The Fowler Museum’s workshop series aims to stimulate curiosity, expand knowledge, and develop respect for people from all over the world. While open to the public, these offerings are designed as free professional development opportunities for K-12 teachers, who are eligible for one salary point credit, pending approval by home institution. Through these workshops, the Fowler Museum meets a crucial need of teachers across Southern California for free training in global cultural traditions.
Lived Islam Through the Arts
Saturday, September 14, 2024 / 9:30 AM – 12:30 PM
Webinar
In this presentation, we provide an overview of The Art of Knowing project. This pedagogical intervention and research project utilizes non-Western, specifically Indigenous Muslim storywork, as the foundation for an extracurricular science curriculum to engage elementary school children in multiple ways of knowing, and diverse orientations toward knowledge.
We first situate the study geographically and temporally within the local community context to understand the school site and the community in which it is located. Next, we explain and demonstrate the application of social critiques of modernity and coloniality to the design of curriculum and pedagogical strategies that forward culturally responsive and revitalizing relationships with, and understanding and production of knowledge and our world. Finally, we provide a model lesson using the story of Hayy ibn Yaqzan, a classical tale from the MENA & Muslim work that provides a theory of knowledge, as a curricular and pedagogical foundation.
Arshad I. Ali, is an educator, community worker, and scholar who studies youth culture, race, identity, and politics. He is Associate Professor of Ethnic Studies Education and Civic Education at UC Santa Cruz. Dr. Ali’s research examines the construction of racial identities through exploring questions of democracy, liberalism, and modernity in the lives of youth. He has written extensively on issues relating to the cultural geography of Muslim student surveillance, citizenship, governmentality and other issues of coloniality and Muslims in Western spaces. His current research project explores questions of Muslim ways of knowing and science pedagogy in elementary education.
Ebtissam Oraby, EdD, is a teaching assistant professor at George Washington University, where she teaches Arabic language and literature. She is a scholar of curriculum and pedagogy specializing in multilingual education, and Arab and Muslim cultures. Her research interests lie at the intersection of philosophy, language, religion, and education.
Sam Burmester, is an educator and education scholar who draws on his career as a Language Arts teacher to explore pedagogies of literary, linguistic, and epistemological pluralism. His current work engages questions of institutional construction of linguistic, epistemological, and cultural legibility in educational spaces, particularly surrounding issues of how individuals, their knowledge, and their ways of knowing are represented and if/how they are able to represent themselves and their knowledge.
Sponsor(s): Center for Southeast Asian Studies, Fowler Museum at UCLA
Below are descriptions of past Fowler workshops.
Ethnic Studies Symposium Series: African American Studies
February 7, 2024, 8:30 am–3:30 pm
Presented by the LA County Office of Education
Deepen your knowledge and understanding of the history, culture, struggles, and contributions to American society of the African American community to prepare you to teach Ethnic Studies and commemorate Black History Month all year long.
Our keynote speakers include Tiffany Barber, Asst. Professor of African American Art, UCLA, and Kiese Lovette Vita, Professor, Cal State Dominguez Hills, teacher at Animo Jackie Robinson High School and educational consultant for supporting Black students. The training will also include an art activity and curated tour of African art at the Fowler Museum at UCLA.
This program was generously funded by the Nissan Foundation
Educators’ Circle: Day of the Ancestors
December 17th, 2022, 12–2 pm
LA Commons, KAOS Network, the Fowler Museum at UCLA, and the Center of Religion and Cities at Morgan State University invited K-12 educators to a dialogue circle intended to explore how teachers and cultural institutions can collaborate on integrating the arts and histories of the African diaspora into their curricula. The conversation was centered on the annual Day of the Ancestors: Festival of Masks celebration in LA’s Leimert Park. The main objective was to create a cohort of K-12 teachers committed to integrating community-engaged learning into the classroom.
This program was part of the Fowler initiative “Art of Africa and the African Diaspora,” generously funded by the Nissan Foundation and The Ralph M. Parsons Foundation.
Teacher Institute: Day of the Ancestors
Saturday, May 6, 2023, 10 am–4 pm
In 2023, LA Commons organized the 13th installment of Day of the Ancestors: Festival of Masks in the historic cultural hub of Leimert Park. LA Commons and the Fowler Museum partnered on this Teacher Institute to support educators in integrating histories of Africa and African diaspora into their classrooms. Through music and the visual arts, participants learned about various African and African diasporic cultural traditions, especially those celebrated in Los Angeles.
This program was part of the Fowler initiative “Art of Africa and the African Diaspora,” generously funded by the Nissan Foundation and The Ralph M. Parsons Foundation, with additional support from the Lilly Endowment, Inc..
Teaching Histories of South and Southeast Asia through the Visual Arts
February 25, March 4, and March 11, 2023, 10 am–3:30 pm
Teaching Histories of South and Southeast Asia through the Visual Arts was a free opportunity for educators teaching grade levels 6-12. This institute focused on Jain, Buddhist, Hindu, and Muslim communities from South and Southeast Asia, and their diasporas in the Los Angeles area.
Participants explored how individuals and communities express their key beliefs and practices through the arts. Scholars, community leaders, and curators, as well as K-12 teachers versed in differentiated learning styles, led teacher participants through curriculum activities that support teaching of world history, culture, geography, and language arts. Educators were introduced to a wealth of Los Angeles resources—museums, murals, and religious sites— that can be integrated into curricula.
The institute convened over three Saturdays in the Winter of 2022. LAUSD teachers had the opportunity to receive one LAUSD Salary Point with Multicultural Credit.
This series accompanied the Fowler Museum’s exhibition Visualizing Devotion: Jain Embroidered Shrine Hangings (November 20, 2022–March 26, 2023) and was organized by the Fowler Museum at UCLA in collaboration with the UCLA Center for Southeast Asian Studies, UCLA Center for Near Eastern Studies, and UCLA Islamic Studies.
This program was generously funded by Lilly Endowment, Inc.