[Palestineinschools] from rethinking schools

[Ora Wise]

Hey y’all,
I thought that everyone might want to read the email that bill bigelow from
rethinking schools sent since we’ve talked about their support of our
project so much and we have so much to gain from them.  Attached is the role
play he mentions.

Hi Ora,

Great to hear from you. I'm delighted that you're going forward with this
sorely needed work.

My first thought about this is that it may be that less is more. That is,
you might concentrate the group's energy on creating a few very solid
lessons that can be shared around the country and then building from there.
Please tell folks who you are working with that if anyone is doing teaching
around Palestinian issues and thinks that s/he might be ready to write a
piece for Rethinking Schools, then I would be happy to talk with them and
try to help shape an article. This is how Rethinking Columbus came together:
built around several "anchor" articles on critical teaching of the issue, as
well as critiques of the traditional story (which also ought to be part of
your effort, I'd think.)

As I think I mentioned before, Rethinking Schools has done very little on
this issue -- not because we don't want to, but because we haven't gotten
articles and because our own teaching on it is not so exemplary. We've done
some editorials, included a piece or two in War, Terrorism, and Our
Classrooms special edition after 9/11 and I did a piece on Israel's attack
on Palestinian education after a 1989 teachers delegation that Bob Peterson,
Linda Christensen, and I were on. Anyway, all that to say that we would be
very eager to help develop some of the curriculum people there develop into
reader-friendly pieces.

I forwarded your note to Bob Peterson, and am also cc'ing this to him. Bob
has been keenly interested in the Palestinian struggle for the last 30 plus
years, so he's somebody to keep in the loop.

I'm attaching a role play that I did taking off from the film Promises. I
have mixed feelings about the film, but I think it can be worked with in
good ways. I used the role play only once, so it's rough, but take a look
and you can see what it tries to get at. We did it immediately following the
film and students were very responsive. I offered it to the people who are
producing the teaching guide for Promises, but I think they thought it was
too pro-Palestinian.

Best, Bill

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