7 minute read
The Renewal of Islamic Education
These videos were compiled into a “video hug,” that weaved together the participants’ segments into an uplifting and inspirational testimony of their collective resolve (https:// tinyurl.com/isla-resilience).
Additionally, the retreat included raffles and giveaways with gift cards to their vendor of choice, a gift card to all participants to The ISLA Bookstore (www.theislabookstore. org), courtesy of partnering organization, Al-Furqaan Foundation, and some free professional development workshops for winning schools.
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While the virtual event was only two hours long, the program included a variety of interactive activities. It began with a beautiful recitation of Surah Duha (Chap. 93), connected to the theme of “rising with resilience” by IANT Quranic Academy’s (www.myiqa. org) Shaykh Muhammad Khan. Participants were guided through a mindfulness practice led by Wadud Hassan, founder of Define 360 (www.define360.online), reflecting upon some of Allah’s names and attributes. Kathy Jamil, former ISLA board chair and founding principal of Universal School in Buffalo, N.Y., and current educational consultant (http://litconsulting.org), led a breakout session highlighting the importance of leading with clarity. ISLA executive director Shaza Khan concluded the event by sharing ISLA’s growth over the past year and upcoming programs and services that will help to support Islamic schools in 2021.
The event was remarkably close in spirit to the physical event, despite the many constraints of being held virtually and for such a short duration. There was a feeling of community, excitement and celebration, with moments for reflection and connection to God and the Sunna of the Prophet (salla Allahu ‘alayhi wa sallam). Due to it being held online, many educators were able to participate in the ISLA Retreat for the first time.
One retreat participant reflected, “I almost didn’t join because I am really tired of virtual experiences, but I’m glad I did!” And another summarized sentiments culminating from a year-long endeavor to collaborate with Islamic school colleagues across the country, “Truly a new experience. This pandemic made us find other ways to have this retreat, not miss it, and see all the people we have been meeting during the yearly retreats. Jazakum Allah Khairan for all you do for the Islamic education.” ih
The Reality of Muslim Children in Public Schools
Teachers want to help us — we have to show them how
BY MICHAEL ABRAHAM
The average Muslim parent in the U.S. has concerns about how public schools influence their children. While sending them to Islamic schools might be preferable, the reality is that the vast majority of Muslim children attend public schools, where they will spend over 16,000 hours of their growing-up years. It is common knowledge in our communities that this particular worry has always been prevalent and is only heightened today.
At the same time, the average public school teacher, along with the education system itself, has been facing the task of teaching an ever-increasingly diverse student body in the current century. This was especially buttressed by the decade of 2000-10, which saw the U.S. welcome more immigrants than any other decade in its history. There are now more Muslim students in public schools than ever before. The reaction to this increasing diversity has been to amp up the prioritization and prevalence of training teachers and staff in multiculturalism and racial equity throughout pre-service teaching training programs, school policies and in-service professional development.
The result is that the average teacher now absorbs a nearly endless amount of messaging about the need to accept and respect students and families who are not from the same background as themselves. Racial equity and multicultural training are incorporated, at least in part, in nearly every school district proximal to an urban center, and standards for developing multicultural competencies are common to virtually all state teacher licensure requirements. What is generally known and felt by public school teachers is that the pressure to be “culturally responsive” and practice “culturally relevant pedagogy” is made apparent and strongly felt. However, what most find lacking, yet desperately desire, is a concrete “how to” manual when it comes to transforming what they have learned into real-world cultural competencies.
Here lies the grand opportunity for Muslims. Having analyzed and experienced this dynamic, seven years ago I
embarked upon creating a comprehensive professional development program for teachers of Muslim students. My goal was to give public school educators everything they needed to know so they could not only quell the private concerns of Muslim parents, but also show educators how to leverage Muslim students’ religio-cultural background in school in order to realize all of the shared secular goals that the education system and Muslim communities have in nurturing youth. dozens of districts. Some schools have had their entire staff take the training. During these interactions, one fact has become very clear: The educators’ reception of explicit instruction about Islam and how it interplays in the lives of Muslim Americans is not only overwhelmingly positive, but also with the sentiment that focusing on it is exactly what they have been looking for to help them understand and connect with their Muslim students and their families. As much as we might lament the state of
Parts of the program that I created and launched in 2017, “Engaging Muslim Students in Public Schools,” were originally done at educator conferences in the Twin Cities, and then as specialized presentations in a training program for in-service educators at Hamline University (St. Paul, Minn.). After that, it was conducted twice as a 24-hour training course for interested educators in Minneapolis. Hamline University has since accredited this program. That same year I began working on a condensed sixhour version of the training available educators that could be done in a one-day seminar and conducted them live — primarily in Minnesota, but also in other states as well.
I executed this work in a way designed to deliver an uncompromising message to educators: that Muslims value Islam and what it teaches, that a Muslim identity for their children is of vital importance to them and that there is an objective reality to what Islam authentically is and the values it upholds. Given these facts, teachers can use specific ways to support the positive development of a Muslim child’s identity in a secular public school setting. However, doing this successfully necessitates an authentic and comprehensive knowledge about Islam and Muslim communities.
To date, I have trained over 1,000 educators representing hundreds of schools and our youth, teachers who spend all day with them clearly know that their Muslim identity is important to them. They want to facilitate its positive development to whatever extent the families desire; however, they need us to show them how to do this.
This comprehensive knowledge involves extended and organized learning about Islam and our communities. This knowledge then has to be linked directly to the school setting, after which we can show educators how to (1) avoid giving offense unintentionally, (2) accommodate religious practice by informing the educators about the necessary particulars so a comfortable environment can be prepared for the youth to observe them and (3) how to use Islamic modes of pedagogy, an undertaking from which many educators are yearning to benefit.
The training also offers a full array of K-12 texts, texts that authentically demonstrate Islamic religiosity and worldviews as a legitimate and live perspective and way of life. Also, the training gives teachers the proper background information they need to teach about those texts authentically and thereby bring the desired truly culturally diverse perspective into the classroom.
Public school educators are vectors for how the larger society will understand a topic for, unlike the media, the education system fosters the actual discourse of society’s non-reactionary class of people. If we ever wish to cross the bridges that we need to cross in order to truly live out our hopes of practicing Islam in the U.S., then we have to comprehensively educate this country’s non-Muslims about what Islam really is. Doing this effectively, and with any type of scale and longevity, will inevitably be seeded in the public education system. The current time is ripe for us to move beyond pamphlet-type advocacy and prompt educators to acquire a deeper understanding of us and our religion.
This training is now available in book form (“Engaging Muslim Students inPublic Schools,” 2020) as well as an online course series. Sharing the book with your child’s teacher or principal and recommending they take the course online will benefit everyone.
Our schools are still local entities, and there is nothing they take more seriously than advocacy from parents. School administrations frequently have their staff take webinars or give them books to read, and everyone is looking for resources to help them better understand Muslim families. ih
Michael Abraham is a Muslim educator and author of “Engaging Muslim Students in Public Schools” (2020).
