Reaching the Teachers Campaign

The American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC) with its strong grass-roots national network of chapters, activists, parents and educators, is committed to improve the quality of education about the Arab world.

This "Reaching the Teachers" campaign encourages Arab Americans to become more involved in their community schools, builds relationships with teachers associations, and sensitizes educators to the Arab American community and its concerns. While we have seen a steady improvement in increasing awareness of Arab-related issues, much needs to be done in spreading the word to the more than 300,000 social studies teachers and 12,000 school districts in the US.

Areas of Work Include:

* Build a national network of Arab-Americans who are involved in their children's education and in their local school systems.
* Advise, train, and provide resources for education activists and ADC chapter Education Committees. Support their work as they give classroom presentations, provide educational materials to teachers and school libraries, organize teacher training workshops, monitor textbooks for bias and misrepresentation of the Arab world, take part in school Human Relations or Minority committees, and respond to incidents of insensitivity or discrimination in the schools.
* Develop lesson plans and bibliographies on Arab culture, anti-Arab discrimination, Arab women, religions of the Arab world, and Palestine.
* Supply teachers and school systems with good educational materials on the Arab world.
* Provide resources on Arabs and Arab Americans to schools of education for use in multicultural teacher training.
* Place articles on Arab American concerns in national educational publications and professional journal for educators.
* Sensitize key multicultural educators, whose work influences the education profession as a whole to the Arab-American community and its concerns.
* Cultivate a national network of Arab-American educators.
* Heighten the profile of Arab Americans and the Arab world in the multicultural curriculum. Put Arab Americans on the multicultural education agenda.

For information, please contact:

ADC Education Department
1732 Wisconsin Avenue, NW
Washington, DC 20007
202.244.2990
adc@adc.org
www.adc.org