Learning: Innovations
Uncovering Stereotypes of 'Covered' Muslim Women

In a new curriculum and audiotape, Muslim women speak for themselves.

Sandra Childs isn't Muslim and doesn't wear a scarf, as many Muslim women do. But her fascination with Muslim culture led her and a group of Portland, Oregon, educators to write a curriculum last year for middle and high school students called "Scarves of Many Colors: Muslim Women and the Veil."

That was before September 11 and the war in Afghanistan. Since September, Childs says many teachers have expressed interest in the curriculum, which engages students by bringing to the surface their preconceptions. Students are shown photos of women wearing scarves, and asked to write about the women's thoughts, families, and daily routines.

"Students write stories of oppressed women," says Childs, an NEA member who teaches social studies at Franklin High School in Portland. "Actually, one of the women in the photos is the former prime minister of Pakistan. Another is a member of the Iranian parliament."

Role-playing exercises bring home the idea that Muslim women live in many different situations and view the world in different ways.

One lesson uses an award-winning public radio documentary in which American and Middle Eastern women explain why they cover their hair. "In some cultures, women cover their hair because they are oppressed. But in others, it is an act of defiance, or a sign that tells the public to respect them," says Childs.

The radio program was the seed from which the curriculum grew. "I heard the program and I was fascinated that wearing a veil could mean so many different things," says Bill Bigelow, a Portland teacher currently on leave to work for Rethinking Schools magazine.

Bigelow set up a meeting for Childs and other teachers with the program's producer, Joan Bohorfoush. The teachers then spent two years writing and testing the curriculum.

Childs says teachers adapt the curriculum to their own needs. Most use it for one to two weeks.

For More: Order the curriculum and audiotape for $15 plus s&h at www.teachingforchange.org or 800/763-9131.

How To Close the Achievement Gap

Pedro Noguera, professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, has spent many years working with parents and students to close the achievement gap between middle and lower class students. He was a featured speaker at NEA's Priority Schools Initiative conference in October.

You worked in a Berkeley, California high school. What was the challenge?
These kids faced tough issues. They lived in communities that had a lot of crime and drugs. There was a kind of despondency, but these kids still had dreams. We had kids who wanted to go to college but didn't know how to get there. We had to help them figure that out.

Why is there an achievement gap?
The patterns of achievement reflect social inequality. Kids who are disadvantaged do less well than kids who are privileged. It's partly because they have less educated parents, but then we compound the problem: To those who have the least, we give the least in education resources.

What's the way forward?
Right now, policy makers rarely consult educators about what's needed. They're much more likely to consult business leaders.

The debate is dominated by noneducators, who know very little about what it takes to promote learning. They've fixated on testing, but assessment only tells you what kids know. It doesn't tell you how to promote learning.

We are a wealthy country with the resources to do great things. Our difficulty in education is not due to resources. It's due to will. The challenge that educators face is how to generate the public will.

What can educators do?
As individuals, it's very, very hard. But educators can organize with each other and with parents. Parents want the same things educators want. We've got to be much more creative about building alliances with parents.

For More:
Visit www.inmotionmagazine.com/noguera.html. For more on NEA's Priority Schools Initiative, visit www.nea.org. Search for Priority Schools.

Get Rid of Ads: $5,000 Prize

Tired of seeing advertisements in your cafeteria or in student textbooks? Implement an action plan to expel commercialism from your school and you could win $5,000.

That's the idea behind the first annual "National Ad Slam Contest," sponsored by Commercial Alert, a nonprofit organization established three years ago by Ralph Nader to protect children and communities from commercialism.

"Children go to school to learn how to read, write, and think," says Executive Director Gary Ruskin. "They don't go to school to learn how to shop. Yet hundreds of corporations market their products aggressively to our children every day on school grounds."

Ruskin believes advertising by Pepsi, Coke, Doritos, and other corporations wastes valuable instructional time, corrupts textbooks and curricula, and promotes junk food and soda pop despite skyrocketing levels of childhood obesity.

Commercial Alert is also against Channel One, which broadcasts news and advertisements to captive audiences of about 8 million children in 12,000 schools each day.

"Compelling impressionable children to view commercials during their limited school time is repugnant," he says. "Corpora-tions want to use schools as little market-research factories."

The contest--endorsed by Mothering Magazine and the National Council of the Churches of Christ among others--is "one way to have fun as we rid our schools of marketers," says Ruskin.

Educators, parents, and students have until May 15 to tell Commercial Alert what they are doing to get the advertisers out. This can include activities such as changing school policies about commercialism or holding creative events and rallies.

The $5,000 grand prize will be awarded in June, along with other prizes for creativity, media coverage, and teamwork.

"Our schools should be sacred ground because children have enough exposure to advertisers," Ruskin adds. "If enough of us participate, maybe we can make that happen."

For More:
Go to www.commercialalert.org/adslam/ for more on the contest, including suggested activities.

Math Gigs Hit Center Stage

Junior high teacher Tammy King was enjoying a student concert one evening when she found herself wishing math students could publicly demonstrate how much they'd learned, just like the music students.

"Then I thought, why not? Why can't we put math concepts on stage?"

So King, who has taught at Mountain Ridge Junior High in Highland, Utah, for six years, created Mathtasia, in which students dramatize, sing, and dance math concepts. The first show was so successful that schools throughout the area are staging their own. Now, it's an annual event.

King is thrilled with how much fun her students have with math. "I can't believe how much more they learn when they have to come up with a song or skit," she says. Mathtasia gigs have included demonstrating right, obtuse, and acute angles with hand gestures accompanied by the music of "YMCA"; and skateboarding up and down positive and negative slopes. In the works: a Wizard of Oz parody that features the X-kins of Functionland.

Students who normally wouldn't be motivated by math are tuning in, says King. "When they see a good idea for the show, they grab it. My typical, 'I'm too tough for school' kid will say, 'We're going to do a rap' to this or that math concept."

For More:
Write to Tammy King at Mountain Ridge Junior High, 5525 West 10400 North, Highland, Utah 84003.

Making Tests More Useful

Public school educators are bracing for a new onslaught of federally mandated, state-administered standardized tests--and the heat is on classroom teachers to deliver student performance on those tests, big time. Now, a commission of leading testing experts is putting the heat on the states to make the tests useful to teachers in improving student achievement.

The panel of experts, convened by NEA and four other national education organizations, is headed by Dr. James W. Popham, emeritus professor at UCLA. The commission has produced a report titled Building Tests to Support Instruction and Accountability, containing a set of nine criteria by which states can be held accountable.

In essence, the report says: Let's not leave teachers in the dark about the content their students are being asked to master.

Let's not leave them wondering exactly how each student performed on standardized tests.

And instead of playing blame games with test results, let's provide educators with the professional development they need to use those results on the frontlines, in the classroom.

Having issued its criteria for state accountability, the commission does not intend to go away. Next year, it plans a second report that will assess the states on these criteria.

Marcie Dianda, NEA senior policy analyst and point person for the commission, says the group "hopes to see a new generation of state tests, tests that are useful to teachers."

For More:
Read the report and its nine criteria for judging the states on the NEA Web site at www.nea.org/issues/high-stakes/buildingtests.html.