7 minute read
The Reality of Muslim Children in Public Schools
our schools’ core mission is to guide our children and provide them with resources to strengthen their faith.
The Arabic/Quran track, which had six presentations from seven distinguished presenters, spoke on how, like everyone else, educators had to adjust their private lives while meeting their job requirements. These teachers soon realized that they needed more adaptivity skills because teaching a foreign language requires a certain amount and quality of efforts when there is no eye contact, body language and a face to face connection. After mentioning how Arabs and converts always want to understand Islam from its main source, she presented a collection of helpful resources for achieving these goals.
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Lina Kholaki (Arabic language consultant, Los Angeles Unified district) and Nacheda Tizani (New Horizons School, Pasadena, Calif.) delivered several free websites and resources for teachers to use as well as innovative ideas and activities that increase their students’ engagements and maximize their use of time.
Dalia El Deeb (director, Ahlul Qur’an
THIS YEAR’S EVENT FEATURED THREE TRACKS: ISLAMIC STUDIES, ARABIC/QURAN, AND CURRICULUM AND INSTRUCTION. A TOTAL OF 530 DOMESTIC AND FOREIGN PARTICIPANTS REGISTERED FOR THIS VIRTUAL CONFERENCE.
This track’s presenters addressed the main current and recurrent challenges confronting these teachers. One presentation addressed general interest in the field; others were more specific, ranging from the importance of being accredited and acquiring a solid background in teaching to appreciating Arabic’s increasing recognition as an international language — it is the third or fourth language of interest at the international level — and connecting it to the Quran.
The main focus of most presentations was helping teachers transition to virtual teaching by using technology.
The first presentation’s thought provoking title, “Arabic Varieties: Which One to Teach?” allowed Ahmed Khorshid, who has taught at the American University in Cairo for over 30 years, to talk about Modern Standard Arabic, classical Arabic and the numerous colloquial varieties/dialects. His intent was to highlight the need to “avoid unintentional mixing of the varieties.” Most Islamic schools choose Fusha (classical Arabic), and so “it is important for teachers not to let their ‘ammiya (dialect) affect their teaching.”
Amal Elhoseiny (New Horizons School, Pasadena, Calif.) reminded teachers about the goal of teaching Fuhsa-style Arabic in Islamic schools so their students can master Arabic gradually and thus connect with the Qur’an and learn how to read it correctly. Academy) drew attention with her vibrant presentation and videos. She also shared hands-on activities that help keep students engaged in her Arabic virtual classroom while challenging them with rigorous tasks and questions to maintain their interest. Nada Shaath (World Languages and Cultures Specialist, Los Angeles Unified School District), who has helped and coached many Arabic teachers, explained how Islamic school teachers can become accredited.
Basmah T. Al Saleem (founder, e-Turn Training & Consulting) spoke about the ECRIF (Encounter, Clarify, Remember, Internalize, Fluency) strategy on how to set up an Arabic class to achieve the lesson’s goals, starting from warmup time to getting the best of the lesson’s prime time, when students can still focus and absorb new material, and ending with the best ways to wrap up an Arabic class. She tackled the ways and means of teaching all receptive and productive language skills, and urged teachers to remain positive and enthusiastic: “Remember that change is hard at first, messy in the middle and gorgeous at the end.”
The Curriculum and Instruction track presented opportunities to advance knowledge and its practical application in education. Amaarah DeCuire (president, Paragon Education Consulting) and Rehenuma Asmi (executive board member, Center for Islam in the Contemporary World, Shenandoah University) spoke on “Prophetic Pedagogy.” Shaikh Hasib Noor (founder and president,The Legacy Institute) discussed “Educating Modern Muslims.” Douglas Reeves (founder, DouglasReeves.com) addressed “Social and Emotional Learning/ Motivating Students” and Tony Wagner (senior research fellow, Learning Policy Institute) talked about “Preparing Young People to Bring the Skills of Innovation.”
DeCuire and Asmi explored how the Prophet humanized his students and approached them as individuals with unique cultures and personalities. Noor analyzed how Islam and secularism impact our youth and their worldview and asked Islamic schools to use the Quranic teaching guidance, and not the public school’s paradigm, to shape their students’ structure, content, pedagogy and culture.
During her brief summary of the seven essential elements/concepts in Islamic education, she urged Islamic schools to foster a collective mindset in students, where they become aware and invested in the collective good and can act responsibly toward the umma and the world.
Reeves’ highly interactive dialogue about the various strategies for igniting students’ motivation emphasized the implementation of effective grading practices to provide the accurate, specific and timely feedback required to improve student performance. Wagner discussed how knowledge is now a free commodity and how the ability to innovate will guarantee students and our country a prosperous future. He overviewed the five outliers in teachers’ practice that cultivate creative problem-solving in innovative schools, which enables them to break away from traditional schooling methods, and provided valuable online resources.
Each session was followed by a Q&A session and a rich discussion of the topics presented. Overall, this track was a great success.
This year’s WCEF’s inspiring and informative program attracted unprecedented attendance. Due to the online platform, we even attracted educators from abroad.The positive feedback was very refreshing. The recorded sessions are available at https:// isna.net/education-forums/. ih
Leila Shatara is president, CISNA, and head of school, Noor-Ul-Iman School; Azra Naqvi is principal, Hadi School of Excellence; and Thouraya Boubetra, an executive committee member in the Arabic Teacher Council of Southern California, is a former online Arabic education director of the Aldeen Foundation.
Rising with Resilience
BY SHAZA KHAN
The challenges of 2020 gave all of us the opportunity to prove that necessity is the mother of invention. The pandemic created multilayered problems that caused Islamic organizations and schools to rethink their “normal” and reinvent how they would go about delivering their core programs and services— or enhance them to meet the new needs of their constituents.
The work that the Islamic Schools League of America (ISLA; www.theisla.org) does is no different. With the new set of challenges presented by Covid-19, ISLA had to rethink how they deliver on an annual tradition, the ISLA Leadership Retreat, designed to provide professional and spiritual development to full-time Islamic school leaders across the nation.
This year’s 9th annual ISLA Leadership Retreat was planned to take place right before the presidential elections in the last weeks of October 2020 at the Diyanet Center of America (https://diyanetamerica.org), only a 30-minute drive from Washington, D.C. ISLA’s executive director had visited the location, planned out the lodging and conference logistics and was working with the program committee to integrate elements of nature-based excursions, team-building activities and a “field trip” to the Capitol and the Nation’s Mosque in the heart of the city. The theme of the retreat would be related
to fostering diversity, equity and inclusion in Islamic schools.
Yet, in March 2020 when WHO officially declared Covid-19 a pandemic, ISLA indefinitely postponed the event. They refocused their energies on providing immediate support to Islamic school leaders and teachers to help them transition to remote and hybrid learning, fundraising during a pandemic, accessing federal emergency funding and exploring their own role and responsibility around racism in the United States and within our Islamic institutions.
There was little time to reconsider the ISLA Leadership Retreat, which has been a tradition for nine years. However, as things started to quiet down (relatively speaking) by November, the organization reconvened its program committee and explored how it could create an event that could help Islamic school educators reflect on, appreciate and celebrate the challenges they faced and overcame in this historic year.
If there was any one word that could capture the spirit of our Islamic school educators amidst all of the chaos and crisis created by Covid-19, it was “Resilience.” In spite of everything else happening in the world, Islamic school teachers and leaders showed up every day to provide young people with consistency, community and social and emotional support to help them navigate through these difficult times. For several months at the start of the new academic year, administrators participated in weekly meetings hosted by ISLA to connect and learn from one another, and teachers attended weekly “Teach with Tech” workshops. Their persistent efforts to meet the needs of their students were remarkable, even as many struggled with personal health concerns and anxieties experienced by the broader public.
While typically the ISLA Leadership Retreat takes place in a natural setting, away from the hustle and bustle of everyday life, and occurs over an entire weekend with physical activities and team building opportunities, there was no such option for the ISLA Leadership Retreat 2020; it had to be virtual. Given the “Zoom fatigue” that everyone was experiencing, ISLA decided to host a 2-hour event in place of its traditional retreat that would be upbeat and fun.
Over 75 participants attended the virtual retreat. The program theme was “Rising with Resilience.” Towards this end, educators were requested to send in a brief video to reflect on what helped them remain resilient in 2020.
