Poetry and Public Life

Rationale

Why Muslim Poets?

Fellows participating in the Yale National Initiative apply to a seminar within their field of study in an effort to develop a curriculum unit that fills a void within their curriculum. Last year, the School District of Philadelphia purchased new English Language Arts curriculum for grades K-8. This curriculum is a significant improvement from prior years, yet there is a lack of diversity among the authors in the textbook. At the time, I was appointed School Based Teacher Leader for Literacy for Lea Elementary. I help teachers implement the new curriculum and develop professional development based on the needs and wants of my colleagues. Several of my colleagues recognized the changing demographics of students, and shared with me their desire to expand the classrooms’ reading lists to include more Middle Eastern, Indian, and North African authors.

I want to improve my scope of understanding of Muslim writers, because the population of Muslim students and their families is growing within the school and classroom. I want our classroom to reflect who we are as individuals and build an understanding of the various cultures represented. This unit does not study the conventions of Muslim poetry or how Muslim poetry differs in content and attitude from the tenets of Western thought. Part of the implicit purpose of this unit is to make students notice that free verse written by Muslim poets does not differ greatly from the free verse of many other contemporary poets.

During my teaching career at Lea Elementary, I taught several units through the School District of Philadelphia curriculum and curriculum developed through the Teachers Institute of Philadelphia and Yale National Initiative about the immigration process from the 19^th century to today. Some of my students are naturalized citizens and some of them are undocumented along with their parents. They reflect all levels of fluency in speaking and writing English. The social and political issues debated during the 2016 Presidential Election and Donald Trump’s Executive Order 13769 have evoked conflicting emotions and harsh memories for many of my students, because they are Muslim and left their home countries in order to escape poverty and violence. I remember reading a daily journal entry from one of my eighth grade students who defended her father for several pages, because they left Bangladesh in order to pursue better education in America for the entire family. All of her siblings are sisters, and through her defense of her father, she expressed her fear of how others might view and judge him. Afrin’s journal shares private thoughts with the poets and authors under study in this unit.

When students are able to see themselves within the lines of poetry and relate to similar conflicts, students form a critical attitude and reinforce their confidence in their identity. The poets in this unit lived in different places all over the world, and wrote their poems in several different languages. Fifteen students within last year’s eighth grade class migrated from different countries within a three-year time span. Twelve of those students were raised in a Muslim home-each unique. Poets like Raza Ali Hasan and Sohrab Sepehri reference several Muslim cultures and traditions within their poems while Forough Farrokhzad and Mahmoud Darwish elaborate central conflicts of regret and man versus country through natural imagery. Taken all in all, these selected poems will spur conversations about Islamic culture and tradition and expunge misconceptions.

Why Student Portfolios in Digital Form?

One of the essential characteristics of the student portfolio is to show the progression of the writer’s style and content. I believe in the necessity of incorporating the rough draft versions of the writing sample with peer feedback either on the actual student paper on or a rubric sheet. Collaboration within the writing process is vital to the development of the writing standard. Portfolios that contain this correspondence between the writer and editor will show whether or not the student is making the changes needed to exceed the standard or falling behind. This evidence is valuable for determining the student’s grade and needed when conferencing with the teacher at the end of an interim report or quarter. Often this collaboration is misplaced or illegible. I want to promote a gradual transference of hard copy to digital portfolios, also known as e-portfolios.

Implementing the use of e-portfolios and the establishment of audio recordings for the writing portfolio addresses many of the shifts within the Common Core State Standards for the use of technology within the classroom. One key shift for English Language Arts is the expectation “of a command of sequence and detail that is essential for effective argumentative and informative writing.”⁵  A teacher can assess this shift based on the pitch, tone, and enunciation of the student when reading a poem out loud for recording. Poetry can be argumentative, and students who demonstrate an understanding of the intended audience will change inflection and tone. Cadence in speech is the command of the verse and style of the poem. Students can reflect on their command of voice, along with their writing style, through the use of an e-portfolio.⁶  I value handwritten essays and feedback to students, but recording students’ voices on a reliable and public dashboard is a primary keepsake. It becomes a digital form of history.

Why Good Muslim, Bad Muslim?

If one were to listen to this podcast for a single reason, it would be for Taz’s laugh. She has the best laugh!  Currently, there are 30 episodes of Good Muslim, Bad Muslim with approximately 42 million listeners.⁷  The location of the podcast varies, but each episode reflects on current issues or personal situations in Tanzila "Taz" Ahmed’s and Zahra Noorbakhsh’s life as they debate what it means to be a good or bad Muslim. They are funny, charming, sincere, personable, and smart. They share with the public very private moments of what it means to be Muslim, female, and an artist in the 21^st century. Students will explore complicated social issues like identity, blending traditions, and family obligations. The majority of my students who are Muslim are female, and I know there is a lot to balance between religious tradition and the ethos of being a teenager with an iPhone. I advise teachers to listen to the entire episode and screen for appropriate age level content. In one episode, Taz and Zahra discuss premarital sex, dating people who drink alcohol and eat pork, and the challenges of growing up in a secular neighborhood school and feeling left out when people celebrate Christian holidays.

In the content section of this curriculum unit, I will summarize some of my favorite segments for my classroom, but several episodes contain interesting and currently engaging approaches to Muslim social issues. Within the past two years, Taz and Zahra discuss the converging of the Black Lives Matter and Palestinian movements and the 2016 Presidential Election; they acknowledge frustrations concerning the slogan ‘Je Suis Charlie’, and invite many entrepreneurs and journalists like Saqib Keval from Oakland's The People's Kitchen and Neda Ulaby, a reporter for National Public Radion, to join the conversation. One of the highlights of the podcasts is Taz’s connection to Muslim poetry. “Ramadan is a time of reflection and prayer and for some of us-poetry. This space is for poets to share their Ramadan poems or prose or paint or music daily for Ramadan.”⁸  Taz will post poems by contemporary and prestigious Muslim poets and read aloud verses during episodes airing during Ramadan. It is a perfect synergy of free verse presented in a digital platform. If teachers are looking to expand their selection of poems for this unit, I highly suggest this medium.

Teachers using this podcast need to use discretion, especially when sharing the website with students. There are many amazing resources on their website for students to explore for continuous research, but Taz and Zahra discuss a lot of personal aspects of their lives. I would seek approval from your principal before using the website associated with Good Muslim, Bad Muslim, and I would advise sending home a parental permission letter in order to clarify the purpose of using this podcast. I would emphasize that although Taz and Zahra are satirists with edgy voices, they explore essential conflicts related to assimilation and Muslim identity in Los Angeles and San Francisco from the 1980s to today.