Our Team

Naveed Mir

Naveed grew up in the UK and has over ten years experience teaching in schools in the in both Key Stages 1 and 2. Her previous roles include Year Group Leader, History Coordinator and Modern Foreign Languages Coordinator.

She also spent some time in Egypt studying Modern Standard Arabic. During her role as the MFL Coordinator she was part of an initiative introducing Arabic as part of the MFL Curriculum to Non Arabic Speaking children.

She  currently lives in Doha with her husband and two children.

Simon Berry

Simon joined the team at DESS as the specialist computing teacher in September 2018. He has over 18 years of experience teaching in the north east of England as both a class teacher and computing specialist. He has over 18 years of experience teaching in the north east of England as both a class teacher and computing specialist. Before traing to be a teacher at Durham University, Simon studied for a degree in Information Technology at Teesside University. He is also a Raspberry Pi Certified Educator. In his spare time he likes to read, support Middlesbrough FC, watch science fiction movies, listen to loud music and build robots out of Lego!

Holly Williams

Holly moved to Doha from the UK in 2010, where she was previously a class and specialist French teacher at a prep school in Durham. She has taught across the school at DESS, and acted as Head of Computing for a number of years, until switching to Head of French in 2018. Holly grew up in the UK, France and Germany, then later studied French with Linguistics at the University of St Andrews, followed by a PGCE at Newcastle University. She is passionate about the teaching and learning of modern foreign languages, and hopes to instil this in our enthusiastic pupils here at DESS.

Salwa Abusalih

Salwa joined Doha English Speaking School in September 2013. She has been instrumental in using the material provided from the Supreme Education Council in Qatar, and adapting this to a deliverable syllabus for the Native Arabic groups of students at DESS. She also designs the syllabus for the Intermediate Group of students using the Modern Foreign Languages syllabus as a guide. Previously, Salwa was the Head of Arabic & Islamic Studies for 13 years at Ras Al Khaimah English Speaking School (RAKESS) in the UAE. During this time, she established the program of ‘Arabic as a foreign language’ for the first time at the school, allowing non-Arabic speakers to learn the basics of the language and excel at the GCSE and IB examinations. In addition to teaching Arabic, Salwa is also responsible for the Islamic Studies program at DESS, planning and delivering the learning objectives of the subject to our students. She is a mother of three; a doctor, a dentist, and a Finance professional.

Elaine Wills

Elaine has worked at DESS for 27 years. Initially she worked in Year Six for 7 years, during which time she held the post of Literacy coordinator, before joining the Curriculum Management Team where she was responsible for Record Keeping and Assessment. In 2000 she created the International Centre for Music in response to demands for music, dance and drama tuition at DESS. During the six years of running the centre she also taught on a part time basis, working from Reception to Year Six. In 2006 Elaine returned to DESS on a full time basis. She now runs the Learning Support unit as the school’s Special Educational Needs Coordinator (SENCO)."

Andrew Woodhouse

Neal Gough