Beyond Atrium: Sitting Down with Azzaam Abdur-Rahman ‘23 and Maya Khalil ‘19
This winter, I sat down with Azzaam Abdur-Rahman ‘23 and Maya Khalil ‘19 to hear about each of their compelling intellectual and academic journeys beginning at Atrium. They are joyfully pursuing longtime passions and newly discovered ones. Wonderfully ethical and thoughtful young people, I feel bursting pride in who Maya and Azzaam each are – and who they are becoming.
To see Azzaam, I traveled to Phillips Andover Academy, where he is in tenth grade. We met in the dining hall, filled with diverse students from around New England, the U.S., and the world. He wears his Middle School State Track Championship medal, a treasured memento from his Atrium days. He responds to my first question with an unexpected – but utterly characteristic – Atrium moment.
Tell me a story about Atrium.
We were learning some math in Middle School, and afterwards I was running at cross country practice, and I was just thinking about the math concepts the whole time. I was running up a hill, and I was coached to swing my arms going up hills to make it better. I remember wondering, does swinging your arms create an exponential relationship or a linear relationship? If you don't swing your arms, are you going to be exponentially slower or slower in a linear way? Applying math has always been a natural thing for me – it’s how I think about the world. So I love physics!
Can you recall when this interest started for you?
I remember one moment when I was playing at home – I was in fourth or fifth grade at Atrium. My mom had bought a magnetic kit, and I was suddenly like – magnets are like MAGIC! I said to myself at that moment: if I ever make a big invention with magnets, I'm going to cite this moment as the moment I became interested. So now, in high school, I’m going into physics and actually learning about magnets and their potential and practical applications.
You’d like to take physics further?
First, I just want to say that physics is the most challenging class for me, and my most challenging classes tend to be my favorites. To consistently do well, I have to try really hard, and that's what attracts me to it. That, and learning things that are so small, like attraction at the atomic level, but then you learn how big and important they actually are, like how particle accelerators are based on such core physics principles.
You’ve always had many dimensions. For your Eighth Grade Passion Project, you taught yourself how to play piano! Are you still pursuing music?
I've taken music electives almost every term, and I've been pretty strong at it. I feel like I'm not that good technically or anything like that, but I still perform well in my classes. I think a lot of your performance in the arts comes from your own curiosity and from being creative.
Looking back, what has served you well from your days at Atrium?
I remember being able to dive into what was interesting to me. Sometimes in advisory, we would spend the period with our rolling desks pushed up against each other, playing with math problems together, just exploring concepts together. My independence was really built throughout Middle School at Atrium. You could always be challenging yourself, pushing yourself.
Atrium also built up my social ability. I was pushed to branch out to every sphere socially and make new connections at Atrium. That happened naturally for everyone because it's such a small community, and I connected on a deeper level with everyone. This allowed me to pivot really strongly into such a big high school. Coming to Andover, I’ve branched out actively to make those connections with people. People here ask me, “what's your friend group?” and I have like five friend groups! I hang out with the math kids a lot. I hang out with the music kids a lot and the sports kids a lot. Even people that I don't have similar interests with, I hang out with them too. Atrum taught me to actively branch out and find people with different interests.
In high school, who are the important adults for you?
I came to Andover with an expectation from Atrium about being close to teachers – I think that led me to pursue those relationships with them. My advisor has been very important. She knows me across all of my pursuits, and she's been very supportive across them. She's also just a very nice person to have in my corner. The advisor of the Muslim Student Association is, as well – he's been very important to me. He's known me throughout my whole career here – he is like a point person for me, and I connect with him on a deep level. My English teacher and my history teacher from last term, I connect really well with them, too.
A final question: What advice do you have for today’s Atrium students?
Learn to actively make the most of your experiences – that will help you make the most of your experiences wherever you go. You need to actively challenge yourself; you can't just settle. Push yourself to expand your passions when you're not being forced to – that’s the most important thing. Atrium has resources to help you find your passions.
The best part about Azzaam is that in class, he's always smiling. Not many students really get physics when they first encounter it, but he can put things together from chapters studied months ago – he really gets it! He's really motivated, but not by the grades. He's really curious, so it's just joyful for him to learn things.
Tracey Golini, Andover Instructor in Physics
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Well known at Atrium and then Concord Academy for her enduring passion for environmental and life sciences – and for raising chickens – it’s fitting to meet Maya Khalil ‘19 at Bowdoin’s glass-walled Roux Center for the Environment at Bowdoin. Her interests have broadened considerably, inspired in part by teaching preschool during her gap year. Maya is thinking about education policy and teaching, physics and the Arabic language, and picking music for her eclectic college radio show.
From your gap year and your first Bowdoin classes, what new perspectives on learning and Atrium do you have?
I'm taking an education class, and it turns out I really enjoy it. I like theory, and this class is called “Power and Dilemmas in Education.” Right now, we're reading a book about how Black and Latino students in a good school are still underserved compared to their white peers and all the different ways that shows up. That's been really fascinating – it combines a lot of the things I like about humanities and about science.
I taught at two preschools as an assistant teacher during my gap year, with lots of play-based curriculum, outside time, exploration time. That reminded me of my kindergarten experience at Atrium. We had a big focus on social-emotional learning, so I spent a lot of time thinking about how I'm so glad that at Atrium, I got to do the things my students were doing; I know a lot of kids don't get to do this. I also think about going into teaching, and I’d love to work somewhere like Atrium – I definitely see how unique Atrium is among its peers.
What else about Atrium still resonates for you now?
I think about my middle school experience a lot – so many things! Like the habits of mind, and doing so much self-reflection and looking at rubrics – things like that helped me understand why metacognition is so important. What the Atrium middle school faculty taught me felt really clearly intentional. Like how to bring people into the community, make sure everyone's heard, how to explain things, and different ways of working with people who think differently. In middle school, I got to dive really deep into my interests, purely focused on learning and not at all on grades. For example, through Science Olympiad, I could go really deep into water quality or macroinvertebrates. That was powerful for me. I got to do what I wanted to do in middle school, which was learn about ecology and just be kind of a nerd overall!
What have you discovered so far in your college studies?
It's been very exciting to explore lots of different subjects because previously, I've been very focused on life sciences. It’s also made me realize that I would love to do research in biology or ecology. I really want to take advanced ecology classes – something that I particularly like about ecology is the math-modeling side. I’d love to add more knowledge to the ecology field. With physics, I don’t have a particular interest in adding more knowledge to that field – other people can do that – but I do really enjoy that way of thinking. Physics feels really interesting and challenging to think about. I'm also taking Arabic now just for fun because I want to know the language. It's really satisfying to be able to read in the alphabet. There's a lot to learn about culture and dialects. It’s made me very curious and fascinated about linguistics.
What about co-curricular activities?
My orientation trip was whitewater kayaking. That was really fun – different from anything I'd done before. I've been doing American Sign Language club. I would say I probably know the least in that group but it’s been really fun. I go to the Middle East and North African Student Association – MENASA – and that's a nice social way to decompress. And Tea Club, too!
And you host a show on the campus radio station, WBOR?
Yes! My Friday morning radio show. Once, my grandmother called in to tell us to stop playing so much Elvis! Our category is quote-unquote “Experimental,” and I host it with my floormate. We do a different theme every week – one was “Sea Creatures.” The theme can be very abstract or very literal. We're hoping to do one coming up on “Tomfoolery,” which will be only songs by people named Tom. We only have five so far, so we’ll have to see!
Final thoughts about Atrium?
There’s a culture of care at Atrium, and Atrium is also just a very kind place. If someone's not being kind, it really sticks out, which, as it turns out, is not always the case everywhere we go. I feel like that made me more academically courageous, more willing to take risks than other people necessarily are.
Maya listens to advice, and she's very careful as a student. When you put her in pair work, she's great! She works collaboratively and so effectively with her classmates. It has been a true pleasure to have her in my class and to get to know her; she’s exceptionally bright, with tremendous potential!
Professor Batool Khattab, Bowdoin College Lecturer in Arabic
Atrium School strives to instill in young people a drive to solve problems and innovate; confidence in identity and voice; leadership through empathy and inclusivity; and an abiding commitment to citizenship, sustainability, and impact. So clearly in Azzaam’s and Maya’s words, I feel the powerful presence of these multi-dimensional qualities, formed uniquely in each of them. Their intellectual curiosity and playfulness fuel self-discovery and humane self-confidence. Whatever communities they join, form, or lead, they’ll kindly and positively change for the better. In Azzaam and Maya, deep excellence with joy is palpable!