By Timothy R. Olsen ’09, M.B.A. ’18

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Jeff Dahdah and Amy Reid,  both 2016 Utah State University graduates, couldn’t have imaged a year ago where they’d be now. The couple had settled back into life in Utah after some time living in the Midwest and were enjoying continued success in their chosen profession. However, frustrations with that profession and a desire for a greater impact pulled them in a new direction. 

Now, a year later, the pair leaves their house and listens to their favorite radio morning show, “Khaled and Dana in the mornings,” and tries to pick up new phrases from the hosts. It’s not always the easiest task, because the hosts mix in some Arabic, a language the U.S. State Department classifies as a Category IV or “super-hard” language, with their English. It’s one of only five in that category, and takes approximately 88 weeks, or 2200 class hours, to learn. 

But Jeff and Amy are learning, slowly, each day, because they are now working at a school in the Middle Eastern country of Jordan, where Arabic is the primary language.

Located in the city of Amman, the Abdul Hamid Sharaf School — which is primarily English-speaking —was started in 1980 by Jeff’s grandparents and is now run by his uncle and father. Since arriving to the country in January of this year, the couple has been working at the school — an eclectic K-12 day school that houses a diverse population of roughly 600 students. It’s something they wouldn’t have dreamed of just a few months prior.

“Definitely like a little bit of culture shock at first,” Jeff says. “I think the first month we were here we were just like, ‘What are we doing?’”

Despite their recent foray into the educational world, the couple started out on a very different path. They met at Utah State University in 2015 while navigating the university’s broadcast journalism program and working for the student newspaper, The Utah Statesman. Upon their graduation in 2016, they both landed jobs working for KMVT News in Twin Falls, Idaho, where they spent two years before moving on to reporter and multimedia journalist jobs in Madison, Wisconsin. 

It was there they got married in February of 2021 by a judge with only two friends in attendance as their families watched on Zoom. In true pandemic — and Wisconsin — fashion, they tied the knot outside while it was a brisk minus-20 degrees.

That fall, Jeff and Amy returned to Utah to work for KSL — Amy as a producer and Jeff as a photojournalist. But in December 2023, Amy left due to growing frustration over the media’s portrayal of the conflict in Gaza and Jeff also began pondering other opportunities. As they contemplated what to do next, an interesting option emerged, one that would take them halfway across the world.

Jeff, who is part Palestinian, has family he grew up visiting in Jordan, and is a dual citizen of the United States and Jordan, has always struggled with the media’s portrayal of the conflict between Palestine and Israel. Those frustrations only became more pronounced with the recent conflict in the Middle East.

“I really believe in and believed in journalism when I got into it, but it always felt like it fell short. I switched my major to journalism in 2014 when there was a war in Gaza because I wanted to see more Arab voices. I used to joke that [Utah State] was probably the only state school that was getting an education in Middle East foreign policy through their student newspaper.

“I was always wanting for something more out of it, and as rewarding as journalism was for me in all these other ways, there was this really personal way for me that it felt like I was just pushing a mountain that would not move. I’m just like, ‘Hey, let’s be sympathetic to Arabs, let’s just try to be human with Arabs.”

Now, living less than an hour away from the Israeli border and roughly three hours away from the Gaza Strip, that human element has taken on a whole new meaning. Several of the teachers and students at AHSS, along with much of the population of Jordan, have ties to Palestine as many Palestinian refugees settled in Jordan after the creation of the State of Israel in 1948.

“Every tiny update is something that the entire school is talking about, even like young kids care very deeply about these small updates, which is kind of sad,” Amy says. “When I’m putting together my lesson plans, I’m like, ‘Is this really appropriate for a fifth grader?’ But they’re talking about this anyway, on their own. They’re reading about this anyway, on their own. And it’s really sad to see such young kids have to be faced with something like that.”

However, as heavy as things may be at times, Jeff says day-to-day life in Amman — a place he visited throughout his childhood while growing up in Salt Lake City — is as peaceful as it’s always been, and the visible effects of the nearby conflict are minimal.

And while the student population is primarily Jordanian, the school houses students from all over the world. Students from Singapore, Korea, Ukraine, and Guatemala, among many other countries, attend AHSS — many working on their third or fourth language. While more commonplace now than when the school opened in 1980, that kind of diversity is still one of the things that makes the school so unique. At that time, schools were mostly split between Muslim or Christian students, and while that is still the case for many, AHSS was one of the first to offer a place for students who didn’t fit into those demographics. 

“You look at the landscape now and there’s a lot more schools like this,” Jeff says. So, while there’s still the public schools, segregated based off gender, the religious schools segregated based off faith, there are also a lot of like American system and British system schools that are kind of on this same model.”

Though navigating such dramatic career and lifestyle shifts at the same time has been a lot for Jeff and Amy, the feeling of making a difference in the world continues to motivate them daily. 

“I think as different as the cultures are, and like, we don’t even fully speak the same language. I have to slow down every single lesson that I do and consciously talk slowly so that they can understand what I’m saying,” says Amy, who grew up in Sandy. “But even with all that, it just feels like, in a way, time I’d spend in a school in the U.S. They’re just kids and … they’re just caring people.

“It’s hard to see these images and videos that we’ll see coming out of Gaza. Those kids are just like the kids that I’m teaching every day. Those adults look just like the teachers or the parents that are coming in [to the school]. I feel like I had so much humanity before, but it just feels so personal now.”

Jeff agrees. 

“Yeah, I don’t think there’s anything quite as healing as just person-to-person contacts and relationships,” he says. “After spending so much time just seeing people in the worst states possible, mentally, physically, and then getting to see people that look very much like that just run around and play at recess or like get excited when they learn something, it’s been very healing. It’s putting a positive face on these people instead of a tragic face.”