This is Jennifer Gonzalez welcoming you to episode 210 of the Cult of Pedagogy Podcast.

In this episode, we're going to talk about ways to integrate Arab narratives across the curriculum.

One of the many ways we can make our schools more nurturing for all students is to diversify our classroom materials.

When students see themselves in the curriculum, it shapes their identities by offering a reflection of themselves.

Dr. Rudeen Sims Bishop describes these kinds of materials as mirrors.

Diverse materials also serve as what Sims calls windows and sliding glass doors,

allowing us to view people who are different from us and enter worlds different from what we're familiar with.

While many educators embrace the goal of diversifying classroom materials in theory,

they may not be confident about how to achieve it.

Websites like We Need Diverse Books and Diverse Book Finder are a great place to start.

Another approach is to look into our curricula to find places where the contributions of many cultures can be more fully acknowledged.

In today's episode, we will be doing this with a specific focus on Arab cultures.

A little over a year ago in episode 185, Dr. Soeson Jaber helped us understand

how Arab American students often experience exclusion, bullying, and other forms of marginalization in our schools,

and how we can do a better job of supporting them.

Today, Dr. Jaber returns with three other educators, Fatma El Samra, Reem Fakri, and Abir Ramadan Shinawi,

to focus more specifically on the curriculum piece of this work,

approaches we can take to integrate Arab narratives into our teaching and curriculum.

If this topic interests you, I want you to know that over on the website,

I'm going to provide a list of resources that don't all get mentioned here.

We didn't think it would make for a compelling podcast if we just listed a bunch of titles,

so we kept the conversation more conceptual.

...