In this lesson, students will learn about the Silk Road and compare it with global exchanges that are occurring today. Students will begin with an introduction to the meaning of a global exchange. Students will then watch a Ted Talk about the Silk Road, followed by a discussion about the ancient trading routes and the importance of Marco Polo. Students will simulate traveling along the Silk Road by going on a visual tour of key cities. For each “city,” students will map the trade routes and analyze artifacts as a class that range from ceramics to textiles. Students will discuss the importance of the cultural exchange that occurred along the Silk Road and how it is global exchange occurs in their community today.

In this lesson, students will learn about the Silk Road and compare it with global exchanges that are occurring today. Students will begin with an introduction to the meaning of a global exchange. Students will then watch a TedEd Talk about the Silk Road, followed by a discussion about the ancient trading routes and the importance of global travelers like Ibn Battuta. After watching the video, students will simulate travel along the Silk Road by visiting stations that represent key cities. At each “city,” students will map the route and analyze artifacts that range from photographs to non-fiction accounts. To conclude the activity, students will discuss the importance of the cultural exchange that occurred along the Silk Road and how global exchange continues to occur in their communities today.

By reviewing data from the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum from the 1930s and 1940s, students will consider perceptions of refugees in the United States over time. Students will critically analyze historical documents and connect them with similarly themed current events/today’s refugee crisis. Students will explore stories of refugees and develop empathy for what it is like being an outcast, yearning for freedom and opportunity in a foreign land.

Through this lesson, students will gain a greater understanding of the various challenges that Syrian refugees face. Students will read excerpts from interviews with Sanaa Domat, a Syrian woman originally from Homs. Students will learn about her experience in both her native country and in her new host country. By using oral histories in the classroom, distant events will become more real and relevant to students. Oral histories were collected by students in a Refugee Lives interactive learning course at Duke University, and are part of the Refugee Lives Oral History Project, http://sites.duke.edu/arabiccommunities/.

Through this lesson, students will gain a greater understanding of the various challenges that Iraqi refugees face. Students will read excerpts from an interview with Sufyan A., an Iraqi man originally from
Baghdad. Students will learn about his experience in both his native country and in his new host country. By using oral histories in the classroom, distant events will become more real and relevant to students. Oral histories were collected by students in a Refugee Lives interactive learning course at Duke University, and are part of the Refugee Lives Oral History Project, http://sites.duke.edu/arabiccommunities/.

Islam is the second largest religion in the world and the fastest growing. Because faith is an integral part of people’s life, it is often the subject of beautiful works of art. Material objects are often created to reflect the feelings and values of the artist. In this lesson, students will virtually visit the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and the British Museum in London to find the Five Pillars of the Islamic faith in works of art. Each work of art in the virtual tour will help explain different tenets or beliefs of the Islamic faith. With each work of art, students will be directed to other sources that help explain things with more depth. The goal of the lesson is to answer two questions: 1. What are the 5 Pillars of Islam? 2. How does art reflect and support religious beliefs and practice?

There is much diversity within Islamic culture. During this unit, students will learn about several significant forms of Islamic art (mosque architecture, geometric/arabesque design, and calligraphy) by completing a children’s book that is missing important information or images. The book is divided up into 5 class sessions with an optional 6th session to wrap up missing sections or create a cover. Through the exploration, students will learn that Islamic art around the world can include many different concepts, and they will apply new knowledge through note-taking, graphic organizers, drawing, calligraphy, and optional mosaic portions of the book. When finished, each student will have a completed book that reviews the arts covered in the unit and
celebrates the diversity of Muslim culture around the world. See the accompanying PowerPoint here: http://ncmideast.org/files/2016/02/Book-of-Islamic-Arts_Peck.pptx

In this lesson, students will discover immigration stories of two distinct and often overlooked groups: Iranian (also known as Persian) immigrants and Lebanese immigrants. Students will discover the different factors that led these men and women to settle in North Carolina and how they contributed to North Carolina’s economy and history. Students will work collaboratively to analyze secondary sources, including stories of immigrants and background information on immigration, and create a comparison chart detailing the similarities and differences between these two groups from the Middle East. Students will also gain a deeper understanding of the complex concept of what makes a place “home,” allowing them to not only gain an educational understanding of immigration in North Carolina, but to also make deeper, personal connections to individual stories.

The following lesson is part of a Visual Arts instructional unit exploring Graffiti as a visual art form expressing contemporary ideas of Islamic culture. Historically, Illuminated manuscripts (especially Illuminated Qur’ans) were instrumental in spreading ideas of Islam. Contemporary Islamic Graffiti developed in response to a need to illuminate contemporary ideas of Islam in a visual platform that is not only visually captivating, but in the public sphere. In this unit, students will first explore the visual art form of historic Illuminated Manuscripts and engage in critical analysis of at least one historic work. Students will also explore the works of Contemporary Islamic Graffiti artists. See the accompanying PowerPoints here: http://ncmideast.org/files/2016/02/Islamic-Graffiti_Person.pptx and here: https://ncmideast.org/files/2016/02/Islamic-Illuminated-Manuscripts_Person.pptx

With 1 billion Muslims worldwide, diversity is the norm within Islam. However, Islam and Muslims have historically been reduced to a few, often negative stereotypes, particularly in the West. This lesson aims to help students understand the common stereotypes they may encounter related to Islam and builds a toolkit for unpacking and challenging narrow representations of Islam. See the accompanying PowerPoint here: http://ncmideast.org/files/2016/02/Deconstructing-Stereotypes-Related-to-Islam-and-Muslims-PowerPoint_Loranger.pdf

During this unit of study, students will explore Gamelan music of Indonesia and apply the learning by replicating a simple Gamelan ensemble performance on barred Orff instruments and drums. Students will learn that even today, the Gamelan ensemble is used as a part of Muslim religious ceremonies. See the accompanying PowerPoint here: http://ncmideast.org/files/2016/02/Exploring-Indonesian-Culture-through-Gamelan-Music_Copeland.pptx

During this lesson, students will receive a brief introduction to Islam through the picture book, Golden Domes and Silver Lanterns. In addition, students will learn that there have been Muslims in North Carolina for many, many years through the story of Omar ibn Said.

In this lesson, students will explore the role of hip hop during the Arab Spring. After an introduction to events of the Arab Spring, students will read and analyize lyrics from Arab artists. Students will discuss literary elements and figurative language as they read the different texts.

This multi-day lesson will focus on the role of Islam in the Kingdoms of Western Africa, where Islam influenced the area tremendously in the time period prior to the Atlantic slave trade. The geographic focus will be on Africa that now encompasses the modern countries of Senegal, Gambia, Guinea, Burkina Faso, Niger, Mali, and Nigeria. Students will learn that Islam was brought to the Americas by enslaved African Muslims. The overall theme of the lesson will be the practice, survival, resistance and adaptation of the five Pillars of Islam in Colonial and Antebellum America.

On January 2015, the MiLLENNiAL magazine featured an article “The Growing Phenomenon of Food Trucks.” It started with this missive: “Street food may seem like a recent phenomenon in the States but believe it or not, America has quite the history when it comes to mobile meal stations. Consumers have been getting their food from portable venues for over 200 years. Beginning with a pushcart to the Chuck Wagon to a horse-drawn freight carriage to the famous “roach coaches” to what we have today – gourmet food trucks.” The reality is that consumers got more than just food. For the adventurous ones, a brave, new, and bigger world opened up, connecting them to faraway places, sense, and cultures. With time, the unfamiliar will hopefully become familiar, demystified, and a welcomed sight. This creative exercise asks students to come up with the “The Next Best New Food Truck” in which the “food” has yet to enter dominant or mainstream American culture. The fun is coming up with and designing the next food truck concept.

After an initial overview and quick read of Othello for plot and character familiarity, students will explore selected passages and related texts more deeply (vertically) to define the concept of “other” during Elizabethan times and connect to contemporary, modern examples of “other-ing.” Using the horizontal and vertical framework, students will identify and explore, in discussions and writing, the effects of bias as conveyed through language and binary opposition to illustrate problematic attitudes of Islamophobia, recognizing that these attitudes perpetuate stereotype and limit tolerance, leading to the “Danger of the Single Story” as Nigerian author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie eloquently illustrates in her TED talk. Students will complete an extension project where they illustrate that an individual regardless of religion or culture is more than a “label”---s/he is in fact an “ocean of a stream of stories” (Salmon Rushdie’s novel Haroun and the Sea of Stories).

Students will employ rhetorical analysis skills to analyze four major Iran-related speeches from the last four presidential administrations. The speeches provide a chance for students to apply their understanding of rhetoric and annotation skills, and also think about the question of change vs. continuity in U.S. foreign policy. This two-day lesson is intended to be used as part of broader teaching on rhetoric and rhetorical analysis. This lesson ideally falls after the theoretical introduction to rhetoric in which students are introduced to the concept of rhetoric, rhetorical and Aristotelian appeals, and persuasive strategies.

In this lesson, students will study the major and minor groups who immigrated into the United States from the 1820 through the 2010 census. Students will read Citizen Khan, an article about a Muslim immigrant living in Wyoming in the early 1900s and his path to American citizenship. Students will examine the role that xenophobia, naturalization, immigration quotas, push/pull factors, and perceived standards of “whiteness” had on immigrants throughout United States history. See the accompanying PowerPoint here: http://ncmideast.org/files/2016/02/Immigration-Foldable_Harris.pptx

Students will use technology to explore the social, cultural, religious, and economic impact of the Silk Road and other transcontinental trade routes between the Classical Era and Gunpowder Empires of World History. Students will focus on the great achievements of empires and kingdoms, the great scholars, and Islamic explorers during the time of great social, cultural, and economic expansion in Europe, Asia, and Africa. At the conclusion of the lesson, students will create an interactive travel journal to highlight the different experiences that travelers along the Silk Road and other transcontinental trade routes would have encountered. The lesson encompasses many key concepts and objectives of the NC Essential Standards in World History, while addressing common core literacy standards for Social Studies students.

Students will visit stations for medieval cities scattered throughout Africa, Asia, and Europe that were predominantly Muslim. For each city, they will analyze architecture, artifacts, and/or primary sources and will complete a journal of their experiences there. To conclude the lesson, they will focus on similarities and differences between the regions to answer the central historical question: What was life like in the Medieval Islamic world?