Middle
East Teacher Resource Project
Salary Point Workshops -
"Teaching About the Arab World:
Meeting the Standards Across Disciplines, K-12"
 Our workshops for teachers address many aspects of the Arab World, including its ethnic and religious diversity, history, cultural stereotypes, and relations with the United States. Information on
classroom resources and teaching strategies, as well as guidelines on meeting California academic content standards are provided.
One general or multicultural-specific salary point will be given to LAUSD teachers who complete a workshop. The next workshop in the district is planned for Fall 2008.
Recommended Curricula & Resources
This is a sampling of the many curricula resources available over the Internet which we thought were most helpful for teaching about the Middle East. Most of them are free for download while several are for purchase. Although the lesson plans were not designed by the American Friends Service Committee and represent diverse perspectives, they are generally consistent with the organization's values of peace, social justice, and a belief in the worth of every individual.
The curricula have been grouped into five subject areas. Please click on a category to see a listing:
Also, please see Additional Resources for Educators to explore the hundreds of additional excellent resources available to teachers about the Middle East.
More About the Middle East Teacher Resource Project
For many reasons, the Middle East is one of the most historically misunderstood regions in the world. Most Middle East education and activism in the United States has focused on the adult population. Often, by the time they are addressed, the average American adult's perspective has been informed by decades of information and misinformation coming from the media, commonly held assumptions or stereotypes, and either inadequate or else completely absent formal education on the region.
This is an especially serious lack given the essential role that the United States has played, and continues to play in the region today. The volatile and complex issues involved and the importance of understanding the Arab and Muslim world demand that we pay more formal attention to the region if we are to responsibly address such issues as "terrorism" or "peace" in the Middle East.
The AFSC Middle East Teacher Resource Project (METRP) attempts to take a more long-term proactive approach within this context by building capacity in the educational system, with a view towards nurturing a more informed citizenry for the future. By working directly with teachers, METRP hopes to encourage more formal education about the peoples, cultures, history and politics of the Middle East among the student population, a younger target group than is traditionally reached.
It seeks to do this on several levels:
- By providing publicly accessible listings of relevant curricula and resources about the Middle East through electronic and printed materials;
- By working with and fostering networks that will advocate for more informed and balanced education on the region (through teachers' unions, associations, credential programs, etc.);
- By working directly on a local level with teachers and in classrooms by offering speakers, presentations, videos, printed materials and other educational aids.
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