The first semester of the school year just ended a week ago.  Last week we had final exams, and the week before that was spent reviewing all the chapters we had covered thus far.  During that last week I had a lot of D and C students come and ask me what they could do at THIS time to fix their grade and bring it up to a C or a B, respectively.  They become hostile and a little frantic this time of year.

Meanwhile the A and B students are as cool as a cucumber.  They didn’t have any missing work to turn in.  They’d be consistently studying all quarter, so reviewing wasn’t such a task for them either.  And most of them had worked hard to earn a good grade all quarter that they had a pretty nice cushion to fall back on during finals–their grades weren’t going to be effected as easily by a bad midterm grade.

I really felt sorry for the C and D students.  They had spent the first  8 weeks ignoring warnings of missing assignments, low quizzes and tests, tutoring opportunities, extra credit, etc.  Because they were lazy and procrastinated they were completely helpless when it really mattered to them.  And sadly enough, I think they were hoping for a miracle to come and help them transform into an amazing student in the last 2 weeks and then pull their grades out of a big old mess they spent 8 weeks creating. (more…)

Ya Allah make my student caring and kind
Open his heart, and open his mind
Make her righteous, respectful and honest
And also pious, loving and modest

Make him appreciate the chance to come to school
And realize that knowledge is his greatest tool
To get what she wants in this life, and the next
And to be considered among the ummah’s best

Let him see the importance of knowledge
Not just as means to get into college
That it can empower him in this life
To help out his brethren living in strife

Show her that she can be a doctor and help save a life
And not just, instead, strive to be a doctor’s wife
Let her not measure her success on her number of purses
But instead the ability to lead a team of fifty nurses

Let his goal not be the best grade on a test
But that he studied and tried his best
Make her do homework and turn all of it in
And study every night with true discipline

Let him see that nothing is given withing out trying
And that cheating is the same thing as lying
Guide her to see that success only comes from You
And attaining Jannah is the only success that is true

Show my student that my goal is the same
To help increase the strength of their name
To make them the best students they can be,
Ya Allah, please answer my dua, ameen!

Two Sundays ago Saqib and I went to the Islamic Center of Naperville to attend its second installment of the lecture series Ramadan Reminders entitled Paths to Remembrance.  This lecture/class was given by AbdelRahman Murphy.  Two things impressed me.

First:  AbdelRahman did a couple things from a speaker’s end vital for a good event.

1)  The speaker was on time (read, early) greeting people as they came in–this is VERY important as a teacher.
2) The speaker was prepared and organized with a power point presentation–also VERY important when teaching.  It shows your audience/students that you cared to prepare something a head of time, that it required thought, and effort.

(more…)

In the teacher’s lounge one of my co-workers had brought her daughter down into the room from babysitting to eat lunch together.  My friends and I were sitting at one part of the table sharing a bag of chips, and the woman’s daughter wanted some.  We happily gave some chips to the little girl.  The mom told her that was all she was going to get.

After eating her chips, the daughter wanted more.  The mom said no, but the daughter threw a fit.  So the mom caved in and gave her daughter some more chips, again saying that this time was the last.  Of course, the same thing happened at least two more times.  After the third time, the mom finally decided to tell her daughter there weren’t anymore chips… she lied!

Well, after eating her chips, the daughter wanted more.  So she started crying for it, again.  The mom kept telling her the same old lie:  there weren’t anymore chips.  But she finally realized her daughter didn’t believe her, so she turned to me and said, “Can you give her some more chips?”

I was a little annoyed.  Didn’t she just tell her daughter the chips were done?  I actually mentioned that to her, “You told her there weren’t anymore…?”  The mom said, “Yea I know, but she wants it now.” (more…)

Today in the teacher’s lounge I had an interesting discussion with the Islamic studies teacher.  She was mentioning to me that the book she has to use to teach fiqh is so heavy and dense with information that it overwhelms the kids.  It has a lot of “nit picky” details all stemming from the Hanafi madhab.  She doesn’t seem to like the book much.

Personally, I don’t think I’d like it much either.  Not for high school students, at least.  I don’t think that any of them really need to know, just yet, considering their situation in life and at school, so much in depth information about how to pray.  Teaching the details implies that you know the basics, and unfortunately I’m not sure that that is the case.  I know from seeing it first hand that some of these kids can’t get through 2 rakah of sunnah without making major nullifying mistakes.  So why do they need to spend hours learning how to hold their hands, or which degree to make their backs form during rukuh, or just how low to go when it comes time for sujud?

The way I see it is:  Imaan isn’t in the details.  And I think these kids really need something to raise their Imaan, not something to drag it down with too much information.  The idea of being slammed with rules and regulations for something they have to do everyday (pray) would just be dreary and uninviting.  As another teacher put it, we want to show these kids how easy it is to practice this religion, and that it is made to make our lives easier–not more confusing.

If in the future, once these students have perfected their basic salaah by meeting the fardh requirements, THEN they should move on to the advanced aspects and details of it.  Until then, as I told the teacher, I’d be happy just knowing that they know they have to pray and they get that much done.  Maybe my standards are low, but it’s easier to have them met.