Summer Institute provides professional development for 6-12 grade educators.
by Catherine Angst
The Duke Islamic Studies Center and the Duke University Middle East Studies Center with support from the Qatar Foundation International (QFI) hosted forty 6-12 grade educators for a five-day summer institute from June 24-29, 2018.
https://youtu.be/jeYcLc5Kj7A
“This institute will completely shift your perspective,” said Jennifer McKinney, a high school history teacher from Fort Smith, Arkansas, “It’s one of those life-changing institutes.”
- “Women and Leadership in the Arab World” with Professor Nadia Yaqub, Ph.D
- “Contemporary Turkey from Ataürk to the AKP” with Professor Erdağ Göknar, Ph.D.
- “An End – Or A Beginning?: The Arab Uprisings of 2011 as History” with Professor James Gelvin, Ph.D.
“We have designed the institute’s program of study around common themes in state curricula, as well as frequently asked questions about the region,” said Emma Harver, a partner on the program from the Duke-UNC Consortium for Middle East Studies. Beyond lectures, the educators participated in specialty breakout sessions, curriculum building workshops, and a panel discussion on Islamophobia with local Muslim community members.
Institute participants partook in several extracurricular cultural experiences. Teachers donned their chef hats and prepared a Middle Eastern feast as part of a cooking enrichment class. They also traveled to the Islamic Center of Raleigh and observed prayer.
Duke and QFI piloted this summer institute in June 2017 with the theme “The Middle East and Islam: New perspectives of Islamic History from the 16th century to the present”. The pilot institute was quite successful, so the program grew to double the size of its teacher cohort this summer.
Re-posted: https://jhfc.duke.edu/duke-hosts-dimensions-of-the-middle-east/