque at the community at large and you have the community at the center and the community of school. Feels like you have a lot of really supportive, rich relationships.

Yes. We do. I do. And I’m grateful for all of them. I am genuinely grateful because I wouldn’t be where I am without that support in terms of emotionally, mentally, physically. They matter a lot.

Dr. Aleksa is one of the best mentors I ever came across. And I connected with him in a way where I really do feel like everything mattered. Everything mattered in terms of my workload. And that’s one of the things he always did for his student: when you walked into his room, he’d ask you, how’s your day? What’s going on? He wouldn’t even ask about workload, but like, how are you? And he always made that work feel important and appreciated and it set up the best standards in terms of expectations and goals to have for my center.