Supporting Palestinian youth in thinking about the future: findings and dilemmas from programming

• In Event: Roundtable Group 6
  In Refereed Roundtable Session: Meeting the educational needs of children and youth in emergencies

Proposal

The “My Education, My Power” program, organized by the NGO Palestine: Sports For Life (PS4L) brought together a unique approach in language education, sports for development, and social emotional learning for a holistic experience that supported students' emotional needs, skill development, and future-building in outside-of-school programming. The two week program ran seven times between January 2021 and August 2022 in middle schools across the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem. This iterative process allowed for continued development of staff and programming, with many lessons learned.

The English language classes, led by local English teachers, used project-based learning with scaffolds inspired by liberatory approaches to guide students through a bilingual curriculum designed to promote self-reflection and critical consciousness. The mentorship classes, led by school social workers, supported students in developing inter and intrapersonal skills through art and play based activities. The sports classes, led by coaches specially trained in PS4L’s sports-based skill education, focused on developing skills just as communication, planning, strategic thinking, and leadership through fun, interactive, outdoor activities and reflection.

Students drew from all three subjects to develop a vision for their future across the realms of career, relationships, hobbies, and values. The final project consisted of students articulating their hopes and aspirations in these arenas in a translanguaged presentation, with students using as much English as they felt comfortable.

While we think about acts of protest as part of CIES 2024, questions around whether and how approaches used in this program around future thinking, critical consciousness, and empowering pedagogies such as project-based learning and translanguaging are related and possibly guide acts of protest arise.
One question that I would love to discuss at CIES is about how we presented our relationship to the US Government, the funders of the program. Out of around 20 staff, there was only one American, myself, yet, the American flag was pasted on the textbook, banner, logo, etc. Due to the large prevalence of donor-funded projects in the West Bank, it is common for kids to see the flags of other nations on their materials and school buildings (in 2022, we were at one school that was built by the Saudi government, with a large Saudi flag emblazoned on the building, and the other school had one wing donated by the Dutch and another wing donated by Turkiye). However, the impact of the US flag on our program, and the impact of these donor statements on kids in general is unknown.

Some room for improvement that I would like to engage with is more formally organizing the curriculum around a framework such as Bronfenbrenner’s, and more direct engagement witht eh topics of climate change, sustainability, and students’ relationship to the earth.

Author

• Catherine Pitcher, Harvard Graduate School of Education