Drama as teaching tool re Israeli-Palestinian conflict

This play looks fascinating:
Precious Stones: Interview with playwright Jamil Khoury

Apparently it's the story of a wealthy Palestinian woman and a working-class Jewish woman, who try to start a dialogue group in Chicago in 1989 and end up falling in love.

I recommend checking out the article linked above—the description of the play (& especially of the author) is intriguing. (Don't be dissuaded by the opening paragraph, which is really, really bad writing at its finest. The writing in the rest of the article is quite bearable).

Khoury, whose father is Syrian & who was in the West Bank during the time the play takes place, identifies primarily as a "queer feminist," and at least from this article, it sounds like he really is a feminist. He says there's no "message" in the play—he says that "taking sides" would insult the intelligence of the audience.

Khoury talks about wanting to write believable, sympathetic characters from all perspectives, and all the work he had to do to be able to write characters whose views he wasn't used to sympathizing with (like the right-wing anti-Palestinian boss of the Jewish woman). Intriguingly, he has two women play all six characters, so that the same woman who portrays the anti-Palestinian boss also portrays the Palestinian lover.

It sounds like he does have a message, but it's that women relate to the conflict very differently from how men do, and also that there is a lot of diversity and internal dialogue within each "side" of the conflict.

This (especially the latter half) is an idea I have been struggling to convey to your average American for years. As I mentioned below, I just wrote a whole lesson plan that attempts to present eight views of the conflict for high school students, and I must say it wasn't very successful. It sounds like this play could be a great way to do that, without making students read a lot of political rhetoric from eight different people (yawn! plus—vocabulary!!!).

Although....heh, it would be interesting to see whether I'd get more flak from parents over making students read a lesbian love story or an interview with the leader of the al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigade.

There was a production of "Precious Stones" in Milwaukee on March 5—I really wish I'd known about it. It sounds incredible.

language family tree

I'm working on a semester curriculum to introduce sixth-graders to 'the beginning of history.' I'm very excited about it. One thing I've been wanting to do is have the students put the puzzle pieces together and make some conjectures about early human migrations. This is part of my overall idea that students should be learning to "think like historians," i.e. they should be doing real tasks of scholarship, not just filling in blanks.

As far as I can tell, there are two main sources of conjecture about early human migration among scientists: artifacts (tracing the spread of technology & decorative styles) and language (relationships between different languages, when one language split off from another, etc). I was very excited about the possibility of having students use linguistic data for this unit.

But I can't seem to find any information about language divergence as evidence re early human migration--at least, I can't find any information that isn't over my head. I can find the theories, which only whets my appetite further, because I never knew for example that Celtic and Breton are related all the way back to some root in southern Russia--and nothing's more fun than a theory you would never have guessed on your own.

But, I find no information that I can use to reconstruct a lesson to let students make this discovery for themselves. I can pretty much read anything in any field and get something out of it, but apparently linguistics (along with physics) is an exception to that. All I want is something simple--a key word whose translation in different languages is a clue to their relationships, for example. I just want students to look at it and say, "oh, wow, the word is similar in these languages so the languages might be related," and color stuff in on a map and so on. Is that so much to ask? My own knowledge is no help--common words I can think of offer no clues whatsoever ("chien" and "perro" offer no clue of connection; same with "frau" and "woman," or "femme" and "mujer").

I had given up completely, but last week a dear friend from college resurfaced, and it just so happens that this friend majored in... drum roll please... linguistics! Now I'm hoping that he will help me put this lesson together. He's done a lot of favors for me in my life (like singing at my wedding) so maybe he doesn't owe me any more... but wait, there was the fish named Maurice, so actually, yes, he does owe me. Language and migration lesson, here we come!

comparative math & science links

I love this stuff. It helps counteract an assumption that all useful and intelligent things came from Europe to the rest of the world. (Case in point: we were discussing multicultural contributions to science & learning and one person couldn't think of anything from China besides Chinese restaurants! This was a future social studies teacher mind you!!!!)

It's also an intriguing way to think about how multiple solutions relate to the same problem.

Anyway, only one link so far (the inspiration for this post of course):

Calendaropaedia, all about calendars around the world. Here is the description from its home page:

Since the dawn of civilisation man has kept track of time by use of the sun, the moon, and the stars. Man noticed that time could be broken up into units of the day (the time taken for the earth to rotate once on its axis), the month (the time taken for the moon to orbit the earth) and the year (the time taken for the earth to orbit the sun).

This information was needed so as to know when to plant crops and when to hold religious ceremonies. The problems were that a month is not made up of an integral number of days, a year is not made of an integral number of months and neither is a year made up of an integral number of days. This caused man to use his ingenuity to overcome these problems and produce a calendar which enabled him to keep track of time.

The ways in which these problems were tackled down the centuries and across the world is the subject of this Web site. It is recommended that you start by looking at the Comparison of Calendars.

Do--it's fascinating! From the Aztec Empire to the French Revolution, everyone had their own solution.

opposing perspectives lesson plans

I've been working on a "structured academic controversy" (SAC) lesson plan--an assignment--for which I chose the Israeli-Palestinian struggle as a topic. As a result, I've been thinking a lot about how to teach controversial issues.

IMO the dominant public-school message to students about ALL controversial issues is: "There are always two extremes. A rational, 'moderate' person takes a position in the middle."

As an example of this viewpoint, a teacher ed student (from a different teacher ed program) who was visiting the school where I was student teaching, communicated this assumption directly when "helping" high school students with their study of the Montgomery Bus Boycott: he suggested to high school students that Dr. King et alia represented one “extreme,” while the KKK, George Wallace, et alia represented the other “extreme.” He went on to say that, "you know, usually in cases like this, you've got the two extremes and the 'truth' is somewhere in the middle." What would the "truth" be, I wonder, according to his worldview? Moderate segregation? (I was furious at this guy and got him in trouble--that was fun).

The major fallacies in this idea of course is: (1) there are always more than two positions and (2) in the classroom setting, the "middle" is as arbitrarily constructed as the "extremes." (And in a situation like the Israeli-Palestinian struggle, you can also present two opposing positions that are so extreme and so incompatible, that they will just produce despair--or you can present opposing positions that are so close that students will have trouble understanding what the problem is).

So although the SAC design we were assigned calls for two positions, I ended up designing my lesson with nine. This makes for a lot more work. But if I can pull it off, I think it would be more stimulating and more realistic. ("If"—I said "if.")

may it be so

To help me prepare for job interviews etc., I decided to try to envision myself beginning the school year in the fall. What will be my priorities? What will my class be like? How will I be ready? This is what I wrote. Then I thought I might as well post it here.

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On the first day of school, fall 2005, I walk into my classroom prepared to welcome MY VERY OWN CLASS. Everything is ready. My curriculum is outlined for the year; it's ready in detail through the end of October. My curriculum is not complicated, but it is challenging.

1) I start from square one in terms of skills. A student without much English, a student without much academic preparation, a student without much experience of the physical world, a student with disabilities--all students find it accessible because it begins by assuming they are learners and have learned a lot, without assuming anything about what they have learned up to now.

2) Each lesson builds on the next one, gradually developing students' academic *and* group-work skills, and gradually deepening their understanding of the material, as well as their understanding of how to study history and society.

3) The lessons are all cooperative, with an individual final product. They all follow a model of scaffolding: more support, gradually decreasing support, to finally, individual accomplishment.

4) The lessons involve students doing the work. I will not be rushing around doing the work, and students will not be waiting for me to help them. They will be able to help themselves and each other. The lesson's goal will be clear at the outset and will require a minimum of explanation to get started. The end point is clear but the process is something they have to work out together. First with more support, later with less.

In this vision in my mind, I know what I'm doing because I have planned carefully. I have everything I need. I have rehearsed my first day alone and with an audience. I know what I will say. Everything that I will say and do for this first day is so thoroughly prepared that I can focus my main attention on the students--I can observe them, interact with them, relax with them. Being unprepared in any way will mean less observation, less interaction, less relaxation.

When they come in, I welcome them at the door with enthusiasm. They know they are in the right room, they have an assigned seat and an assignment to begin working on right away. Everything is ready.

The atmosphere is serious but not pressured. It is an atmosphere of hard work, but also of calm.

They will learn skills and content. They will learn to work together. They will learn to trust themselves and believe in their own point of view. They will learn first that they will never be humiliated in my class; later they will learn not to fear humiliation or anything that can happen to them in school. They will become resilient, self-reliant, confident, calm. They will learn to cope with difficult emotions in a mature manner.

Because I am prepared, that first day and afterward, I will be calm. Not everything will go as I've planned, and that's to be expected. I will be flexible and relaxed. I will have my priorities in the right order: (1) safety: the children will feel safe in my class, safe from any disrespect or cruelty coming from me, or from each other. (2) learning: the children will learn a lot in my class. They will learn because they will do the work.

I will not over-react to things that are not a priority. Students who do things I didn't plan for them to do, will not upset or alarm me, because I know what the priorities are. And, I will be confident in my understanding of what is happening--I will listen to my instincts. If they are safe and learning, then I will not react to what they are doing. If they need to be redirected to safety and learning, I can do that too. That's all that is required of me, since I have done all the really hard work in advance. The learning is all planned out, and the learning is all the students' work. All I need to do is help them stay focused and clarify any questions. It's really not that hard at all.

I will be very patient and calm, although I will also secretly be elated, that first day. This is my class. At last. After so many years and so much work. This is my class.

May it be so, let it be so, I want it so much. Just have to get there.

military euphemisms

You know you've been working too much on your "Israeli-Palestinian struggle" lesson plan when you say to your wife, "We never use these plates; we should put them in the basement... in fact we should redeploy everything on this shelf..." Did I just say "redeploy"? About plates?

Redeploy is not my least favorite euphemism (that would be "pacify"), but it always makes me smile in a twisted sort of way. Redeploy is what you do when you don't want to retreat. It makes the point that you are operating from a position of strength, that you are simply moving your army, not withdrawing it, and nobody's making you do it, either. But it makes me smile because usually someone is making you do it, and so it always seems like a bit of a failure in terms of macho bluster.

It used to confuse me, because I thought it meant the army was "going back to" Lebanon or Gaza or wherever. No, it means the army is withdrawing from Lebanon or Gaza or wherever. We should have a list of military euphemisms for students... and for those rearranging their kitchen cabinets.