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Author: Christian Century
Before mid-November arrives, multicultural educator Afeefa Syeed will have brought third-, fourth- and fifth-grade students from the Muslim Al Fatih Academy in Herndon, Virginia, to several public schools to share the practices and beliefs of their holiest month, Ramadan.
Syeed and the children will present the call to prayer in Arabic, display prayer rugs and offer tastes of dates. In countless other classrooms across the country, similar efforts will be made to educate students about the time of fasting and spiritual reflection for adherents of the world's second largest religion.
Ramadan, which began in mid-October this year, is making more appearances in public school classrooms, thanks to a series of new teacher training initiatives, an increased fascination with Islam and the assurance that schools, if careful, can educate impressionable children about religion without crossing a constitutional line.
The Council on Islamic Education, a nonprofit organization based in Fountain Valley, California, plans to release an updated version of its booklet Muslim Holidays, which was first published in 1997, for the more than 4,000 teachers nationwide who have used it.
The booklet, which contains lesson plan ideas and historical and cultural background on Ramadan and other Muslim holidays, also outlines the various state regulations governing instruction about religion in public schools and discusses accommodations that schools can make to enable Muslim students to observe the holiday.