On Collaboration

"Collaboration, one of the 21st century skills, is never an easy task, especially when it means shaking a fossilized and comfortable status quo. However, it is ultimately very rewarding and worth pursuing. To make it happen successfully, we need to have people with good long-term visions, persistence, and patience."

Lunch & Learn @Fox Meadow: Indonesian Cooking

Fox Meadow, Lunch and Learn: Indonesian Cooking, June 5, 2009. Coordinators: Colleen Mangan, Peter McKenna.

"Thousands of islands. Thousands of flavors. The boldness of buffalo curry. The beauty of Balinese food offerings. This is the cuisine of Indonesia: a realm of flavors that stretches from mountain gardens, through manic markets, and across the Spice islands. Prepare to see a glimpse of what feeds this diverse nation, a country where fruit is as fresh as the land, and the chillies are as hot as the hospitality." (Quote from the Lonely Planet World Food series.)

Jakarta during the 15th-17th century.

May-June 2009. Scarsdale High School, 9th grade classrooms. Collaborating teachers: Kami Wright, Kendra Claussen.

Students in Kami's 10th grade class started a research project on what world's big cities looked like during the 15th-17th centuries. Four of her students chose Jakarta as their research topic. Jakarta used to be called Batavia, and it was the capital of the Dutch East Indies. It was the keystone of Dutch imperialism. They were able to control the spice islands, thus for a long period of time held a monopoly of world spices, and emerged as the world's major economy. I served as the resource person for this project. The students interviewed me on what Jakarta was like as a city at those periods of time. They focused on the social, political, economic, and cultural aspects of it. I also helped them find documents that would support their presentations.

STI Course: Indonesia, Islam, and Islam in Indonesia

May 2009. Scarsdale Schools, District room 172. Coordinators: Gwen Johnson & Iwan Syahril.

“If you want to know if Islam, democracy, modernity, and women’s rights can coexist, go to Indonesia.” (Hillary Clinton, 2009)

In a more globalized and interdependent world, it is a great necessity to understand the diverse elements in the planet we all inhabit. There have been too many times that our failure to grasp the holistic understanding of a certain community has led us to a number of horrible episodes in human history. 

In the era of war against terrorism, the Muslim communities have been portrayed as the “them” side by many people in the Western world. There is a danger when we lose or ignore the complexities within Muslim communities in different parts of the world.  Simplifying it into one single picture based on images and messages from biased and prejudiced sources, particularly mainstream Western media, can foster a greater misunderstanding between Islam and non-Islamic communities around the world.  In this unique STI course Scarsdale teachers and administrators were engaged in various texts and interactive activities to look into the myths, stereotypes, and prejudices around Islam, the second largest world religion. For this purpose, we looked into the case study of Indonesia. 

Indonesia, a childhome of President Barack Obama, is a land of multiculturalism that offers many interesting lessons about the intricate socio-cultural elements within Muslim communities. It is the home of approximately 240 million people scattered in its 17,508 islands that lie around the equator in the Southeast Asian region. 

Consisting of more than 300 ethnic groups, each with their own traditions, cultures, and languages. Indonesia adopts the philosophy of a tossed salad in a way of acknowledging its diversity. It is captured in the national motto, Bhinneka Tunggal Ika, which means Unity in Diversity.  

Participants used movies, books, academic journal and newspaper articles, to explore, discuss, and reflect on their understandings about Indonesia and Islam, and thought about strategies to use their learning in this course into their own classroom teaching.

 

Country Interview: The Winning Buffalo Tribe

April 2009. Greenacres 1st grade classrooms. Collaborating teachers: Karen Pelekis, Catherine Manin, Sharon Rosenthal.

1st graders in Greenacres invited me to come to their class to talk about my hometown West Sumatra, Indonesia. They did some research before my visit, and formulated the questions. When I came, they were ready with their set of questions. The teacher, Karen Pelekis, also prepared the related slides and pictures to support my responses as well. When we looked at the architecture of the traditional houses in West Sumatra, I pointed out that the roof looks like a buffalo horn. 

After that, I told them the history behind that tradition, and apparently the kids loved this story. The West Sumatran tribe, called the Minangkabau, is very identical with the symbol of the buffalo horn because there was a time when this region wanted to be conquered by the foreign power of Java. Instead of having a fight or war, the West Sumatran people offered a buffalo fight instead. The buffalo that was chosen was the baby buffalo who was still breast-feeding to his mother. Before the fight someone put a metal with sharp edges on the little buffalo's mouth. The little buffalo thought the big buffalo was his mother, so he went straight to big buffalo's stomach. Finally, this small buffalo won the fight because he cut the stomach of the big buffalo with the sharp metal on his mouth. The big buffalo was defeated, and the West Sumatran people kept their freedom. Since then, people in West Sumatra are called the "Minangkabau"  tribe, which means 'the winning buffalo" tribe!

Saman Dance for 8th graders

April-June 2009. Scarsdale Middle School, 8th grade classrooms. Collaborating teachers: Cheryl Orlandi, Melissa Zeiler, Chris Reali.

Four 8th grade classes of Cheryl Orlandi's and four 8th grade classes of Melissa Zeiler's took turns in learning the special Indonesian dance from Aceh ethnic group called the Saman dance. It is also called the Thousand Hands dance because it requires a lot of hand movements and hand-eye coordination. The dance is originally performed during important community celebrations in Aceh, but has now become a regular top dance in many Indonesian cultural performances. Students found this dance very unique and they quickly learned all the basic patterns, the rhythmic movements, and the quickened tempos of the dance in just a few lessons. Two classes performed the dance accompanied by students from Chris Reali's music class who beat the drums according to the rhythms of the dance songs. A great collaboration between the teachers and also students!

Human Rights Day

April 2009. Scarsdale Middle School, 7th graders. Coordinators: Emma Wixted, Meghan Lahey.

Human Rights Day in Scarsdale Middle School has always been a great learning day. There are always a number of great presenters who share a wide range issues concerning human rights and humanities. I was invited to give a presentation about Islam and Indonesia. Due to the limited amount of time, most of the presentation and discussion I had was mainly related to the topic of Islam. 

There were four groups of 7th graders who came to my sessions. Each of them showed their genuine curiosity, and directly and indirectly, reflected on their previous knowledge and understanding on the topic. Some of them seemed to have very little awareness about it. At times, it was quite clear from their reactions that there had been some misunderstanding on issues surrounding Islam.

International Fair at Scarsdale High School

April 2009. Scarsdale High School. Coordinators: Tom Conrad, Jose Lamela.

It was a different day in Scarsdale High School. Students dressed up according to their cultural heritage. There were beautiful performances in the auditorium, various workshops, and food fair. It was a delight! I was in charge of the food stand and also gave a workshop on Indonesian movies. 

I used an award-winning teenage high school movie that was very popular in Indonesia in 2002-2003. The movie was "Ada Apa Dengan Cinta" (What's up with Cinta/Love?). Students were quite interested in the movie that they were disappointed for not being able to see the entire movie. We only had 30 minutes and they were curious to know about how the movie ended. Through our brief discussions, it seemed that students were able to draw some similar patterns between the characters they saw in the movie with their own life. 

Multicultural Awareness: Heathcote PTA conference

April 2009. Heathcote PTA. Coordinator: Tracy Jaffe, the PTA President.

I was invited to speak to Heathcote PTA about the multicultural awareness, and decided to talk about reimagining global citizenship. This talk in many ways resembled the one I gave in the Superintendent Conference Day in March. Then main thesis is that we have to break down the stereotypes, prejudices, and other cultural barriers in developing better coalitions in solving our global issues. In addition, we need to build the capacity for empathy, and this should be used as the basis of any social interaction. This was my working philosophy in the workshop.

CHOICE Film Festival

April 2009. Scarsdale Middle School, CHOICE program. Collaborating teachers: Cindy Seidel, Marci Rothman, Kristen Martin.

CHOICE held its First Annual Documentary Film Festival on Tuesday, April 21st from 8:20 - 10:00 in the Middle School Auditorium.  I was invited to be one of the judges. CHOICE 8th grade students had been learning about global economic, environmental and political issues.  They worked in groups to select topics to investigate further, such as: gender roles, global economy, the Middle Eastern conflict, etc.  They spent many weeks researching, planning, filming and editing their stories with the top five being shown at the film festival. 

A short presentation on Islam

April 2009. Scarsdale Middle School, 8th grade classrooms. Collaborating teacher: Emma Wixted.

Students in Emma's classes reflected on what they knew about Islam before I started the lessons. Again, there were many interesting discoveries during this phase, where there was a consistent pattern from the students to think of Islam as a region or country. Some even had no idea about what it was. And most made the connection with the Middle East. They were surprised to know that the majority of Muslims, more than 80%, do not live in the Middle East. 

We went through some basic information about Islam, such as the the five pillars in Islam, the six articles of faith, mosques, prophets in Islam, etc. They were surprised to find out that in the articles of belief, Muslims believe in prophets similar to the ones in other big religions. Names such as Abraham, Moses, David, Jacob, Job, Elijah, Noah, Jesus, are the names of the prophets in Islam. We finished by watching a clip of Queen Rania, the Queen of Jordan, from her YouTube page. Queen Rania has been one of the world leaders who have tried to bridge the misperceptions and misunderstandings about Islam, the Muslim and Arab world. 

Feminism in Islam

April 2009. Scarsdale High School, grades 11-12. Collaborating teacher: Lauren Tallevi.

Students in Lauren's feminist class were first asked to reflect on the meaning of feminism, Islam, and the relationship between Islam and feminism. A lot of them were surprised to learn that Islam was, at least, more feminist than what they had thought before. 

The early Islam in the 6th century, for instance, showed that women gained more rights under Islamic civilization, for instance the rights to approve man to marry, the rights to divorce, and the inheritance rights. It can be said that it was a very progressive move in those years, and even the Western civilization only picked up the inheritance rights for women long after that, in the 18th century. Early Muslim women were active as educators and teachers in the 8th-13th centuries, an image very different from the stories about Taliban. 

 

A Glimpse of Indonesian Music

April 2009. Scarsdale Middle School, World Club. Collaborating teachers: Sandra Chan, Dana Lipton, Ann Marie Barron.

During the World Club session in Scarsdale Middle School, I showed a variety of Indonesian music to the club members. We watched some clips from a popular Indonesian hip hop female star, a famous Indonesian rock band, and an Indonesian traditional bamboo orchestra. Students made connections with their own country of origin, such as Japan and Korea. Towards the end, they had a brief workshop on how to play angklung, the Indonesian bamboo musical instrument.

Reimagining Global Citizenship

March 2009. Superintendent Conference Day. Coordinators: Dr. McGill, Dr. Weber, Dr. DiYanni.

This workshop session was part of the Superintendent Conference. Imagination is part of the higher order thinking. It challenges and pushes us to see beyond what is possible for our contexts now. In other words, it may come to the ability to imagine what is perceived to be impossible or even unimaginable. 

I relate this very much to the speech "I have a dream" by Dr. Martin Luther King. It was a social imagination that was perceived impossible and/or unimaginable for most people at that time. I am sure people in the US have come a long way in overcoming the racial divides. The greatest achievement is the election of an African American president, Barack Obama. I would like to apply the same approach in how we view our planet and global citizenship. We have to break down the stereotypes, prejudices, and other cultural barriers in developing better coalitions in solving our global issues. In addition, we need to build the capacity for empathy, and this should be used as the basis of any social interaction. This was my working philosophy in the workshop.

The main conclusions were:

1. What we imagine is influenced by our identities, values, and experiences.
2. Imagining and reimagining our world should start by challenging our stereotypes and prejudices and developing our capacity for empathy.
3. Imagining and reimagining is a lifelong process as we should keep making constant improvement in how we understand others.

Q&A on Islam

March 2009. Scarsdale High School, 9th grade classrooms. Collaborating teachers: Neil Ginsberg, Kendra Claussen, Katie Prizio, Kate Krahl, Kami Wright.

One every five people on earth is a Muslim. Despite being the 2nd largest religion in the world, Islam is perhaps the most misunderstood one. Mainly it is because the way Islam and Muslims have been portrayed by the mainstream Western media. There are some common stereotypes against Islam which center on the issues of terrorism and violence, backwardness and irrationality, and women's rights and oppression. The discussions I had in many 9th grade Social Studies classrooms usually touched any of those issues. Many initial understandings seemed to have been formed without understanding the contexts. 

The main emphasis was the fact that Islam is not a monolithic religion, and one has to take into account the social and cultural contexts of the place where Islam (and any other religion) is practiced. Some emphasis was also given on the golden age of Islam, during the 8th-13th centuries, where Islamic civilization was the center of the world civilization. Students also learned more about the social, historical and cultural contexts of the thoughts, images, impressions, and understandings they had had about Islam. Students were also exposed to the images they don't normally see about Islam. These sessions were very productive, especially in some classrooms where students have done some research and work around Islam and the Muslim world.