Supporting Muslim Youth

On Wednesday, April 30^th, the staff of the Religion and Diversity Education program at Tanenbaum attended a conference entitled “Muslim Youth in NYC Public Schools” at Teachers College here in Manhattan. The conference was presented by Dr. Louis Cristillo, a Research Assistant Professor of Education at TC, as a launch for the preliminary results of his soon-to-be-released full study on Muslim youth in public schools in New York City.

The day-long event was broken into two halves- a morning of research presentations, and an afternoon of break-out sessions, giving the audience a chance to make sense of the research. The break-out sessions gave the audience members the rare chance to apply what we learned from the study to our own contexts, and provided a space for sharing insights and making connections.

One of the most important reminders offered by the conference was that of the very real toll 9/11 has taken on individuals, communities, our city and our nation. In the wake of 9/11, the media’s portrayal of Islam and Muslims has become more lively and focused than it has been in the recent past. Cristillo’s study shows that Muslim youth in New York City have felt that focus bear down on them as well. According to Cristillo, only 4% of New York City’s Muslim youth are in private religious schools, with the remaining 96% of the population attending public schools. His research shows that 1 in 10 students in NYC public schools are Muslim, and that the students in his study experienced significant changes in their lives after the tragedy of September 11^th. Now, seven years later, he seeks to find ways that educators and the public school system can learn to better serve Muslim youth and to recognize the diversity of opinion and experience among them.

The Religion and Diversity Education program here at Tanenbaum foregrounds the importance of understanding the needs of students from all backgrounds, and we offer links here to Cristillo’s work, as well as that of Dr. Michelle Fine of CUNY Graduate Center and Dr. Selcuk Sirin of NYU as resources for educators who would like more information about this often-overlooked student population. We’d love to hear your responses to the work, and ways that you will use it to inform your practice!

• Dr. Cristillo’s study- “Religiosity, Education and Civic Belonging: Muslim Youth in New York City Public Schools“
• Dr. Michelle Fine’s homepage
• Dr. Selcuk Sirin’s publications page (features a number of PDFs)

Around the Web: Religion and Diversity Education

Have some time on your hands? Take a minute to read up on some of the news of the week concerning religion and diversity in the educational sphere. Around the Web is a feature that brings together a variety of recent articles that address the issues of religion and diversity and their places in education (public and private)!

We’d love to hear your thoughts on these links!

February 21st is International Mother Tongue Day! Celebrate!

Diversity education bill proposed in California after school shooting.

Florida State Board of Education rules that evolution is a “theory,” not a fact, that should taught in Florida schools.

“Bill of Responsibilities” to be taught to secondary students in South Africa, highlights respect for diversity.

Durban, South Africa school denies admission to Sikh boy based on his appearance.

Economic Diversity @ Stanford- the university will now offer tuition breaks to families with incomes under $100,000.

The number of multiculturalism courses being offered in high schools and colleges is on the rise.

For information on Tanenbaum’s programmatic offerings in Religion and Diversity Education, check out our trainings and curricula!

Crossing the Faith Line

In retrospect, I wonder who I thought I’d meet at the Interfaith Youth Core “Crossing the Faith Line” conference back in October. I’m not sure. Maybe I hadn’t really thought about who I’d meet, but was rather more concerned with what I’d say. In the end, I met people of many ages, races, nationalities, ethnicities, genders, locations, religions, and belief systems. I met a mini-America. The participants were of a variety of political viewpoints as well—this was neither a “liberal” or a “conservative” crowd. The Interfaith Youth Core looks nothing like you probably think it does, though you probably don’t have a real clear view of what to think. Our country doesn’t have a well-publicized history of interfaith activism. The conference highlighted the reality of who and what an interfaith movement in the 21^st century U.S. looks like.

I facilitated a roundtable lunch session called “The Relevance of Religion in 21^st Century Curriculum,” and heard concerns about religious diversity in the classroom from educators from all over the country. Teachers, students, and administrators in a variety of settings are finding themselves in the midst of an explosion of diversity in their classrooms, and have not been trained in dealing with it. People are overwhelmed and overburdened, and often are searching for ways to bring students together in celebration of their differences in the face of the often negative messages students get from their surroundings about the meanings of certain differences. I took away a sense of growing hope that there are many Americans interested in healing the rifts between us, even though the process may cause some discomfort.

Selfishly, I must say that part of the pleasure I derived from the conference was purely personal- I enjoyed getting to know new people, many of whom are young and organizing on high school and college campuses across the nation, who are working to make our lives, schools, and towns more harmonious by teaching us how to speak and learn from each other. I was impressed by the grassroots efforts of students and, sometimes, their teachers to put religion on the radar. The feeling of the conference overall was incredibly harmonious, and being a representative of an organization like Tanenbaum, whose whole mission revolves around wanting to support the creation of safe spaces like it, I felt completely revitalized in my work.

If spaces like the conference, and organizations like IFYC, are developing and growing across the country, soon the national conversation around how to live together—in recognition of and respect for our myriad differences—will have to galvanize. IFYC’s work is a big step in the right direction.

*For more information on the Interfaith Youth Core, check out www.IFYC.org.