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Living in the Holy Land: Respecting Differences
Interreligious
educational workshops with Christian
and Moslem teachers in Bethlehem and
Ramallah
Bethlehem, 27th
February 2010
By David Clement –
Volunteer at the Arab Educational
Institute, Dipl. Social Education
Worker
Background:
AEI’s long-term project “Living in
the Holy Land – Respecting
Differences” is a school networking
project which brings together
Christian and Moslem religious
education teachers from the
Bethlehem and Ramallah areas as well
as the Ministry of Education of the
Palestinian National Authority. The
main objective is to develop
interreligious (Christian and
Muslim) religious school education.
For this reason AEI, together with
the involved teachers and the
Ministry, is presently developing
approaches and methods of teaching
and learning interfaith religious
education. One new idea which I
helped to give shape, is to develop
and implement drama activities as a
suitable way of interreligious
learning.
I was very pleased to
have had the opportunity to speak to
Christian and Moslem teachers at two
project workshops, on October 9 in
Beit Sahour and on December 5 in
Ramallah.
In Beit Sahour I
briefly introduced the idea of using
drama as a method of interreligious
learning in religious education.
This method and associated
activities were new to most
teachers. They asked for simple
demonstrations.
To meet that demand,
I visited from November 2009 on
AEI’s school network in Ramallah and
Bethlehem and did a 60-minute
demonstration training with the
pupils on drama activities, at each
single school. The teachers observed
and gave me the floor. Those school
visits were evaluated with the help
of a standard questionnaire.
In the Ramallah
workshop on December 5, I presented
the results of the evaluation and
talked more deeply about drama as a
method of learning as well as about
the practical demonstrations. A main
result of the evaluation was that
the teachers need to have experience
with drama and implement the skills
themselves. The idea of holding
teacher workshops came up.
The workshop:
Two three-hour workshops were held
in Ramallah (11.02) and Bethlehem
(04.02). The one with the Ramallah
teachers was realized at St. Joseph
School and the Bethlehem workshop
took place at the AEI Youth House.
The main workshop
objectives were to provide religious
teachers in Palestine, both Moslem
and Christian, with a theoretical
introduction of interreligious
educational methods and a practical
possibility of exercising
educational drama and
communication–interaction
activities.
Specifically, the
teacher should have the opportunity
of experiencing him- or herself the
drama and communication and
interaction activities. By
experiencing those activities, he or
she, on the one side, will feel less
fear using/teaching drama activities
in class. On the other side, he or
she will learn, practically, more
about the helpfulness of using
´holistic activities´ in class.
These activities link up the body
with mind and emotion.
Next to the practical
experience and learning about the
theoretical background of drama
activities, teachers were given an
opportunity to plan a theory lesson
by including holistic drama and
communication/interaction
activities. The lesson plan was
aimed at the question whether the
teachers would be able, personally
and educationally, to use the
activities in class in the future or
whether it might be difficult for
them. The introduced lesson plan
activity was developed by AEI
itself. It is a communication and
reflecting activity called R.R.C.A.
(Read, Reflect, Communicate and
Act).
The workshop´s
content:
The introduced drama activities,
such as “the still image” and “the
machine”, are based on the “drama of
the oppressed” method developed by
Augusto Boal (a drama
theoretician, and drama producer
from Brazil/South America). Next to
these drama activities, the trainer
introduced “the hot seat”, another
drama activity. The simplicity of
these activities makes it possible
for everybody to participate.
As an important part
of the workshop, the workshop
trainer demonstrated, theoretically
and practically, a complete school
lesson by using the lesson plan
activity R.R.C.A. and drama
activities. After the teachers
exercised and experienced R.R.C.A.
as well as the drama activities they
said throughout the workshop that
especially the R.R.C.A. activity
would help them to plan and realize
an interreligious religion lesson in
the future by including drama
activities. The R.R.C.A., as
introduced in the workshop, is based
on a religious or moral dilemma
story. Teachers were given a handout
of the AEI book “Moral stories from
Palestine” (1999) as a gift, full
with religious (Christian and
Muslim) as well as moral dilemma
stories, involving both religious
and national levels.
On the theoretical
level the workshop trainer focused
on explaining that drama as a method
of learning or, more practically I
can say, that drama activities as a
way of learning in class, do not
focus on creating perfect drama and
entertaining an audience. For sure,
playing drama/ doing drama
activities is always fun, but it is
important to say that the teachers
have to focus on the performing
pupil and the holistic learning
experience he or she will achieve.
This means that the teachers have to
focus on the pupil’s inner feelings
and mind and on what is going on
inside the pupils in order to create
a performance. The teachers have to
take in consideration that the
pupils will express themselves in
different ways. As some are shy,
they will express themselves in a
quiet and calm way. I would like to
add, as I did at the workshops, that
the pupils performance/acting is
based on their real life (or social)
experience of the past. If a pupil
has a quiet mother, this pupil will
probably act as a quiet mother,
instead of acting as a “loud”
mother. But this is what we as
educators want. We want to let the
pupils link the moral dilemma story
as experienced by drama activities
with their real life.
Evaluation:
Because of different
reasons, the time was too short to
go into a deep evaluation of the
workshop. Basically, the teachers
were positively surprised of the
theoretical and practical linking
up. Some said, that they know now
how and why to do drama activities
and that the R.R.C.A. lesson
planning activity will help them a
lot.
From my own point of
view, the workshops were a great and
rich learning success. I asked the
teachers whether they would like to
invite me in order to demonstrate a
lesson by including drama
activities. |
