Monday (5/16)
Today we taught the lesson we have been planning and preparing for the past 2 weeks, finally! The class happened to be during the last two blocks of the day right after lunch which is never the best time to have 7th graders, however the class that we taught was a very well-behaved, intelligent class. We started off by introducing what we were going to be seeing- saying that although we hear about muslim extremists and terrorist the most, these things can happen in any religion. We then split them up into groups by telling them to line up alphabetically by the last letter of their first name, silently. They did it pretty quickly and we then split them into 5 groups of 4, finding out that luckily the groups were very equally diverse between level of students and English language learners. They each started at a different station.
Station One: The Denmark Muhammad Cartoons. At this station the students had to look at 6 of the cartoons drawn in 2005, analyze them answering questions such as "Why might some people find these offensive?" Then the students looked at newspaper headlines and pictures of the Muslim reaction to the cartoons, answering questions such as "Do you think every Muslim had this reaction or only the extremists?"
Station Two: The Westboro Baptist Church (my personal favorite). At this station the students looked at posters from the groups protests saying "Thank God for dead soldiers" and "America is going to Hell" and then watched a quick news broadcast about them protesting at a Marine's funeral, the father suing them and losing. They then answered questioned like, "Does this contradict what you know about Christianity? How so?" and "Should they be allowed to protest?"
Station Three: Jim Jones and the People's Temple. They read a background summary of his cult and how over 900 people drank poison and committed mass suicide in 1978. They then listened to audio clips from Jones' actual speech convincing his people to commit suicide. Answering questions such as "Based on what you heard, why do you think they resorted to suicide?" "Are there any mainstream religions that support suicide?"
Station Four: Aum Shinrikyo the Japanese Doomsday Cult from 1995 that let out poisonous gas in the Tokyo subways. They read an article about what happened and answered questions like "Compare these actions to Jim Jones and the People's temple. Which do you think is more extreme- attacking others or mass suicide?"
Station Five: The Florida Koran Burning. The students were given a quick summary of what happened, how Terry Jones a Christian preacher in Florida and his congregation burned a Koran. They then looked at pictures and news headlines about Muslin reactions including a bombing killing 12 in a UN building. Then answering questions such as "Who is the extremist is this situation? Terry Jones for burning the Koran or the Muslims who responded with excessive violence?"
Emily and I walked around listening to conversations, answering questions, and giving them any additional information. I was blown away by some of the conversations they were having. A girl from Turkey whose family is Muslim mumbling "Im ashamed of these people" or a group looking up at me in utter shock and confusion after the Westboro Baptist station asking, "but I dont understand, how are they Christian? How can anyone think that that is right?" The innocence yet intelligence of the conversations was amazing. Unlike American children, these students do not grow up with prejudices or pre-conceived notions of Muslims, they barely know much about 9/11 so we really didn't have to force them into understanding that not all Muslims were extremists or terrorists. When we stressed this they pretty much said- well duh! of course not! Which I absolutely loved! We planned the lesson to take the entire 80 minute lesson, however because they are such good workers, they ended about 10 minutes early, so we had to discuss some of the ideas and responses they had- which I was not prepared for and had a mini heart attack! But we pulled it together and it went over great! As we were finishing up, I saw that I had about a minute to go, so I said I would leave them with one last thought. As Im finishing my sentence the bell rings and I stop, expecting everyone to get up and run out, yet no one moved! Not one student took their eyes away or started to pack up, they sat there waiting for me to finish and dismiss them- I again had a mini heart attack! Overall I was extremely nervous but I think it went great! Unfortunately we wont see that class again until Friday, and we wont be there because we will be on a train to Paris, but Ken will tell us what they say about it Im sure.
Tuesday (5/17)
Today we had a technology workshop for the entire day just for the humanities department. An IT teacher from an international school in Geneva came to give us tips and show us cool websites to use with our students and each other. I was nervous at first because I dont know how to work computers at all and I figured a workshop from 8:30 am to 3:30 pm would kill me. However, it was actually really fun and interesting. Instead of throwing all this information at us, he showed a few tools and websites and gave us time after each to play around with it and really learn them. We learned all the different Google tools- docs, forms, presentations, spread sheets. We also learned about a website called Diigo which allows you to save any cool websites to the web, not just your computer and allows you to share them with others! We joined a group with the other humanities teachers so any time they find a cool website or activity and they save it to Diigo, we can get it and will always have it! We learned some other really cool things that I can really see using in my classroom.
Wednesday and Thursday (5/18-19)
These two days have been pretty much the same, observing classrooms and helping individuals and groups. We have been working on making an assessment for the Islam unit. We are asking students to look at a news article that depicts Islam extremist actions as those of the entire religion. They must take that article and re-write it or re-create it through a project of their choice such as a news skit, a letter to the editor, a response video, etc. They must show the article is wrong by showing an understanding of mainstream Islam. We had to write the rubric last night and that was very difficult and frustrating because we had to stick with a template and criteria that the IB program gives but at the same time, make it fit to our project. Not to mention working together on it when we both have very different ideas and styles with the assessment and lesson. Today Ken looked it over and saw how frustrated we were and helped us with the wording. We are going to give the students a few articles or videos for the project so the last part we have to do is find those and put them together to give to the students. Next week we will present it to the students and oversee their work.
Friday- Monday
We will be in Paris!!!!
No comments:
Post a Comment