Lesson Plan: World Religion Dream Catchers

In my short (five-week) World Religion class, we are concentrating on the six religions that have had the most influence on Western culture--Paganism, Hinduism, Judaism, Buddhism, Christianity, and Islam (in order of when they began).   So to help the students keep the order of these religious movements straight, we made World Religion Dream Catchers.

Dream Catchers are a tradition among some Native American tribes (which fall under the Paganism category).  They are a circle created out of a branch of wood, between which string and beads have been strung, creating an open web in the middle.  The idea is that the dream catcher will capture the bad dreams sent to a child, but will allow the good ones through its openings.

Because we are on a restricted budget of both money and time, we made ours out of paper plates, from which I had cut out the centers and punched eight holes around the inner circle of the remaining rim.  I had the students write the names or draw symbols for the six religions (we covered the religious in symbols in class beforehand) on the paper plate rims, and then string yarn from hole to hole IN ORDER of the religion's founding date.  So the first hole was just the start, but then the student would string the yarn through the Paganism hole, then through the Hinduism hole, then Judaism....you get the idea.

Here are some samples of their work.  As always, they were following the same instructions, but came up with some lovely variations.

9/11 Anniversary and 10,000 Acts of Kindness

I wrote yesterday about how we had spent 9/10/11 delivering cakes to local fire fighters in remembrance of those who had died in 9/11 and in appreciation for the character and selflessness it takes to show up for that kind of a job every day.  That had been organized by my friend Marcia's Triangle Kindness Project as part of a 9/11 Anniversary Pay It Forward campaign, in which EnviroMedia would pay $1.00 to the Pay It Forward Foundation for every act of kindness done in honor of 9/11.

So on 9/11 itself, I wanted us to be one of those 10,000 acts of kindness.  But what to do?  I really thought hard about something that we could do that would be worthy of the significance of this anniversary.  What would be the biggest difference we could make?  What would be in keeping with the event?  Then, as so often happens, an idea occurred to me that immediately seemed so right, it knew that was it.

How about, I thought, if we gave some flowers as a sign of unity and good will...to some Muslims?

I bought the flowers from our local farmer's market (helping local farmers--bonus points for that, right?). Most of their flowers had been destroyed by Hurricane Irene, but they did have some sunflowers.  I thought they were the perfect flowers, because they always seem so optimistic and life-affirming to me, without being too girly or romantic or anything like that.  After all, the sun shines on us all equally; it doesn't care if we are Christians or Muslims or Americans or Chinese or whatever.

And I knew just the place to deliver them.  As I stated in an earlier blog, representatives from the Islamic Association of Raleigh had come to our World Religion class to give a presentation on Islam, and we later observed a prayer ceremony at their mosque.  So it seemed perfect to return the favor with some flowers on behalf of the entire class, given in appreciation and in friendship.  I had also found a card with a dove in it (doves have a significant role in Islam as well as in Judaism and Christianity, in addition to their symbol of peace), in which I wrote a message of peace and unity on a day associated with acts of violence and hate.

I have to admit, however, that as we were driving to the Islamic center, I had a few twinges of doubt.  Would this seem too weird?  Is it inappropriate to bring flowers to a mosque?  We had studied the etiquette of visiting, and that wasn't mentioned as a taboo, but maybe they hadn't listed everything.   My son, who has been a real trooper through all this, was a little uncomfortable as well, but we talked about the need to reach out to others who were different from us, even when it is uncomfortable.

However, as soon as I got to the mosque, I knew it was right that we were there.  Because what was sitting in the middle of the parking lot but a police car.

Fortunately, the police officer was very laid back, so it appeared that she was just there in case of trouble, but apparently there hadn't been any so far.  She complimented our flowers, and seemed to be glad to see some people who definitely looked like they didn't belong to the Muslim community dropping by for good purposes, rather than the kinds of reasons she was probably there to deter.

So we went in, and I asked for the man who had spoken to our class.  The people in Security didn't seem to know him, and were asking around among various supervisors, when he walked through the door!  Once again, things aligned perfectly.  It turns out he had spent the morning at a special interfaith service for the 9/11 anniversary held by Habitat for Humanity.  So he had spent his morning reaching out to others on this day, but I think he was touched that others reached out to the Islamic Association as well.

So that was our act of kindness for 9/11.  I hope there were at least 9,999 others, and that all of them were as satisfying and meaningful to those involved as we found our small act to be.

Lesson Plan: Arabic Scarves

One of the things that we have discussed in our World Religions class are the clothes typically worn by many Muslims.  Aspects of their dress have both cultural and religious significance in Islam.  One of the items of clothing that we have discussed is their use of scarves, particularly for headdresses for both men and women.

In the early days, scarves were extremely practical for the original Muslims, who were mostly desert dwellers.  Scarves that could be draped around the face protected both sexes from sunburn and sand storms.  But even in modern times and in urban settings, many Muslims continue to wear scarves for headdresses.  Women may wear a niqab (Arabic for veil) to cover their face as part of their hijab (Arabic for curtain or cover), or modest clothing that covers everything but a woman's hands and face when she is out in public.    Muslim men often wear a keffiyeh or a square cotton scarf, usually in a checked or plaid pattern.  The black and white keffiyeh is a symbol of the Palestinian political movement, and was made famous by Palestinian politician Yasser Arafat.  Muslim women also may wear scarves not as veils, but as decorative items or as dance accessories.  The women's decorative scarves often have flowers or other forms from nature woven into them, but the men's rarely have images, but instead favor geometric patterns.

So as one of our hands-on projects for Islam, we gave the students squares of white cotton and allowed them to decorate them as they chose (but reviewing the information above about typical Arabic scarf customs).  Along with permanent markers they could use to draw on the white cloth, we gave them duct tape that they could use for decoration, to provide edging for the scarves, or to stick on yarn for fringe (which is particularly prevalent in the male Arabic scarves).  As always, while all the students start with the same blank canvas, they take their art in totally different and beautiful ways.

The boys in the class pretty much stuck with lines, ranging from the more conventional to the ... less conventional:

The girls had more curves and other images in their scarves:

It was gratifying to see that some of them remembered our earlier lesson about the use of tessellated shapes in Islamic art, and incorporated that into their scarf patterns.

This was an inexpensive project that the students enjoyed; our class, at least, almost always enjoy the chance to be creative.  We also find that we get some of best discussions with this age group when their hands are occupied with something else, and they can talk without everyone looking at them, which makes some of them nervous when discussing more sensitive topics.  Since the topic of dress and appearance, particularly women wearing clothes to hide their attractiveness to men, can be a bit sensitive, this is a good technique for fostering discussion without making young adolescents feel too uncomfortable.

Ramadan Mubarak, or Happy Ramadan

Today is the first day of Ramadan, the month-long spiritual observation that is the most sacred practice in the Islamic calendar.  For the month of Ramadan, Muslims fast from dawn until sunset, as well as spending more time in prayer and spiritual reflection, increase their good deeds for others, and pay a percentage of their income to support other Muslims in need.

Since we are studying Islam right now in our World Religion class, we spent last week's lesson on Ramadan.  In our class, at least, it has been easier for the students to appreciate the spiritual power behind the often once-in-a-lifetime pilgrimage to Mecca that the annual observation of Ramadan.  Maybe because the class was primarily boys--middle school boys who seem to be eating all the time--, they just couldn't seem to get why anyone would volunteer to give up eating during the day.  We discussed the many spiritual reasons for fasting, and also talked about other religious practices around fasting or abstinence from certain foods or activities, but they were still dubious about the whole thing.

However, for Muslim children around this age, getting to fast is a really big deal.  Children are not required to fast until around puberty.  However, when they are officially ushered into the population who are supposed to fast, it represents their admittance into the full-fledged or adult community of Islam, sort of like a bar mitzvah does for Jewish adolescents.  So as much as our students don't understand it, being required to fast is something that Muslim middle schoolers really look forward to.

We did do a couple of other things that they liked better than the idea of fasting.  They tried some dates, which is the traditional food to eat first to end the daily fast during Ramadan, which some of them liked better than others.  And because Ramadan is supposed to be a joyous and celebratory time, as well as a highly spiritual one (or maybe, because of being such a spiritual time), families often decorate their houses for the month.

One of the decorations often displayed is a special lantern named a Fanoos or Fanous.  There seems to be lots of different stories behind this tradition that disagree pretty dramatically, so I'm not going to try to give a historical explanation for their connection to Ramadan.  But homes display them during this season, so we made some paper versions and hung them up in our class room.

In a land where we have so much, and in a time where we are so driven to focus on the new and the material, I think it is great to expose our students to the idea that there might be value in voluntarily giving us some of what commands our attention the most in our everyday lives, at least for a little while.  So I don't think you need to be Muslim to be able to learn a great lesson from Ramadan.

Lesson Plan: Sufi Tughras and Name Snowflakes

For the past couple of weeks in our World Religion class, we have been looking at Sufism, an offshoot of Islam.  A graphic symbol for many Sufi orders, which have a much more universal or interfaith approach than most practices of Islam, is the winged heart:

Another tradition in Sufism is to create the winged heart shape as a tughra, which is a calligraphic rendition of the name of the master teacher of that Sufi order (and/or words describing him/her).  So, for example, the tughra of the Sufi orders that come from the tradition established by Hazrat Inayat Khan (the predominant strand of Sufism in the United States), looks like this:

These are beautiful works of art, but not something easily done with a middle school class, since it requires both calligraphy skills and knowledge of arabic.  So instead, I drew upon something we had done years ago in Math Club with my friend Maria of Natural Math, who in turn learned it from another friend and homeschooling mom, Chrissy Akers--namely, Name Snowflakes.

To create Name Snowflakes, you fold up a piece of paper like you would to cut normal types of snowflakes that many students do in elementary school.  However, instead of just cutting out shapes, you draw the name or other word in big block letters that stretch from top fold to bottom fold and that stay attached to each other, and cut out the spaces outside the word.  If you do it right, you have the word repeated number times in different directions, which can look quite lovely.

Here is one I did with my name, Carol:

which, when unfolded, looked like this:

Here is one made from the word SUFI:

Here is the one my son did from the word WUG (chosen primarily because it didn't have any interior spaces that had to be cut out, which is the hardest part of cutting):

So they aren't nearly as lovely or as significant as a tughra, but they can turn out pretty well and at least help students understand the concept of tughras, especially since they can't distinguish the arabic letters.

Our crew had fun with them, as you might be able to tell from this picture:

Lesson Plan: Islamic Prayer Rug

As I stated in an earlier blog post, one of the most interesting and central aspects of understanding Islam is their dedication to and many ritual practices around prayer.  One aspect of their prayer routine is that each person prays on his or her own prayer rug, which they use for both practical (hygiene) and spiritual purposes.  Therefore, one of the projects we have done during our Islamic studies is for the students to make their own versions of mock prayer rugs.

We began, however, with a discussion of Muslim art and decorative techniques.  Islamic buildings are not decorated with images of people or animals, which Muslims believe would encourage people to focus their worship on "false idols," rather than on Allah or God.  Instead, they fill their spaces with abstract shapes or items taken from nature, particular flowers or plants and stars.  In particularly, they rely heavily on decoration through tessellations, or repeated patterns of shapes that interlock and fill the space without any overlaps or gaps.  (M.C. Escher is a modern Western artist who uses or plays with tessellations a lot in his work.)  Muslim tessellations are particularly renowned for using stars and circles as the basis for their tessellations.

Therefore, we began this lesson talking about tessellations and learning to fold and cut out symmetrical stars, such as a six-point star and an eight-point star.  We played with some of those patterns first, and talked about how we could fill a prayer rug with those (although we probably wouldn't be able to do that in class, given our limited time).

To make our rugs, I gave each student a long (around 5 foot) piece of brown butcher paper from a big, 2-foot wide roll that we have.  Then they decorated their "rugs" with cut out stars and/or illustrations using markers.  Each one was an unique as the person creating it!  Our major issue was finding enough room for everyone to work on such big projects in our small room, giving us a great opportunity to work on our cooperation skills!

Here are some samples of the students' work:

The students enjoyed this activity, and it gave them a powerful reminder of Islam to take home.

Curriculum Resource: Islamic Prayer

While prayer is an important part of most religions, the rituals about prayer set forth in the Quran and other sacred writings of Islam must be followed exactly, or the person is not considered to be a Muslim.  The Muslims have required times for prayer five times a day.  The person praying must perform the required cleansing and take specific positions while he or she recites exact prayers, and must go through the entire specified routine before being able to add any personal prayers or concerns, etc.

Fortunately, there are some great YouTube videos demonstrating these rituals.  This is my favorite one explaining the procedures for the pre-prayer cleansing, known as wudu:





Then the following animation describes the process one must go through for the prayers themselves, which is called salah:




These two videos give a great explanation of the entire process of the Muslim prayer routine.  They can serve as a great class discussion starter about the value of such an elaborate process around prayer.

Lesson Plan: The Times of Muhammad

In teaching about Islam in our World Religions class, I think it is really important for the students to understand the culture from which Islam evolved.  To deal with their questions about Osama bin Laden and 9/11 and all that, we have to try to cover the Muslim concept of jihad (which means "struggle" in Arabic, but is often translated as "Holy war" by the Western media).  And to really understand the historical development of jihad, you have to know something about the Arabic tribal culture and the life, times, and conflict/conquest that Muhammad experienced during his life.

We started with the student's favorite topic--FOOD!  I brought in a selection of foods, and asked them to select the 12 that are posted on the Internet as Muhammad's favorite foods.  They did a pretty good job of that, since they had made a lot of Middle Eastern food for the Jesus Feast we had earlier.  However, they were surprised about some of the Middle Eastern standards that were available in the communities Jesus visited that were not common among the nomadic Arabic tribes.

Some of these foods Muhammad ate daily; some he did not.

I then used a pack of cards to tell the story of Muhammad's relationship with the various tribes that are important to his story:  the tribe into which he was born, the powerful tribe that was trying to silence him and his followers, the tribe that "adopted" him when he had to leave Mecca, etc.  Besides being a good story-telling technique, I used the cards because we are trying to follow the Islamic practice of not having pictures of Muhammad, and because it was the Arabs who introduced the concept of cards, which originated in either China or India, to Western culture.

It's too complicated to go into here, but we discussed how the original concept of jihad was originally permission from God for Muhammad to attack the Arabs controlling Mecca, which the heavenly revelation said was justified (although most killing is prohibited in the Quran) because those people were interfering with the true believer's desire to worship God (or Allah) at the Kaaba, the most sacred site in Islam.  Only later did it become linked with the Arab's acquisition of new territory, which they believed was one means of spreading the word about Allah and Islam.

So going over the tribal history of the Arabs and the derivation of the idea of jihad helps to set up a foundation for the discussion we will be having in a few weeks about modern Islamic political affairs, including 9/11 and terrorism and such.  It is a sensitive topic, and can be difficult to discuss with this age, but I think understanding the historical background of Muhammad and the Muslims will help.

Curriculum Resource: Islamic Association of Raleigh

For the summer session, our World Religion class is studying Islam.  Given recent political events, this religion can be somewhat problematic, so we are proceeding carefully.  Also, since this is such a minority religion in this area, students tend to have less personal experience of this faith, but with a higher belief that they know what it is about based on what they have heard from the media.

I think one of the best ways to address an issue like this is to hear things from the horse's mouth, as it were. And so this week, our class had a presentation on Islam from the Islamic Association of Raleigh.

If you want to learn about Islam, and you live in the Triangle area, I definitely recommend the IAR (and I imagine other Islamic centers in major urban centers do much the same).  They regularly present information about Islam to schools, community organizations, Sunday Schools, etc., as well as invite visitors to their mosque.  They did an excellent job with our class, not only by bringing a laptop with Power Point presentations and photos that really help to convey a feeling for the topics in Islam that they were discussing, but also by bringing two middle school-aged boys so that the students in our class could hear from their peers what it was like to be a Muslim.

Presentation by the Islamic Association of Raleigh

Perhaps the most enlightening aspect for me was learning about the (at least) once-in-a-lifetime visit to Mecca that is one of the Five Pillars that are expected of Muslims. The adults had made the pilgrimage, and not only had great photos, but did a wonderful job of conveying the spiritual significance of the journey and of the various aspects of visiting Mecca. And the boys were great in explaining how they incorporated Islam into the typical life of a middle schooler. One of them has already memorized half of the Quran, adding hours a day of religious study on top of his academic classes (and the other one isn't far behind).  On the other hand, they were also just typical boys; they enjoy going to the mosque because after their services, they can go play ball in the gym with their friends.

That kind of normalcy may be the best thing we can give our middle schoolers when talking about Islam.  As a religion, it can seem tough (you follow the Five Pillars and you are a Muslim; if you don't follow what is in the Quran, apparently about 100%, you aren't), or exclusive (they gave us an English translation of their holy book, but it is only truly a Quran if it is in Arabic), or strange (such as the coverings the women have to wear, although the presenters did have an explanation of that).  But when you meet actual people who are friendly and reasonable and act like your next door neighbors, especially when they are kids the same age, it all seems much more normal.

Curriculum Resource: Muhammad

Our World Religion class is now studying Islam, and, of course, a central topic in Islam is the prophet Muhammad.  I found two books that are great for this age range in helping to understand this important man.

The first is the picture book Muhammad by Demi.  Demi, a children's author and illustrator whose work mostly centers on ethnic folk tales and/or religious stories or people, has another winner with this book.  As with all of Demi's work, the pictures are gorgeous and reflect the style of the culture of the person/story (in this case, Arabic).  For example, in deference to the Muslim prohibition against having pictures of Muhammad (it constitutes a "false idol" in their religion), Demi puts him in the picture only as an outline, usually filled in with gold leaf.

But while it is a picture book, it also has plenty of substance for the middle school student.  The book provides a good overview of Muhammad's life and role in Islam and Arabic culture.  In our case, we read the book aloud, which kept the students absorbed in the story and left time in a single class for some good discussion as well (in our case, we also did a Venn diagram to discuss the similarities and difference between Jesus--the last prophet we studied--and Muhammad).

For more depth, however, I recommend the book Muhammad of Mecca:  Prophet of Islam by Elsa Marston.   This book goes into more depth about the events in Muhammad's life and tries to keep an even-handed approach about what is known and what is more conjecture.   It does not deal with spiritual issues at all, but merely reports the best facts as we know them.  However, I thought it was very helpful in explaining the culture of the times, which I think helps explain some of the practices in Islam that can be most confusing or difficult for students to understand (or even Christians/Americans in general).  And it is geared toward the middle school level of reading/understanding.

We are using this two books as major building blocks as we try to create our foundation for our study of Islam.

Curriculum Resource: The Islam Project

We are beginning our study of the religion of Islam, and I ran across what looks like a wonderful educational resource for middle school and high school students.  There are lesson plans and discussion guides for educating tweens and teens about Islam developed by The Islam Project.

The goal of The Islam Project is to produce multimedia materials and associated lessons to help American youth explore the great diversity among the vast numbers of Muslims around the world (currently estimated to comprise almost a quarter of the Earth's population).  In the wake of the attacks on 9/11, they produced two PBS series:  Muhammad:  Legacy of a Prophet and Muslims, which displays the variety in the way that Muslims around the world practice their faith.

Their latest project is a video program called American Muslim Teens Talk.  In this half hour video, nine American Muslim teenagers discuss the issues common to all teenagers--fitting in, dating, having fun, dealing with parents--and the impact that practicing Islam has for them in these areas.  They also discuss negative stereotypes around being Muslim, as well as demonstrating the difference between teenagers raised under Islam.

I haven't seen it yet, but it looks like a terrific resource to help this age group understand more about their Muslim peers and to consider the impact of religious stereotypes in general.