Guest Speaker Questions

I am very excited for the guest speaker to come in today. I plan on asking him questions mostly dealing with his experience in education as a Palestinian. I'm not sure if he went to high school in the United States, but I am particularly interested in gaining some insight and clarity to the following questions:

1) If you did go to high school in the United States, do you feel like your school had an inclusive curriculum that appropriately educated students about your culture?
2) If you did go to high school in Palestine, how do you feel the education values differ over there?
3) Do you have any Palestinian or otherwise Middle Eastern literature in mind that you feel would be great contributions to an English classroom? How do you feel about Kite Runner?
4) What do you think the greatest anxieties facing Middle Eastern students in America are today?
5) What suggestions do you have for me as a future English teacher in embracing my Middle Eastern students, Middle Eastern culture in general, and incorporating Middle Eastern studies successfully into my curriculum?

Thoughts on "War, Terrorism, and Our Classroom."

I came across two articles from the " war, terrorism, and our classroom" site that I would absolutely consider using in my classroom. The first one was an article called "Not in Our Sons Name," written by the parents of a man who was lost in the World Trade Center attacks. In the article, they talk about their reactions to the grief they felt and the way the government seemed to be handling the attacks. They said:

"Our son died a victim of an inhuman ideology. Our actions should not serve the same purpose. Let us grieve. Let us reflect and pray. Let us think about a rational response that brings real peace and justice to our world. But let us not as a nation add to the inhumanity of our times."


The article then suggested using this in the classroom by having the students read it and then respond the the following prompt:

Discuss how Phyllis and Orlando Rodriguez would respond to the policies of the U.S. government in the weeks after they wrote this letter.

Find a newspaper letter to the editor about post-September 11th events - terrorism, the war in Afghanistan, the new anti-terrorism legislation, etc. - and write your own letter in response. If you like, write this from the Rodriguezes' perspective.

I love this idea because it breeds empathy for those directly effected by the attacks, but not in a way that calls on violent vengeance for the death of their son, which is a sentiment I feel many people instantly gravitated to.

Another interesting article I found on this website that I would consider using in my classroom was "Letters to this Universe," where students write anonymous letters addressing the issue of how they personally deal with the grief of losing someone. Everyone drops their letters into a "Letters to the Universe" box, afterwhich the box circulates the rooms and students take turns pulling out a random letter and reading it to the class. I like this idea because it connects students to each other, but more importantly to humanity. It allows them to understand that everyone deals with grief and although there are different ways of coping with the sense of loss, it is an experience that is shared universally.

Teach Me!

I am a little ashamed to admit that I honestly don't know a whole lot about the middle east. I know the names of various countries- Palestine, Syria, Lebanon, Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, Saudi Arabia, etc. I know that they speak several different languages, Arabic and Farsi included. I guess a bit about Islamic culture and traditions too, but I'm pretty ignorant as to many of the actual beliefs of Islam, other than that Mohammed is their prophet, they don't drink, they refer to God as Allah, celebrate Ramadan with fasting, and worship the Quran. I also know a bit (a very small arcane bit) about the ancient history of the middle east, such as, we get our coffee drinking habits from that region.

There was a pretty large middle-eastern population at my high school and for a little while around tenth grade I hung out with a crowd of them a lot. I picked up some vulgar phrases in Arabic from them and learned a bit about the family life habits of some middle eastern families living in America.

Realizing that I pretty much know absolutely nothing about the middle east has made me extremely eager for this unit to enlighten my feeble little American brain.