Zeinab Alsaad's plans for a slow, steady climb through the ranks of the education profession seem to have been destined for disruption by others who recognized her potential. As an undergraduate student at UM-Dearborn, she earned a degree in elementary education with an ESL endorsement and quickly found a position as a second grade teacher in a racially and socioeconomically diverse school in west Dearborn. She had a strong interest in literacy issues, so she quickly jumped into UM-Dearborn’s master of education program, pursuing a reading specialist endorsement, plus a state certification for educational administration. Normally, that expeditious approach to graduate education might indicate a desire to work outside the classroom. But Alsaad says she wasn’t necessarily in a rush: She actually figured she’d spend the foreseeable future working as a teacher, gaining experience, before seriously considering an administrative role. Pretty much right from the start of her career, though, her school colleagues started grooming her for other things. After two years leading a second grade classroom, Alsaad transitioned to being a resource teacher, a specialist who works closely with students and other teachers to develop individualized learning plans, especially for students with disabilities or special needs. She also started handling teacher coaching and writing enrichment for the school. Her colleagues eventually courted her to join the school’s leadership team.
It turned out Alsaad’s reputation as a young talent wasn’t just getting noticed in her school. One day, out of the blue, she got a call from a preschool-through-eighth-grade private school in Dearborn. They were impressed with the volunteer work she was doing through the Islamic Center of America and wanted her to interview for the school’s open principal position. “I was thinking, ‘No way. I don’t have the experience. I did not feel completely ready for that,’” she remembers. “I mean, maybe someday that would be the goal, but I wanted to work my way up to that.” But Alsaad decided to go ahead and at least do the interview. It went great, and soon after, she got a call with an official offer. After teaching for four years, and at the age of just 26, Alsaad decided to try her luck at being a school principal.
Alsaad says the next three years were the “most amazing experience” of her professional life, one that was marked by challenges, learning curves, personal growth and some big successes. When she took the helm as principal, the school was confronting a puzzling situation. It served students who seemed to have all the traditional advantages. They came from mostly upper-middle class families. They were high achievers in the classroom. They had after-school schedules packed with extracurriculars. And, unlike at her previous school, almost all the kids spoke English as a first language. But the school wasn’t seeing the expected results on the state standardized tests. Alsaad’s mission from the board was to lead the way toward lasting progress.
One of her first big diagnoses was that the culture of the school needed some tweaking. Morale wasn’t great. The staff felt more like a collection of individuals than a team. That was not Alsaad’s style, and she wanted to set a new tone, restoring a sense of positivity and mission to the day-to-day. “When I met the staff, I was immediately struck by how special they were. They had genuine care for the students and it was clear that they were there because they truly wanted to make a difference,” she says. “So we had great building blocks. We just had to figure out how to make this a more cooperative effort.” Alsaad started with small things. She began holding staff meetings twice a week, giving teachers more opportunities to connect, share ideas and support one another in addressing classroom challenges. She also brought on an assistant, which allowed her to dedicate more time and attention to directly supporting both teachers and students.
She also put more of an emphasis on data and overhauled the curriculum. Before her arrival, teachers had a great deal of autonomy in how they approached instruction, which brought creativity and flexibility to the classroom. But Alsaad noticed that this approach sometimes made it difficult to ensure consistency from one grade level to the next. “A first grade teacher might not have been fully aware of what skills or standards were emphasized in second grade,” Alsaad explains. “That sometimes created gaps in learning expectations and made it harder for teachers to build on each other’s work.” To address this, Alsaad created a more consistent and collaborative framework for the educational experience — one that preserved teacher creativity while ensuring that all students were building the strong foundation they needed to succeed in every grade. She made standards the centerpiece of the school’s educational effort, and purchased a cohesive, integrated curriculum for the entire school, so everybody was on the same page. The staff would continually review outcome data in team meetings — not to punish teachers, but to collectively target specific areas for improvement. Once she noticed colleagues spontaneously citing metrics and helping each other troubleshoot, she knew things were heading in the right direction.
Alsaad says it was definitely challenging sometimes to get buy-in for these kinds of changes — especially as a young newcomer to the school. She thinks she ultimately succeeded without too many hiccups for a few reasons. One, she was relentlessly positive, not punitive. She always made sure the teachers knew she had their backs and wasn’t shy about going to the board to get staff the resources they needed. Second, as a young person, she knew she had to project confidence and professionalism — especially when she had to say no to things. “You have to set that expectation. Some parents wanted personalized favors, but I didn't make room for that unless it was geared towards our school mission and vision,” she says. “After they realized my style, they appreciated my input because, at the end of the day, it was to better assist the students.” Finally, the results spoke for themselves. When test scores started to rise after Alsaad’s first year and continued to climb the next two years, the success created its own self-sustaining momentum.
Despite these achievements, Alsaad got a sense that it might be time to move on after her third year. She had accomplished a lot. The school was a completely different place to work. The board was thrilled with the results. “But I started to see that I wanted more room to grow and expand my skills,” she remembers. Alsaad was starting to get really interested in policy — especially big picture stuff, like how AI was going to change the education environment. When she notified the board of her intention to resign, they were shocked and tried to get her to stay. But she’d already made up her mind to seek her next adventure.
To kick things off, she’s returned to her roots. A two-time alum, Alsaad enrolled in the Doctor of Education program at UM-Dearborn in 2023 and is again teaming up with Professor of Reading and Language Arts Dara Hill, with whom she did her master’s thesis. Alsaad is focusing her dissertation research on a major contemporary challenge in education: Nationally, a third to a half of new teachers leave the profession within their first five years, and Alsaad suspects part of this attrition has to do with a missing layer of support between a teacher’s college years and their first few years in the classroom. “On the university side, you have your student teaching and your other field experiences, but it may not be quite enough. Teachers may still need a little something extra,” she says, noting that some of the challenging intangible skills, like discipline and classroom management are mostly learned through experience. “This is why, in some districts, you see a reluctance to hire new teachers. But with the shortages we’re experiencing in Michigan, we absolutely need new teachers and need to keep them in the profession.” Right now, Alsaad is investigating potential solutions, like mentoring programs that pair veteran and new educators, and teacher-led professional development that enables teachers to learn from their peers, a modality Alsaad says rank-and-file educators tend to prefer. She’s hoping her dissertation work can help put together a “secret formula” that helps new teachers find their stride and stay in the classroom.
Still just in her early 30s, Alsaad finds it hard to anticipate exactly what her future might involve. Even as she pursues her EdD, she’s still working full-time as an elementary writing coach for a public school (a role she was, again, recruited for). And she expects she’ll want to “stay close to the students” rather than take a policy job or superintendent position, a common path for EdD grads. In fact, her ultimate dream is to open her own preschool — one with an experimental approach that she’s still honing, but would nurture innovation-focused thinking among children through a nature-based education. At this stage of her life, she says she’s still looking to think big, create novel things from scratch and push the limits of what an education can be.
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Story by Lou Blouin
