Capability Enhancement Training for the Asatidz by the Ateneo Teacher Center and the Madaris Volunteer Program

In August 2021, the Madaris Volunteer Program (MVP)  tapped the Ateneo Teacher Center (ATC) to develop and deliver a series of workshops for their year-end training of asatidz (plural for ustadz, or Islamic school teachers) from madaris (plural for madrasah, or Islamic school) in the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region, Lanao del Sur, and Marawi City. The MVP, a collaboration between the Private Education Assistance Committee (PEAC) and Ateneo de Davao University, aims to help improve the quality of education in the madaris and build a relationship of shared learning and respect with educators in the region. 

Resource speakers, mainly from across the Ateneo de Manila University, facilitated 10 sessions on interactive teaching from October 4-25, 2021. For the second workshop series which ran from November 3-17, the Department of Sociology and Anthropology of the Loyola Schools handled several sessions on applying cultural competence skills in the classroom.  

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Many madaris offer instruction only on the Arabic language, the Qur’an, and Islamic values. Some madaris, however, offer the DepEd curriculum during the week and the Islamic curriculum on weekends. 

For many of the asatidz, joining the morning synchronous sessions was tedious. Many, for example, had to wait for rationed electrical power or solar power allocations as well as contend with very poor internet connections. Some had to ferry from the islands to the mainland just to access the internet. It was not uncommon to see 4 or 5 asatidz huddling around one cell phone, eagerly straining to see and hear the speaker. Nevertheless, the asatidz found ways to attend all sessions and accomplish their culminating projects. Their dedication to learning more about their craft and completing the workshop series was edifying.

Perhaps the virtual professional development space helped the teachers—with video cameras usually turned off—feel less inhibited as they shared the joys and the challenges they faced in their classrooms, whether these were about core teaching practices like generating student engagement or about the application of cultural competence skills in dealing with their culturally diverse groups of students. 

The workshops on cultural competence were eye-opening and enlightening, not only for the asatidz, but also for the resource speakers and the MVP and ATC team members who were listening in on the talks. The asatidz realized that, although they lived and worked in what might seem like homogeneous all-Muslim communities, these were in fact very culturally diverse communities whose members were from various Muslim ethnolinguistic groups. They recounted how they were often unaware of their own stereotypes and lack of cultural awareness of the practices and contexts of these other ethnolinguistic groups. Another powerful realization was that, although teachers are already careful to avoid culturally insensitive behaviors, they are often not aware about their implicit biases that seep into the language they use in class, the way they deal with some students, and their policies and practices. These could exclude and marginalize some students in the classrooms, which are supposed to be safe havens in which all students can learn and thrive. Rich discussions also ensued around the concept of what inclusive curriculum and instruction consists of. They reflected, for example, on whether or not the stories, songs, and dances taught in class were representative of all the ethnolinguistic groups in their classroom.

At the end of the series, the ATC and Sociology-Anthropology teams agreed that they were rewarded a hundredfold by the opportunity to exchange stories about their practices and their challenges with fellow educators who taught in contexts very different from their own, yet who, just like them, were committed to doing all that is possible to ensure student learning and well-being. The dedication of the asatidz amidst severe constraints was truly inspiring and uplifting- a sign of hope as we continue to teach during this pandemic!