Posted in Alternative Education, Authentic Education, Child-led learning, Creativity, Multiple Intelligence
Tags: children, connections, control, creativity, imagination, motivation, respect, soulful education
Erase me.
•August 8, 2015 • 2 CommentsDedicated to all the disenfranchised, oppressed, institutionally omitted children of the world.
I am a dream held back
I am a silent regret
I am a misty in your eyes
I am a part that was never realized
Erase me.
I am a mere inconvenience
I am a painful reality
I am an incessant reminder
I am a confession not being made.
Erase me.
I am cut and not pasted.
I am a document deleted.
I am an error quickly erased.
I am a project incomplete.
Erase me.
I am a fault.
I am a burden.
I am a mistake.
I am unforgiven.
Erase me.
I am a life extinguished.
I am a passion never ignited.
I am a need unheeded.
I am a light that went out.
Erase me.
I am a face unwashed.
I am the dishes in the sink.
I am laundry on the floor.
I am the dirt under the nails.
Erase me.
I am the homeless on the street.
I am the child uneducated.
I am what poverty held back
I am the vote not worth getting.
Erase me.
(c) Omaira Alam 2015
Mirrors
•June 4, 2015 • Leave a Comment
Really listen to what adults around you say about children — not their own, but children in general.
Many adults think very little of children and their abilities and motives —
possibly because they think very little of themselves and their own abilities and motives.
They transfer their negative beliefs on children.
If adults thought of themselves as strong, capable learners who enjoy challenges and want to contribute,
presumably they would see children the same way.
Lori Pickert, Author of Project-Based Homeschooling: Mentoring Self-Directed Learners
An Academic Presence…
•March 8, 2015 • Leave a CommentCongratulations to Zaytuna College, the first accredited Muslim college in America!
“Our greatest accreditation is with God.”
More information can be found at Zaytuna College.
Miseducation
•February 21, 2015 • Leave a Comment
Malcolm was a highly disciplined individual. He was disciplined intellectually, he was disciplined morally and he was disciplined spiritually. He was a man of prayer.
He was asked one month before he was killed, in an interview with Jack Barnes and Barry Sheppard on January 18, 1965, “What do you think is responsible for race prejudice in the US?” Malcolm responded, “Ignorance, greed and a skillfully designed program of mis-education that goes right along with the American system of exploitation and oppression… So, it takes education to eliminate it. Just because you have colleges and universities, doesn’t mean you have education. The colleges and universities in the American educational system are skillfully used to mis-educate.”
May God have mercy on this intellectual, moral and spiritual giant.
[May 21, 1925 – February 21, 1965]
Hamza Yusuf, President of Zaytuna College
Purpose of Education
•January 1, 2015 • Leave a Comment
“The Purpose of Education:
The end of learning is to repair the ruin of our first parents
By regaining to know GOD aright,
and out of that knowledge to love Him, to imitate Hime, to be like Him.”
John Milton
Image source can be found here.
Changing the nature of Islamic education
•December 25, 2014 • Leave a CommentUnderstanding Islamic education – Islamic pedagogy – with sincerity means including the whole American Muslim community, not just the segments we are familiar with or that we know personally. We need to get out of our comfort zone to address the real issues.
An excerpt from this powerful piece:
“The Muslim American community cannot sit comfortably in isolation. In fact, our failure to address the realities of black American Muslims is becoming more evident as neighborhoods around inner city mosques crumble and some communities have lost their youth to the streets. Many grassroots programs lack support from mainstream Muslim organizations. There are a number of well-intentioned activist Muslims of immigrant descent who are on the forefront of protesting police brutality and addressing the prison industrial complex, but many of these activists are well versed in secular activism and often by-pass initiatives led by black American Muslims, which only further marginalizes black Muslim voices. It is time that Muslim social and civil society institutions build bridges and empower the disadvantaged and protest in the same ways that they do for oppressed Muslims abroad or of the government spying of Muslims at home. For many of us black Muslims, addressing police brutality, gun violence, education and health care access is not an intellectual exercise or some activist phase of our youth. It is our very survival. I ask you to care because Renisha is me, Oscar is me, Trayvon is me, Eric Garner is me. And there are millions of us facing this type of discrimination and profiling on a day to day, hour to hour, basis.
“Instead of making Islam the solution to society’s problems, our communities have shifted to Islam is insulating ourselves from society’s problems. And that is problematic. And alienating. We should be enraged at Garner’s death. But we should recognize that this happens daily across the nation. And it is happening to a large segment of the American Muslim population too. And will continue to happen, unless we all start to mobilize and organize together.”
Read the full article here.
black board, white chalk 