April: Arab American Heritage Month

Your language-teaching mission, should you choose to accept it, is to celebrate Arab American Heritage Month in your classroom during April (and all year long!).

Image source: https://www.aclib.us/blog/middle-grade-books-arab-american-heritage-month

 April is National Arab American Heritage Month. This month is a great time for celebrating the history, contributions, and culture of the diverse population of Arab Americans, although we can celebrate our students’ diverse heritages any day or month of the year! People who we would today identify as Arabs (check out teachmideast.org’s article “Arab, Middle Eastern, and Muslim? What’s the Difference?”) have been coming to the United States for hundreds of years. The first wave of immigrants came between 1880 and 1924. This slowed down drastically because of restrictive immigration laws passed after World War I. Since the 1970s, the number of Arab Americans has increased rapidly due to a change in these laws, and because of wars and economic hardships in some Arab countries. Today, it is estimated that nearly 3.7 million Americans trace their roots to an Arab country.

I have a few activities that I created originally for the Edmonds School District to celebrate Arab American Heritage Month within various content areas which you can check out here. However, I wanted to highlight a couple that focus on language, and would be a fun addition to your classroom. As a language teacher I love comparing languages, and introducing students to different writing systems. Therefore, for younger students, or students that just need a calming brain-break, you can use a coloring activity that uses the Arabic alphabet to discover a hidden image. Moreover, I always love talking about how languages influence each other. Thus, I created an activity using a list of Arabic words that have made their way into English (I got the list of words from here and here) which has scrambled letters and some images for clues.

RESOURCE: Arabic Coloring Activity

RESOURCE: English Words of Arabic Origin Activity

You can also have students watch some READ-ALOUDS! In response to the COVID-19 pandemic and school closures, the Qatar Foundation International released read-alouds of various children’s books, working with authors, publishers, and writers from across the Arab world. Each read-aloud features works by Arab authors from the Arab world and Arab diaspora, in both English and Arabic. All of their exciting stories can be found on their website (www.qfi.org/read-alouds/) and on the QFI YouTube channel.

 

How do you celebrate Arab American Hertiage Month in your classroom? How do you introduce students to other language systems? Share in the comments!

April: Celebrating Neurodiversity!

Your language-teaching mission, should you choose to accept it, is to celebrate neurodiversity in your classroom during April (and all year long!).

Image: https://today.uconn.edu/2020/01/engineering-new-learning-environment-neurodiversity/#

DID YOU KNOW? In the 1990s a journalist named Harvey Blume and an autism advocate named Judy Singer wanted to create a new political category so that they could fight for the rights of those whose brains worked differently. They also wanted to celebrate the strengths that many neurodiverse people have. For example, people with ADHD are often creative problem-solvers, and people with dyslexia will often have great visual thinking abilities. Now in the 2020s there is a better understanding that there is no ‘normal’ brain, and that everyone’s brain is unique and works ‘differently’. However, many people with conditions like autism choose to continue using the term ‘neurodiverse’ because, according to an article by Howard Timberlake, “it is a useful and positive way of defining their identity and community.” Now, the United Nations has a World Autism Awareness Day every April 2, and many countries use April as the month to raise awareness and celebrate the contributions of neurodiverse people.

 

How can you celebrate neurodiversity in your ELL or language classroom this April?

  • Talk explicitly about neurodiversity and how it helps us create a tapestry of different minds in our society that can contribute different perspectives. For example, Billie Eilish recently won an Oscar for her song “No Time to Die”. In class, you can mention that Billie is neurodiverse: she has Tourette syndrome, which means that she has involuntary tics, and she is synesthetic, which means her senses, like vision and hearing, can blend together.

  • Share resources with your colleagues on ways to celebrate and support neurodiverse students. Shameless plug: On the Lesson: Impossible site, there are two podcast episodes that you can listen to with Michael Weingarth and Drew Thompson and a blog post (with a PDF you can share, below) about “5 Minute Differentiation Strategies”. That is the tip of the iceberg for podcasts and posts about neurodiversity!

  • Highlight neurodiverse individuals in your classroom while making connections to the content. I have a few activities that I created originally for the Edmonds School District to celebrate neurodiversity within various content areas which you can check out here. For example, I drew connections to Alan Turing for a cryptography math lesson and Dr. Maggie Aderin-Pocock for a science lesson on making a spectroscope.

  • Listen to neurodiverse people about their experiences, and avoid organizations that center anyone other than the neurodiverse person themselves. Beware of resources from organizations like Autism Speaks, which according to the Autistic Self Advocacy Network, “uses damaging and offensive fundraising tactics which rely on fear, stereotypes and devaluing the lives of people on the autism spectrum”. Both Michael and Drew, the two people I’ve interviewed about neurodiversity, identify as neurodiverse, and you can follow Michael on Twitter!

 How do you celebrate neurodiversity in the classroom? Feel free to share in the comments!