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BALANCING AT THE BORDERS: BUILDING CULTURAL FLUENCY IN THE
COMPANY OF OTHERS

By

Jocelyn Anne Glazier

A DISSERTATION
Submitted to
Michigan State University
in partial fulfillment of the requirements
for the degree of
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
Department of Teacher Education

2000

ABSTRACT

BALANCING AT THE BORDERS: BUILDING CULTURAL FLUENCY IN THE
COMPANY OF OTHERS

By

Jocelyn Anne Glazier

This study analyzes the experiences of the three teachers and thirty-one students
in a new, integrated school in northern Israel. Across the country, Jews and Arabs have
historically attended segregated schools. In September, 1998, a new bilingual/bicultural
school opened its doors to Jews and Arabs alike. As a “blooming school”, the only
students during this year were first graders. The following year, the school expanded to
include first and second grade. In its third year, the school will include first, second and
third graders and so on. The researcher spent the 1998-1999 school year as a participant
observer in this setting, looking in particular at the interactions between the two groups as
a way to determine 1) how working collaboratively in each others’ company influenced
the understandings that Jewish and Arab teachers had about themselves and each other
and 2) how the curriculum and pedagogy influenced the interactions Jewish and Arab
students had with one another. Her data collection and analysis focused on the
opportunities that were created--by the establishment of the school, by the 'official'
curriculum designed by the teachers and by 'unofficial' curriculum practiced by the
students themselves--to engage individuals (teachers and students) in each others’
company to ultimately enable them to develop cultural fluency--a deep knowledge of
both self and other and an ability to more fluidly cross cultural borders. Though the

setting is unique and fraught with political, historical and social tensions--all of which are

addressed within the dissertation--the knowledge gained from this ethnographic study
will enhance our understanding of both teacher and student learning within multicultural

school settings more generally.

Copyright by
JOCELYN ANNE GLAZIER
2000

To Ghaida, Noha and Yaffe
whose hearts and souls sustained the bilingual/bicultural school in its first year.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This work was nurtured by many. Though dissertation research and writing often
feel like solo endeavors, they are in many ways far from that. The wisdom and support
of many make up the seamwork of this text.

My deepest thanks go to my committee members. To Christopher Clark, my
dissertation chair, for encouraging me initially to set off for Israel in pursuit of this work
that was meaningful to me. Thank you Chris for your knowledge of the Israeli context,
for your consistent words of encouragement through the writing process in particular and
for your attentiveness to detail as you read chapter afier chapter of this text. To Susan
Florio-Ruane, my doctoral advisor, who mentored me in what was my first journey
through educational research, giving me the tools to then set off and pursue my own
research in Israel. Thank you Susan for your ability to pinpoint the things that truly
matter, offering me your wisdom and careful and caring guidance through the various
phases of this work. To Lynn Paine, whose own cross-cultural research allowed her to
offer invaluable advice to me while I was away in the field and when I returned home.
Thank you Lynn for encouraging me to keep returning to my ideas, for challenging me
intellectually all along the way, supporting me all the while at every turn. To Steven
Weiland, who was all encouraging from our first conversation about my study. Thank
you Steve for reminding me, particularly in the latter stages of this work, that my words

and ideas were as important as the ideas of those who came before me.

vi

I am grateful for those people who have inspired and furthered my thinking in
brief hallway conversations, extended discussions in coffee shops or rambling
conversations on trails in the woods. Thank you in particular to: Kara Lycke, who in
addition to doing some incredible editing of this text, reminded me again and again of the
importance of this work; Paula Lane, whose friendship sustained me from the beginning
of this process through to the end; Mark Enfield, who listened patiently to sometimes
rambling analysis and for a clutch marathon editing session near the end of my draftwork;
Mary McVee and Cathy Reischl who, from afar, consistently offered wise advice,
mentoring me through this dissertation despite the distances between us; Brian Delany
for your thoughtful questions and really listening to my responses; Jenny Denyer, for all
of your support and for lending me Elizabeth Smith-Bowen’s work as a companion as I
set ofl‘ for Israel; KaiLonnie Dunsmore, Ailing Kong, Michael Michell, Shari Levine-Rose
and Susan Melnick for the conversations that kept me moving forward through this
process.

This work would not exist if it were not for the people in Israel, working daily
toward social justice. To Yaffe Granby, Noha Khatib and Ghaida Rinawie—I am forever
grateful. You opened your lives to me and through that, opened my eyes. To Tami
Dumai, who welcomed me into the bilingual/bicultural school with wide open arms. To
Lee Gordon and Amin Khalaf—first for their vision and next for their trust in me,
allowing me the space to observe and then write about the first year of this school.
Thank you also to Rochella, Devorah and Aura, who made my research path easier than it

might have been otherwise.

vii

I do not know how to thank the children of the first year and their parents. I felt
embraced by you all and can only hope that I was able to offer something in return for all
that you have given me.

I would like to also thank others in Israel and connected to Israel who helped me
sustain this work. To Lily Orland, who became an instant friend and source of
intellectual nourishment. Thank you Lily for our conversations and for your questions
that helped me make sense of what I was observing while at the school. To Shifra
Schonmann, who might not know how critical our discussions were to me. Thank you
Shifra for helping me uncomplicate that which seemed so complicated at times. To Alisa
and Laurence Kotler-Berkowitz whose friendship sustained me while in Haifa and
beyond. Thank you for caring about me and my work. To Rotem Ilani and Khawla
Zhobie who welcomed me into their lives. And to Khaled and Helene Furani, Fathi
Marshood, and Khalil Sbeit who endured my questions and offered me critical insights
into life in Israel. I also thank Leonard Fein, who awarded me a fellowship through the
SHATIL/New Israel Fund that allowed me to get my hands dirty, so to speak, in the
work of coexistence. I believe the work I describe here indeed carries on your daughter
Nomi’s ideals.

Finally, I am grateful to my family. Thank you Jonathan, Elizabeth, Robyn and
Charlie for rooting me on these past couple of years as you have done so many times
before. You have graciously endured the emotional twists and turns of this experience.
And finally, finally, a thank you to my parents, Renee and Irwin. Thank you for

encouraging me to follow my passions, laying aside any parental angst in favor of

viii

supporting my dreams. You have always been genuinely interested in my work, in my

life. Your constant love and support have helped sustain me.

And now, onto the story.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

LIST OF FIGURES ................................................................ xv
PREFACE ............................................................................ 1
CHAPTER 1

BEYOND CONTACT: MOVING ACROSS BORDERS IN THE
COMPANY OF OTHERS ......................................................... 3
Borderwork ............................................................................ 3
Israeli Context ........................................................................ 5
Contact ................................................................................. 7

Building Cultural Fluency Through Engaging in the Company of Others. . ..10

Cultural Fluency ............................................................ 10

Company ..................................................................... 11
Organization of the Book ............................................................ 14
CHAPTER 2
THE SCHOOL CONTEXT ...................................................... 18
The Bilingual/Bicultural School ..................................................... 18
Into the Fray .......................................................................... 23
Inside the Classrooms ............................................................... 28
A Day in the Life ..................................................................... 31
My Involvement ..................................................................... 35
CHAPTER 3

EXPLORING APPROACHES THAT SUPPORT THE
DEVELOPMENT OF CULTURAL FLUENCY: STUDENTS

ENGAGING IN EACH OTHERS’ COMPANY .............................. 38

Co-existence ........................................................................... 3 8
Intergroup Contact Across Contexts .............................................. 42
Teacher Initiated Contact ............................................................ 47

Seating Arrangements ....................................................... 49

Developing a Written Text: Maintaining Contact at the Computer

Keyboard ..................................................................... 53

At the Level of Contact ........................................... 57

Sharing Holocaust Narratives .............................................. 59
Teacher Initiated Company? ........................................................ 61
Drawing in Pairs ............................................................. 61
Moving From Contact to Company...And Back Again ....... 65

Drawing in Groups ......................................................... 67
Intermingling of Contact and Company ......................... 70

Developing an Oral Text: Engaging in Whole Class Conversation. . ..72

Building Company Through Talk ................................ 80

A Barrier to Company ............................................. 82

Teacher Initiated Company ......................................................... 83
A Common Project: The Sunflowers ..................................... 83
Student Initiated Company in the Classroom .................................... 85
June 27, 1999 ................................................................ 88
Student Initiated Company on the Playground .................................. 91

xi

Concluding Thoughts: The Additive Potential of Company to Develop Cultural
Fluency ................................................................................ 94
Reviewing Experiences of Company ..................................... 95

Developing Cultural Fluency Through Sustained and Varied Interactions... 102

Company Among the Teachers ..................................................... 108
CHAPTER 4
IN THE COMPANY OF OTHERS: THE TEACHERS’ STORIES ...... 109
Opening Risks ........................................................................ 109
Previous Experiences With the “Other” ........................................... 112
Collaboration and Witnessed Teaching ............................................ 1 16
What These Teachers Know ........................................................ 121
Windows of Opportunity for Teacher Learning About Other ................. 122
Learning Through Planning ................................................ 125
Learning In and Through Practice ......................................... 131
Making Learning Public ..................................................... 134
Learning About Self .................................................................. 138
How Does Teacher Learning Influence Teaching Practice? ..................... 147
Costs: Making Compromises and Maintaining Silences ............... 147

Given the Risks, Painful Conversations and Compromises, Why Pursue

This Work? ............................................................................ 153
CHAPTER 5

MAKING THE EXTRAORDINARY ORDINARY ........................... 158
Schools as Border Sites: Opportunities for Student Leaming .................. 158

xii

Schools as Border Sites: Opportunities for Teacher Learning .................. 162

Fences ......................................................................... 163
Seeking a New Endpoint ............................................................ 165
Means to an End ..................................................................... 167
Preparing Teachers to Work at the Border ........................................ 169

The Limits of Language ..................................................... 171

Silence ......................................................................... 172
Making the Extraordinary Ordinary in Israel and the United States ........... 172
A Final Few Words .................................................................. 174
APPENDIX A
IN THEIR COMPANY: THE RESEARCHER’S STORY .................. 176
Leading In ............................................................................. 177
The Benefits of Being Speechless .................................................. 181
Second Language Learning .......................................................... 182

How Did My Language Influence Classroom Interactions? Being in the

Company of the Students .......................................................... 187
From Language to Culture .......................................................... 189
Overcompensating? .................................................................. 193
Owning My Judaism--Being in My Own Company ............................ 196
My Influence on the Setting: Their Being in My Company ................... 198

Role of Informant ........................................................... 199

Role of Teacher Educator .................................................. 201

xiii

The Here and Now .................................................................. 202

Looking Ahead ........................................................................ 206
APPENDIX B

A STORY OF METHOD ......................................................... 208
Entering the Site ...................................................................... 208
Data Collection ....................................................................... 209
Returning Home ...................................................................... 21 5
The Undressing ....................................................................... 217
REFERENCES ...................................................................... 221

xiv

Figure 1
Figure 2
Figure 3

Figure 4

LIST OF FIGURES

Number Systems ................................................... 44
Nested Contexts at the Bilingual/Bicultural School ............ 45
From Contact to Company ....................................... 53

A Company Zone: Overlapping Experiences of Company... 103

PREFACE

In early September, 1999, I received an e-mail message from a friend, bits and
pieces of his own life, responses to questions I had asked him. He ended his long letter
with a deceptively simple question: What's your dissertation about? Seven months later,
I am only now ready to respond to that question.

What's this dissertation about? It's about planting seeds in the mind of a nation so
that the people within it come to realize a possibility of something different. It's about
teachers helping children begin to grow up in a very different way than their parents. It's
about teachers helping people, themselves included, learn to coexist, about teachers
germinating seeds. It’s about students tending gardens of their own and of one another.
The dissertation catalogs risk taking--experimental gardeners trying out different things,
unsure of what will work. It's about the change of seasons and what comes with those
season changes. This is a dissertation of hope. In essence it is a sequel to a thesis I wrote
ten years ago which ends with words about choice—Jews and Arabs can either continue
to hate and kill one another or can learn to live together.

This is a learning to live together story, the story I have been seeking for years.
And yet like many stories, it is rife with conflict as might be expected in particular given
this context. Israel, for the moment, thrives on conflict, on tension. As much as this is a
dissertation about hope, it is also a dissertation about tension--about walking the line of
that tension, about walking into it, about sometimes leaving it behind. It's the everyday
tension of being a first grade teacher or a first grader. It is the tension of being a member
of the majority with privileges too rich to give up but too guilt ridden to hold easily. It is
the tension of being a minority, on one hand seeking to be oneself and on the other hand,
seeking to be someone else, someone with more power. It is the tension of knowing that
this is what you want to do and yet fearing, and feeling, the sometimes painful results, the

consequences. It is the tension of being at a crossroads.

This is a story of pioneering, something I have always been fascinated with, ever
since reading two books in particular on the topic, O.E. Rolvaag's (1927) book Giants in
W followed by Willa Cather's (1913) Q Pioneers. I have
wanted to live the life of a pioneer-~venturing into new places, little guidance, blazing new
trails, new frontiers, at once frightening and captivating, energizing and exhausting,
fulfilling and depressing, sure-footed and insecure. This is the work and the story of the
teachers, the students, the administrators and the parents--all giants themselves-4n a new
school endeavor that brings together two populations who have for years, centuries even,
been at odds. They are the ones breaking the mold. Having been witness, I am here to

write about it.

A Reading Note

As you read this text, one of the things that will become evident is the dichotomy
I draw between Jews and Arabs, though there exists a wide range of Jews, a wide range of
Arabs. I do this intentionally, given the topic of my study. However, I do it
uncomfortably as I struggle with the strict boxes into which we set individuals and how
that simplifies the complex notion of culture. The participants in the study are rich,
round, dynamic, multi-faceted, multicultural individuals. I do not do them enough justice
in this short text. I only wish you the reader could meet these pioneers, to get to know

them as I have.

CHAPTER]

BEYOND CONTACT: MOVING ACROSS BORDERS
IN THE COMPANY OF OTHERS

Borderwork

My younger sister and I shared a room when we were growing up. As I moved
into adolescence, this arrangement appealed to me less and less. To maintain some sense
of personal space and privacy, I designed a game where we would create an imaginary—or
real—line down the center of the bedroom, indicating my half of the room, conveniently
located near the door, and my sister’s half of the room. Though we both meant it those
times when we said to one another “do not cross that line or you’ll be sorry,” we
managed to find clever ways to make the divide work well for us. We’d maneuver our
way along a bedpost, our feet above the floor, and then step on various objects that
somehow didn’t count as being on one side of the room or the other. In that way, we
were able to live with the imaginary border that we—or I in particular—had created.

Border crossing has assumed much more of a complex notion in my mind since
those days of room sharing. The border in our bedroom was never permanent. We could
imagine it or lifl it whenever we pleased. There are, of course, more permanent borders
than the ones we created in our bedroom. Outside of our room, we could imagine the
Massachusetts border, created years ago to mark the separation from New Hampshire,
Vermont, Rhode Island, Connecticut and New York. Beyond that stand the borders of the
United States, borders dotted with electric fences in the south, and customs booths in the
south and north. Crossing these borders requires, at the very least, a passport and, quite
often, a great risk. Borders separating one nation from another, borders separating one
half of a country from its other half are often quite visible, tangible. They are indicated
by rivers, mountains, fences, walls.

Borders have been and continue to be established as a means to mark differences

between people. On one side of the border are “us”; on the other side “them”. There are

borders marked ofien by differences in ideology, religion, ethnicity and/or race. These are
cultural divides over which wars have been fought and continue to be fought, in places
ranging from classrooms to battlefields. I would suggest that though a wall can be
dismantled—as in the case of the Berlin Wall—a border mentality persists. We may, for
instance, bring people from two sides of a city together in a single school but segregation
is maintained through practices such as tracking which leaves minorities and members of
lower social classes in lower tracks, majority and more wealthy students in upper tracks'.
A physical border simply makes it easier to name a reason why individuals from ‘two
sides of the fence’ can’t be together, can’t get along. With a wall in one’s way, you
needn’t step beyond it into another’s property, into another’s life. The “us” doesn’t
become the “them” and “they” don’t become “us”.

What if there is no wall, other than the one that has been historically and socially
constructed, through border stories and cultural narratives of the other complete with
stereotypical images of that other? Perhaps one’s ideologies are then even stronger, more
stringent, because the walls constructed, the borders, are invisible. There is nothing to
indicate that “we” are better than “them” other then the stories that have been developed
before us, that were passed down to our parents and that we pass along to our children.
One has to believe the walls between “us” and “them” truly exist since no formal and
physical marker—other than perhaps the physical attributes of individuals standing on
either side of this imaginary border—indicates them. Stereotypes, fear and loathing are
easily cultivated here. Thus our work at these border bridges—as teachers, as change

agents, as cultural brokers (Gay, 1993)—is perhaps most difficult.

 

' See for example Oakes, 1985 or Darling-Hammond, 1999 for further exploration of the role tracking plays
in segregating students from each other in schools.

W

Israel is a land full of borders. I distinctly recall a first visit to the country during
which time our tour bus stopped at all of Israel’s borders, allowing us to take snapshots
at each. It is a country surrounded by four others, none of which have lived in easy co-
existence with Israel. These borders are marked not only by geographical and physical
boundaries but also by a human presence. Israeli army officials and barracks stand at each
of these borders. Across the river, over the mountain or beyond the fence are the border
patrols of Israel’s neighbors.

Within Israel, there exist additional borders between people. One particularly
significant border is that between Arabs and Jews. These two people have a long history
together in the Middle East dating far back before the strip of land between Jordan,
Egypt, Lebanon and Syria was declared the State of Israel in 1948. Over the course of
fifiy years, the state has grown in size as five wars have been fought in this land and on
its borders. Currently, struggles continue over the physical borders of the West Bank and
Gaza Strip. Where will the borders of the new Palestinian state be? Where will new
fences perhaps be raised? Outside of these particularly volatile areas, Arabs and Jews in
the state experience psychological borders between them perhaps more so than physical
borders.

The Arab and Jewish populations within Israel are themselves quite diverse. Both
groups are divided along religious lines. Within the Arab population in Israel are Moslem
and Christian Arabs, within the Jewish population are secular and religious Jewsz.
Though tensions exist within these cultural groups, I focus in this book on the tension
between these two distinct groups and specifically between Israeli Arabs (those Arabs
that hold Israeli citizenship and make up less than 20% of the Israeli population (Abu-
Nimer, 1999)) and secular Jews, the populations involved in the bilingual/bicultural school

 

2 Other divisions are also evident, including that between Sephardic (Jews with Spanish or Middle Eastern
origins) and Ashkenazic Jews (those with European ancestry) and that between Christian Arabs and Muslim
Arabs in places like the city of Nazareth.

where I conducted my study. “[M]any of the Arab-Jewish tensions are non-religious,
following patterns of stereotyping, fear, envy, and wary friendship that are common to
the prejudices between classes and ethnic groupings elsewhere” (Shipler, 1986, p. 140).
The tensions result in part from land disputes dating from 1948 when Palestine became
Israel, an Israel that the Arabs living in Palestine for the most part did not want, for it lefi
Arabs “who had constituted a significant majority under the pre-state British rule. . .a
minority under Jewish rule” (Ben-Ari & Amir, 1986, p. 45). A war in 1948, begun by the
Arabs but won for all intents and purposes by the Jews, left many Arabs without homes,
without lands. The same process ensued as four other wars broadened Israel’s borders,
leaving many Arabs who lived in border areas such as the West Bank and Gaza without a
place to call home and those Arabs within the heart of the country finding themselves
relocated a distance fi'om areas that had been their home for generations. Because of the
embittered relationship between Arabs and Jews, many of whom on both sides believe
the other is living on their land, fear and animosity rise to a very public level.

It is much easier to create and maintain borders than to cross them, especially
borders like those in Israel that have survived the test of time. Border crossing requires
risk taking and initiative along with distinct perseverance. Crossing requires you to be in
contact with individuals with whom you may not have had contact ever before or with
whom the contact was very informal and minimal at best, conflictual and violent at worst.
In Israel, as in many countries around the world, individuals are born, grow up and begin
their own families within the same community. Often, these communities are culturally
exclusive (Bar-Yosef, 1993). In Israel, Arabs and Jews fiequently live near each other but
not quite next to one another, though there are exceptions‘. Thus contact happens very

informally and infrequently, unless opportunities for it are constructed.

 

3 For more information, see work related to Palestinian refugees (i.e. Shipler, 1986).

‘ In fact Noha and Ghaida, the two Arab teachers in the study, have Jewish neighbors. As Arabs, they are
minorities in the communities in which they live.

Cutest

Individuals who have pursued the challenge of deconstructing borders have sought
to bring people on separate sides of a border together through providing opportunities for
positive contact. In the middle of the twentieth century (during the post World War 11
human relations movement (Abu-Nimer, 1999, p. 1)), many researchers, Allport (1954) in
particular, were convinced that if you brought people in physical contact with one
another, that would necessarily reduce prejudice. The contact hypothesis, the backbone
to programs in Israel and beyond (including the desegregation of schools in the United
States) that seek to bring different groups of people together, suggests that “prejudice and
hostility between members of segregated groups can be reduced by
promoting. . .intergroup contact” (Miller & Brewer, 1984, p. xv).

After exploring the contact hypothesis theory with real people, often done in
experimental settings, numerous psychologists and sociologists came to the conclusion
that certain conditions needed to be applied to the intergroup contact situation in order to
allow for an eradication of stereotypes and prejudice. Intergroup relations could be
improved if the contact I) allowed for equal status between participants; 2) provided
opportunity for intimate relations between individuals; 3) included institutional support;
and 4) involved cooperative versus competitive interactions (Allport, 1954; Coates-
Shrider & Stephan, 1997; Miller & Brewer, 1984) .

Years later, after continuous trial and error in a mix of contrived and real situations

ofien where pre-test and post-test measures were used to determine degree of prejudice

 

5 One of the choices a researcher faces when writing a report of research is that of which research to cite and
what community of scholars to join. I set out into the Israeli field with the American theoretical
framework of multiculturalism and found that it fit awkwardly into a setting in which individuals spoke of
biculturalism rather than multiculturalism. Instead of clinging to the literature of multiculturalism, I chose
to explore more closely the literature most often cited in cross-cultural work in Israel, in particular that
related to contact and the contact hypothesis. In the conclusion of this book, I address the relationship
between intergroup contact as discussed in this introduction and multiculturalism as construed in the United
States context.

and stereotyping, a range of results were reported. Some experiences of intergroup contact
led to a change in prejudice among participants, others led to a change in favor of more
prejudice and some led to no change at all (Cairns, 1996)“. These results are not
surprising given the unattainable challenge of meeting all four of these conditions within
an instance of contact. Whereas an institution can provide necessary support for contact
to happen, thus establishing opportunities for acquaintance between participants in part
through cooperative rather than competitive experiences, it is impossible for that same
institution to create a context of equal status among its participants, though we should
indeed strive for that within schools and classrooms in particular. “The manipulation of
equal status within a contact situation may. . .be very difficult to achieve” (Ruddle &
O’Connor, 1992, p. 24). At this point in time, there are few situations—either inside
schools or outside of them—in which individuals are completely equal. Furthermore,
even if equal status were attainable within school, what one’s mind knows, what one’s
history reveals, is that two sides may be quite unequal in the reality of the world, a reality
that is hard to forget or leave behind. Thus if all four conditions are required for a
reduction of prejudice, it is perhaps not surprising that results are sketchy at best.

There are other weaknesses too to this intergroup contact, conditions, one might
say, that are left out. First, Pettigrew (1986) recognized, for example, the focus on and
favor of similarities of participants involved in the contact experience “. . .to the virtual
exclusion of differences. . .as social bonds.” In addition, Pettigrew offered that the results
of this work are anchored “. . .largely on isolated, non-cumulative effects “ (p. 179),
despite understanding that learning, particularly related to issues of diversity, occurs most
often over time, rather than in isolated moments (see for example Glazier, McVee,
Wallace-Cowell, Shellhom, F lorio-Ruane & Raphael, 2000). Third, intergroup contact is i

based on a reductionist principle. It generally does not work towards the construction of

 

° Additional references are too numerous to list here. A review of abstracts as listed in education,
sociology and psychology databases (i.e. ERIC, Social Sciences Citation Index) revealed numerous
articles related to testing the extended contact hypothesis.

something, the building of something, but rather towards the destruction of something,
despite that there is no consistent data to suggest that contact will indeed consistently
reduce prejudice. Furthermore, “[s]tudies using the contact hypothesis often do not
clearly specify what the contact is designed to change” (Coates-Shrider & Stephan, 1997)
and thus goals remain ambiguous and vague. A fourth limit to this work is that it is
primarily an investigation of otherness, not one about gazing too at self (Boler, 1999).
The construct of contact continues to perpetuate a binarism in which gazing at the other
remains central, exploration of the self as secondary and/or non-existent.

One final limitation of intergroup contact theory is that it doesn’t stress the issue
of curriculum and pedagogy apart from suggesting that there be cooperative rather than
competitive work between participants. The focus on how instruction is
organized—specifically through cooperative activities—is certainly central (Johnson,
Johnson & Maruyarna, 1984, p. 202) however the curriculum around which the
cooperation develops is vaguely defined if at all. Despite that this theory has been
applied to school situations, little concern has been paid to the specific curriculum and
pedagogy that might be used to move people in the direction of prejudice reduction. The
curriculum appears to be perceived as secondary to students’ engagement in cooperative
learning groups, despite that cooperative activities can assume multiple forms and lead to
multiple outcomes, even ones that are perhaps undesirable (Coates-Shrider & Stephan,
1997). Even Allport (1954), though he made some broad curricular suggestions,
commented on the dearth of information related to the content of intercultural education.

Intergroup contact theories provide an initial and important step in helping
individuals move closer towards one another. Bringing individuals from different cultural
backgrounds together in a supportive setting in which to engage with one another in
cooperative situations that provide opportunities for durable acquaintance is a necessary

step towards breaking down barriers between people. I would argue, however, that we

need to address the weaknesses of these intergroup contact theories if we are to move not
simply to the border but through it.

Contact leaves us very much still at the edge of the border which is indeed the safe
place to remain. The Oxford English Dictionary offers the following as possible
definitions for the term contact: “the mutual relation of two bodies whose external
surfaces touch each other”; “a light pressure upon the skin or the sensation of this”; “[in
aeronautics], the state of being in sight of the surface of the earth” (emphasis added, p.
805). To come in contact with is defined in part as “to meet, come across, be brought
into practical connexion with” (p. 805). What these definitions share in common is the
notion of contact as being something very much on the surface. It’s about offering ‘light
pressure’ or ‘being in sight of’ or coming across, things that strike me as quite simple in a
sense. I argue through this work that what we need when we bring individuals together is
something that moves beneath the surface and across the borders. We need to strive for a
less ambiguous goal, for something beyond prejudice reduction, moving instead towards

the creation of something, in particular the creation of cultural fluency.

3__l'!-l' r-r=l let; hro 'IlEr'i‘t' ’ h-uqun if! u'

Cultural Fluency

Simply put, cultural fluency is the ability to step back and forth between two
cultures, to embrace your own culture while understanding its relationship to the cultures
of others—the differences and similarities. It is about being able to examine who you are,
examine your own cultural identity which, perhaps ironically, cannot happen without
being in the company of another (Bakhtin, 1984; 1990; Mead, 1934; 1982). It is about
being multilingual, not simply in terms of verbal discourse but also in terms of non-verbal
communicative styles. It is about an ease of movement—a code switching (Gumperz &

Hernandez-Chavez, 1972) that happens without much strain and without giving up who

10

you are. It is about being able to communicate both with and for the other and it’s about
being able to express another’s perspective alongside your own. It is about exploring and
becoming aware of cultural differences as well as an understanding of how those
differences impact one’s status and one’s opportunities in the larger context. Cultural
fluency cannot be developed in a single moment but rather it happens through the
cumulative effect of individuals from different cultural walks of life engaging in each
other’s company. It is, in effect, a lifelong process, but a process I believe can be

enhanced by education.

Company

Intergroup contact, limits and all as described above, does not allow us in and of
itself to move toward cultural fluency. I argue instead that it is through being in the
company of others that opportunities for the development of cultural fluency are
cultivated and nurtured. Whereas contact often remains at the surface, despite Allport’s
(1954) belief that contact had to “reach below the sm'face in order to be effective in
altering prejudice” (p. 276), company moves beneath the surface. The notion of company
leads us beyond simple contact. The Oxford English Dictionary suggests that company
means “companionship, fellowship, society,” all of which imply a certain commitment to
others. It is furthermore an “assemblage, a collection. . .a gathering of people for social
intercourse. . .a body of persons combined or incorporated for some common object, or for
the joint execution or performance of anything.” Thus it is individuals sharing
participation in a task. In military terms, a company is a “body of soldiers”; in nautical
terms, a “fleet of vessels” or “the whole crew of any ship” (p. 590).

I remember my grandmother used to ask me and my siblings, before any of us
were married, if we were “keeping company” with anyone. She wanted to know with
whom we were intimately connected. The term to her also meant ‘engaged’ when the

courtship became more serious, more long-standing. Being in another’s company suggests

11

intimacy, a closeness that moves beyond simple contact. I believe that in order for one
to cross and dismantle borders, one has to be in company with others—with the “them”.
Simple contact can happen with borders remaining intact. Being in the company of
another moves contact beyond the surface, allowing individuals to move across
psychological borders, language borders and physical borders, moving beyond the surface
of the skin and closer to touching the hearts and souls of one another. Being in the
company of and with another implies a commitment to the other and, perhaps ultimately,
to a different world order.

I believe that commitment—to another, to a different society, to a specific
task—is a critical component of company. One can easily be in contact with another in
such a way that commitment is not essential. And yet it is that commitment that I
believe allows for learning and transformation. No doubt the commitments that people
hold will differ, but I believe that some level of commitment is essential if contact is to
move to the level of company.

Too often, cross-cultural interactions, both in school and outside of school,
remain at the level of contact, bringing individuals physically but not necessarily
psychically, socially or emotionally together. Company asks individuals to make,
perhaps ultimately and eventually, a commitment to each other and to the task at hand,
the actual activity in which they are together engaged and/or the larger goal of border
crossing more generally. The task or activity is a centerpoint around which company
unfolds. This ‘curriculum’ is a critical piece of the experience of company building.
Company requires individuals to engage in shared participation—sharing voice, space,
text. Company occurs through opportunities that first bring participants in contact with
one another and then ask them to engage with one another for extended periods of time, in
activities in which learning about the other and about the self is encouraged and pursued
through meaningful and shared experiences. This requires a greater risk on the part of

participants than more surface experiences of intergroup contact would simply because

12

students must enter into each other’s space and ultimately work together, pursuing the
same task, not side by side but jointly, thus almost intimately sharing a single experience.
When the schools in the United States became desegregated, interaction between whites
and blacks in particular happened most often at the level of casual contact. Interaction
across cultural groups was minimal. It is no wonder that, despite being desegregated in
name, schools maintain an inward structure of segregation (see Kozol, 1991, for example).
“Merely including youth or teachers of different races and ethnicities in the same school
clearly does not produce an integrated school” ( Fine, Weis & Powell, 1997, p. 253).
There was and continues to be no move beyond the level of contact, little commitment by
the schools to move beyond a surface approach of bringing students with different
cultural backgrounds into the same setting.

I suggest that contact that brings together individuals who are from different sides
of a border is a necessary step to building bridges between individuals. However, we
cannot stop there. The work of genuine border crossing, I believe, must be something that
moves beneath the surface, something that allows for the development of cultural fluency,
through which prejudice reduction can no doubt occur. I believe that cultural fluency
develops as individuals engage in each others’ company in multiple and extended
opportunities. Company, as will be seen, comes in many forms. I argue that it is through
multiple experiences and forms of company —a company zone7--that individuals (teachers
and students) can begin to develop cultural fluency.

This book is a story of company building. It is an exploration of opportunities

that bring people together in each other’s company in multiple ways to allow for the

 

7 This notion of a company zone is taken in part from Pratt’s (1992) work on a contact zone which, like
the idea of contact, I believe does not carry us far enough over and through borders. A contact zone is
"...the space in which peoples geographically and historically separated come into contact with each other
and establish ongoing relations...” (Pratt, 1992, p. 6). A "'contact zone' is an attempt to invoke the spatial
and temporal copresence of subjects previously separated by geographic and historical disjunctures, and
whose trajectories now intersect" (p. 6-7). In her work, Pratt describes what happens in these zones as
colonizers and colonized encounter one another, sometimes abruptly, within the same space. A contact
zone is primarily an unstructured space without a stated goal driving the course of its inhabitants.

13

development of cultural fluency, instances of which are indicated by individuals’ actions
and speech“. The book will seek to flesh out what company is, a far cry from the vague
notions of contact, defined often simply as “meaningful” (i.e. Ben-Ari & Amir, 1986, p.
52), and what it allows for. Here I seek to explore what happens in the everyday life of a
school as children and teachers from different sides of the border are brought together. It
is about what happens in a real context with real people engaging in real activities, first in

contact, then in company with each other.

' ° fthBok

What follows is a story of borderwork that moves from contact to company. The
reader accompanies me on a visit to Israel and a particular school in which borders are
being traversed between teachers, between students. Arab and Jewish adults and children
work and play in each others’ company in order to establish a new way of being, an
integrated existence often unheard of in Israel. “With the exception of a few cities, Jewish
and Arab communities are largely segregated, with each group living in its own villages
and attending its own schools” (Bard, 1998, p. 471). Segregated schools are the norm in
Israel. Jews attend Jewish schools, Arabs attend Arab schools. Though the choice to
attend each others’ schools exists, that choice is rarely made. When it is, it is more often
the case that an Arab child would attend a Jewish school where parents would hope
he/she would have a better education than one he/she might get at an Arab school. Arab

parents in particular whom I interviewed9 commented on the difference in resources

 

5 Activity theory suggests that it is through studying an individual’s social interactions with others—and
with objects—that we can gain an understanding of one’s consciousness. “Activity theorists argue

that. . .consciousness is located in everyday practice: you are what you do. And what you do is firmly and
inextricably embedded in the social matrix. ..This social matrix is composed of people and artifacts.
Artifacts may be physical tools or sign systems such as human language” (N ardi, 2000). Vygotsky—one of
the originators of activity theory—further reminds us that “every function in the child’s cultural
development appears twice: first on the social level, and later, on the individual level; first between
people...and then inside the child” (Vygotsky, 1978, p. 57)

9 I conducted interviews with the parents of six of the students: three of the Arab children and three of the
Jewish children.

14

between Arab village schools (which have fewer) and Jewish schools (which have more)
as well as the difference in the caliber of training Jewish teachers receive in contrast to the
less rigorous and more traditional educational training received by Arab teachers.
Furthermore, the teacher to student ratio at this school (3:31) was clearly more favorable
to the teacher to student ratio at other schools (often 1:30 and higher).

The new school described here, which opened September, 1998, offers something
different from the norm. It is “a school that self-consciously creates intellectual and
social engagement across racial and ethnic groups” (Fine, Weis, & Powell, 1997, p. 248).
This intentionality on the part of the school and those involved in the school is a critical
first step towards more meaningful engagement across cultures. Stating that mission or
ideology, however, is only the beginning. We all know of contexts that fall far short of
their stated missions and goals. How the structure comes together—and how those
within the context engage with one another—will ultimately determine whether or not a
school can be a border-crossing space. In studying this school, I wanted to discern what
it might mean for the school’s inhabitants—the teachers and students—to be first in
contact with one another and then to be in each other’s company. This is a descriptive
study of what being in the company of another meant in this context, how these
individuals engaged in each other’s company and an analysis of what they began to learn
in each other’s company.

The book represents a meeting of three distinct yet intertwined roots that are all
embedded within me. These days, I consider myself a teacher, a teacher educator and a
researcher. This work is a concatenation of these roles, thus different chapters speak to
three different audiences.

In chapter two, I describe in some depth the school context, providing some
history of its development and a physical description of the school itself. The objective
here is to bring the reader more deeply into the context. In this chapter too, I introduce

the reader to those intimately involved in the development and nurturing of the school and

15

offer a broad description of a day in the school calendar. Finally, I provide a brief
description of my involvement at the school.

Chapter three is the first of three analysis chapters. This chapter provides a
description of the children’s experiences as they met in the company of one another and
of their teachers and began to develop cultural fluency, revealed most ofien through their
actions. These pages in particular further flesh out the notion of company. This chapter
may be of interest to teachers who are working to dismantle the borders between the
students in their classrooms.

Chapter four is devoted entirely to the teachers and their experience of working in
each other’s company at the school. It is about the costs and rewards that they
experience working and learning in this setting and in one another’s company. Their
developing understanding of self and other is revealed here in part through their speech,
collected through interviews, viewing sessions, and conversations throughout the year.
This chapter may be of particular interest to teacher educators who want to help their
students—in-service or pre-service teachers—come to understand their own cultural
beliefs and how these may impact the work that they do with their own students.

Chapter five provides a conclusion in which I reflect on some of the constructs
introduced earlier in the book. I then discuss how what I learned in the Israeli context
may speak to my work in the United States context, thinking broadly about how the
notions of company and cultural fluency may propel us to think differently about
classroom work in settings with diverse student and teacher populations.

The last two sections of the text may be most interesting to an educational
researcher, particularly one setting out to do research in a context far from home.
Appendix A is a third analysis chapter which describes my own boundary crossing
experiences and what I learned being in the company of the teachers, the students, the
parents and friends met in Israel. It is further about what some of these individuals had

the opportunity to learn while being in my company. Appendix B then offers a narrative

16

account of my research process, both the data gathering in the field and the analysis both
in the field and back at home.

My hope is that each reader will make something personally meaningful fiom the
stories I tell here. What I hope most for is that my storytelling—and that of all of the
participants quoted throughout—will prompt further storytelling in return. This is, after
all, a conversation that began before me and this text and will no doubt continue long

afterwards.

17

CHAPTER 2
THE SCHOOL CONTEXT

111g Bilingual/Bicultura! School

The rainstorms in northern Israel during the winter months are mesmerizing. In
the distance, you can watch as a white mist settles itself over the mountains and rolls its
way towards the bilingual/bicultural school, taking over the spaces that were brilliant blue
only moments before. A hush settles on the land just as the first thick drops of rain fall
to the ground. Within seconds, the rain turns to sheets, pounding on the roof of the
school building. Before your ears grow accustomed to the sudden noise, you can barely
hear the thirty-one students who are running back and forth in the center room, a
makeshift gymnasium for the time being. The rain has postponed the outdoor physical
education activities. By the time the relay races have ended, the sky has returned to its
brilliant blue, lit by the afternoon sun.

It's January at the bilingual/bicultural school in Misgav, a regional area in the north
of Israel, four months after the opening of school. In September, 1998, thirty-two sets of
parents'°-sixteen Jewish, sixteen Arab--from the Galilee region of Israel (a three hour
drive north from Jerusalem) brought their first grade children to a new, integrated school
located in the Misgav municipality center, amongst an already existing Jewish elementary
school, middle school and high school. The children and their parents were greeted at the
school by the three teachers of this first grade class: Yaffe Granby", Noha Khatib and
Ghaida Rinawie; along with the school principal, Tami Dumai; and the two founders of
the non-profit Center for Bilingual Education in Israel which initiated this particular
school program: Lee Gordon and Amin Khalaf. Lee and Amin established the center as a

 

'°One Jewish student left the school in the middle of October leaving 31 students for the remainder of the
year.

" Names used in the text are participants’ given names with the exception of the children who are referred
to by pseudonyms.

18

way to begin to " [create] a network of integrated, bilingual Jewish-Arab schools" in Israel
(Cohen, 1998, p.3).
The mission statement for the first year of this unique school—written primarily
by its founders—read as follows:
The schools we propose to develop will foster equality between Jews and Arabs in
Israel, without forcing either side to sacrifice its cultural heritage and identity. The
educational programs and structures we are creating will strengthen separate
identities and cultures of both Jews and Arabs through an educational atmosphere of
equality and mutual respect. In a country which has experienced too many years of
violent conflict between Arab and Jew, and continues to suffer from mistrust, fear,
ignorance and intolerance on both sides, it is our goal to create a new model of
education in which children, their families and the surrounding community can
experience and grow together among values of democracy, mutual respect, and
tolerance and ultimately this will make a valuable contribution toward greater
coexistence between Arabs and Jews in our country.
Parents from a range of backgrounds (i.e. from different social classes) chose to send their
children to this school, a far cry from the segregated schools normally attended by Jewish
and Arab children, for various reasons. While some parents sought a better education for
their children than what they might receive elsewhere, others chose to send their children
to the school for ideological reasons. The children who attend this blooming school—the
first year the school consisted only of a first grade class; the following year, first and
second grade; the year after, first, second and third and so on—come from a number of
villages and settlements in the surrounding area, all within a twenty-six mile radius. The
sixteen Arab students” are fi'om the villages of Sha’ab (5), Sakhnin (9) and Kaukab (2).
The fifteen Jewish students hail fi'om Rakefet (5), Shorashim (1), Avtalion (1) and Tuval
(8)-
The teachers themselves arrive at the school from different places with different

histories. Yaffe, a Sephardic or Middle Eastern Jewish woman from Shorashim, has the
most teaching experience of the three teachers. She has taught for eight years--both in Tel

 

’2 All of the Arab students during the first year were Arab Moslems. In the second year of the school, there
was one Christian Arab student at the school.

19

Aviv where she lived and in a nearby Galilee community. She also has experience
working in a summer camp called SHEMESH--a compilation of the names of the
communities initially involved in this coexistence effort (Shorashim, Misgav and Sha’ab)
which brings together Jewish and Arab children in part as an effort to help diminish the
fear the groups may have of one another (Bard, 1999). Yaffe speaks fluent Hebrew and
English and is working to develop fluency in Arabic. Ghaida, a Moslem Arab living in
Nazareth Illit, has experience working in a variety of educational programs, but this is her
first year as a fitll time teacher in a regular elementary school classroom. Ghaida is fluent
in Arabic, Hebrew and English and spent part of her time outside of the first grade
classroom this year completing her Master's degree in Hebrew Literature. Noha's
experience in education ranges from supervising teachers working in extracurricular social
programs with students to herself teaching in such programs in Arab schools. The
youngest of the three teachers, Noha is a Moslem Arab from Nahariya. Like Ghaida,
Noha too is fluent in Arabic, Hebrew and English. Like Ghaida, this too is Noha’s first
year as a full time elementary school teacher.

The school is supported by funds from the Ministry of Education and from
private donations and grants. The Ministry paid the salaries of two of the three teachers
in the school and provided transportation back and forth to the school for the students
the first year. The school, due to its direct and physical connection to the existing
Misgav elementary school, was granted regular official school status--any student may
attend though enrollment was limited so as to keep the low teacher/student ratio.

Currently throughout Israel, Jewish children attend Jewish schools, Arab children
attend Arab schools. "There are some examples of Arab children enrolled in Jewish,
Hebrew speaking schools, but the cost of this is generally the Arab child's forfeiting of his
opportunity to learn in his native language and with a curriculum that can help strengthen
his unique culture and heritage" (printed material from the Center for Bilingual education

in Israel, 1998). Lee and Amin hoped to create a new educational model--an option other

20

than the existing one. There is a second bilingual school that exists already in Israel. The
elementary school—founded in the mid-1980’s—is in a village called Neve Shalom/Wahat
al-Salaam or Oasis of Peace. This is a community where approximately 35 families-Arab
and Jewish--live together. Initially, the elementary school was for the children from the
village but it has expanded to include children from smrounding communities. Currently,
80% of the students in attendance are from outside of Oasis of Peace (school brochure,
1999)

Lee, a Jew originally from the United States, and Amin, an Israeli Arab, came to
their idea for the creation of the school in Misgav fiom similar directions. Lee explained
that the motivation to begin the project was a natural outgrowth to the work he had been
doing in Israel since moving there in the early 1970’s. He has been involved in
Arab/Jewish relations since that time, working in particular in Arab/Jewish dialogue
groups. Druing a fellowship program in 1995, Lee conceived of the idea of developing a
network of Jewish/Arab schools and moved the project into action (Interview, April
2000). Amin joined the project also as an extension of life work he had been pursuing
which included previous work in the school at Oasis of Peace. Amin had been involved in
a number of educational experiences that brought Jews and Arabs together to learn further
about one another. His interest in this project stemmed in part from his own experiences
growing up in Israel and in part from his desire that his young son have a different
experience than he had, particularly in regards to education. Though Anrin attended Arab
schools, he had few opportunities to learn about himself as an Arab while growing up, a
not unusual phenomenon in Arab schools (Interview, July 1999). He entered university
believing he knew little about his own culture which prompted him to pursue Arabic
language and literature as well as Middle Eastern Studies in a master’s degree program.
Also growing up, Amin feared Jews with whom he had little contact. Again it wasn’t
until the university that he began to have more regular encounters with Jews. He chose to

pursue the development of the bilingual/bicultural schools because he wanted to provide

21

an option for Arab parents, a school to which they could send their children other than to
the village schools which often lack necessary resources. In addition, he believes the
school will offer an opportunity for children like his son to both study their own identity
while learning about and studying with Jews, ultimately dispelling any fear of the other
(Interview, July 1999). Lee defines their mission as providing opportunities for the
“building of relationships on an egalitarian basis”, providing opportunities for “ongoing
contact” that will enable the “building of connections that go beyond the superficial level”
(Interview, April 2000).

When the idea for the school began to coalesce, Lee and Amin—who were
introduced to one another through a mutual friend—sought out possible sites for the
school project, looking initially for communities where Arab/Jewish coexistence projects
already had some hold‘3. They approached mayors and educational officials in cities and
villages across Israel. When they came north to meet with the educational head of the
district ministry, he suggested Misgav as a possible starting place. When Lee and Amin
approached Tami Dumai, already the elementary school principal in Misgav, with the
idea, she immediately wanted the school to become part of the Misgav regional school. In
fact, Misgav was the first Jewish council Lee and Amin approached that said yes to the
idea (Gordon, Interview, April 2000). Tami explained that when she heard about the
program, she didn’t think twice about it: she wanted to be part of its development. She
explained to me “When I first heard of this idea, on the spot I said ‘Well if it ever
materializes, I want it to be my school’. It was so natural for me...It’s just what should
be done and I completely identified with the idea...I believe in co-existence” (Interview,
July 1999). With Tami's support, along with that of other educational leaders
particularly in the local Arab villages, Lee and Amin began to present the idea to parents

in the area. What they discovered was that there was definite interest in the project.

 

’3 Though integrated Arab/Jewish schools do not exist, there are a number of Arab/Jewish extracurricular
projects that do exist throughout the country.

22

Thus, after much planning, fundraising and negotiation, the school--which in its first year
consisted of only a single first grade class--opened its doors. Since then, it has been the
object of much interest and scrutiny by parents, by community members, by the media,
by potential donors, by the Ministry of Education, and by me, an educational researcher
seeking to learn something about the process of bringing two cultures together in an effort
to help individuals within these cultures deepen their own cultural identities while

becoming more fluent in the cultural identity(ies) of others.

W

I step out of the sherut"--shared taxi—by the main bus stop in Acco/Acre at
7:35AM, having left my apartment in Haifa nearly an hour earlier. Here is the spot where
Noha, one of the teachers from the school, will pick me up as she has done on numerous
occasions this year. F rom Acco/Acre, it's a thirty minute drive up to Misgav, where the
bilingual/bicultural school is located, depending on traffic. With Noha at the wheel, we
settle into easy conversation about our lives-~last night's movie, maybe, or her boyfriend's
volleyball team and a recent game they played. If I feel up for it, if I think Noha feels up
for it, we’ll talk about school: about the day's plan, something I observed or wondered
about yesterday's lesson or this week's upcoming meeting with the principal or potential
donors. From the radio come the now familiar rising and falling tones of an Arabic singer,
F eruz. We hang a right as we reach the junction of M70 and from there head deeper up
into the Galilee region. Along the way, we pass the same people at their bus stops:
young Jewish men and women in their army gear, rifles hanging solidly, comfortably even,
on their shoulders, forefinger of right hands pointed down in an effort to summon a ride
home or to a base; and the older Arab man, his head in a white kafiiah (head scarf) and

 

" Unless specified otherwise, the foreign language terms that l incorporate in the text are Hebrew. Further
explanation regarding my language experience is found in Appendix A.

23

dressed in black pants, always at the same bus stop at the same time, his eyes following
us as we pass, hoping we'll pull over and offer him a ride.

Soon the mountains of the Galilee are visible, backdrops to the valleys and wide,
flat spaces that we pass now. It's winter, early January, so the soil is newly wet, black,
gleaming, ready, waiting. The heads of red poppies, their black centers a dark contrast,
peek out from the pale green grass that works its way up the sides of the slopes along the
road. The sun shines hazily now and hangs right at the spot uncovered by my window
visor. Noha shifts down to third gear as we travel the now winding two lane road. To the
right, a blanket of evergreens wends its way up and down the slopes. A playground sits
back off the side of the road below me now. Noha downshifts again as the truck in front
of us, filled high with untethered oranges, moves at no more than a crawl. Behind us, the
cars begin lining up. One darts out to the left and races past us and beyond the truck.
The left side of the road is clear now so Noha edges out, then passes the truck, and we
continue in third gear up to Misgav. On our way, we pass road signs--in Hebrew,
English and Arabic--for Sakhnin and Sha’ab, two villages in which Arab children who
attend the school live. The sign for Rakefet, one of the settlements from where some of
the Jewish children come, becomes visible soon after. Just before we reach the right turn
up to school, we pass a stretch of land well used by local cattle and goats. Today, the
cows are alone, without a shepherd or shepherdess, having their fill of grass.

We bear right into the entrance of the Moetza Haegzareet—-the Misgav regional
council area which serves the Jewish population in this region”. Here in this complex are
local ministry offices, a health facility, a sports club, the Jewish high school and middle
school (combined serving approximately 1600 students), a Jewish elementary school
(with 600 students) and the bilingual school (with 31 students). More than 99% of the
students who attend the schools here—other than the bilingual school—are Jewish. Only

 

‘5 Each Arab village has similar services within the village or in a nearby village.

24

one of the 600 students in the Jewish elementary school is Arab (Tami, Interview, July
1 999).

We make our way through the open blue gate, the words ‘welcome’ in Hebrew on
one side, Arabic on the other, something I only noticed after having visited Misgav on
countless occasions, and drive up towards the parking lot that is directly behind the main
elementary school building. No empty spaces reveal themselves, but Noha is quite skilled
at finding a spot along the curb at which to place her small car. We retrieve our stuff from
the back seat--Noha her straw bag with notebook, datebook, pencil case, cellphone and
homemade treats that she'll offer us later in the day, me my black knapsack filled as
always with a tape recorder, notebook or two, computer disks, and, because it's a
Wednesday, my Hebrew books so I can head right to my own Hebrew class from here-—
and we walk through the gate that leads into the school area. We pass the three security
guards who chat with one another, small ceramic cups of thick black coffee in hand, and
Noha greets them with "Ahallan," an Arabic word for welcome which has joined the
common Israeli vernacular, used by Jews and Arabs alike.

We continue on our way, past the cages of birds and rabbits and the fish pond that
sit at the back of the Jewish elementary school, walking towards a second gate of the
school complex through which kids now pour, having just stepped off the buses and vans
that brought them to school, heading past us in the opposite direction in which Noha and
I walk. As we climb up a small concrete staircase leading to one playground that sits
directly below the bilingual/bicultural school, some of the children, colorful knapsacks
with faces of Mickey Mouse or the Power Rangers on their backs, approach Noha.
"Malimtee, malimtee," (teacher, teacher) one of the Arab children begins in Arabic and
launches into a story that carries us up the path, past the first/second grade Jewish school
unit, and to the stairs leading to the bilingual/bicultural school building. Having walked
past the larger elementary school building, past the students heading towards the other

side of this school complex where the high school and middle school sit, and now past the

25

first and second grade building, we are close to the edge of this large school complex. In
fact, the windows in the classrooms of the bilingual/bicultural school, rather than face
other buildings or classrooms on the school complex, face flourishing fields and offer a
pleasant and open view of the hills of the Galilee. Tami, the principal of the elementary
school and the bilingual/bicultural school, made a conscious decision to place the school in
this spot. The fact that it was an available space was only one part of her decision. She
readily recounts walking the large school complex, seeking the best place for this special
school. When she visited the building in which the school now sits, she decided it Was the
perfect spot—part of the school complex but far enough away to be on its own. She was
quite conscious of the fact that the 16 Arab students would be the minority on the school
complex where more than two thousand Jewish students attended school everyday
(Interview, July 1999).

A group of kids playing soccer on the gravel surface directly below the
bilingual/bicultural school building pays us no mind as we walk past and then up the
stairs and into the common space of the building. Our voices echo in this open space, a
place large enough for the thirty one kids to have their sports lesson twice a week when
it’s cold or raining. The ceiling here is high and temporary. When rain falls, which
happens in vigorous spurts during the short winter, the drops pound on the roof, making
it impossible to carry on conversation in this space. It's enough to drown out the shouts
of the children as they race one another during their physical education classes or recess.
The gray concrete floor is set off somewhat by the painted scenes that cover some of the
space on the four walls. A visitor might notice that the leaves on the trees, the fins on the
fish, and the wings of the butterflies that decorate these walls this first year are not so
exact, a bit distant fi'om being 'picture perfect'. The kids, the teachers and I took turns
with paint and paintbrushes one week in November. This is one of the signatures that

stamps this place 'ours'--inhabited by those associated with the bilingual/bicultural school.

26

Surrounding this open space are six rooms, four used by Jewish school programs
(such as for special holiday projects and for the guide program, an outdoor education
program available at many Jewish schools) at irregular intervals. The bilingual/bicultural
school occupies two of these rooms, one next to the other, in addition to the open space
in the center.

When I first entered the school and the two classrooms, one clearly Arabic

dominant the other Hebrew dominant, I noted the following in margins of my fieldnotes:

I find this set-up interesting. . .its separateness reminds me of the separateness of
many of the coexistence experiences that occur outside of schools. What does that
distance mean in the end?. . .I wonder if this separation [of classrooms] makes any
difference. . .is one classroom always Arabic, the other always Hebrew? Certainly
small group activities in both languages float through both classrooms but I
wonder about where students feel most comfortable—in one classroom rather than
another? (October, 1998)

Though Arabic and Hebrew were heard and spoken in both rooms as students used both
their first and second languages, the visual landscape from the start of the year suggested
that a single language dominated each room. One room was clearly the 'home' of Arabic
while the second room was referred to every once in awhile by the children as "the
Hebrew room" and once by Yaffe as "my room". After making that comment, she
laughed and said something to the effect: "I can't believe I said that--I mean...". Before
school started, the teachers had meetings with two educators who work in the field of
bilingual education in California. The founders of the school--Lee and Amin--had invited
these individuals in particular because of their reputation in the field of bilingualism. The
meetings the teachers had with these teachers--which included two intense days of
discussion--prompted the teachers to choose this approach, to begin the year with
essentially two separate language rooms. Whole class lessons in Hebrew were conducted
in one room, whole class Arabic lessons in the second room. Yaffe explained that this

separation into two language rooms was important in order to “honor the language” of

27

both groups. Furthermore, she explained ‘you need the walls to talk the language, the
library to talk the language. Everything you have around needs to be connected to the
language. You can’t change every hour” (Interview, July 1999).

This separation of rooms was something that was uncomfortable to a number of
people over the year. I wondered in my fieldnotes, on my first visit to the school, about
the usefulness of this approach or the inherent danger, a way to potentially separate
rather than integrate the children. In a conversation I had early on with a local consultant
working with the teachers in the area of bilingualism, she too expressed concern about this
approach, a concern which would lead to some tension between her and the teachers.
Later in the year, the teachers too began to question this approach, in part because it
seemed to be a point of fixation for many. By the early spring, books had found their
way from a bookshelf in one room to the bookshelf in a second room. Alphabet posters

in both languages hung side by side in both rooms.

W

In January, in the "Arabic room's", the walls are covered with Arabic words and
letters. When entering the classroom, directly to the left hang the letters of the Arabic
alphabet, beside each letter a picture denoting a word beginning with that letter. Next to
the alphabet is the chalkboard and next to that, on the same wall, a bulletin board on
which currently hang two examples of whole class stories--stories in Arabic that the kids
dictated as a class to Ghaida. On the second wall, which faces the visitor when he or she
enters the classroom, are two windows (through which one can see the playground and
behind that a good stretch of the mountainous Galilee region), above which are examples
of student work, drawings in particular that the children have done in pairs, often in

Arab/Jewish pairs. Against the back wall, a virtual sea is visible--blue plastic covered

 

'5 I use the terms Hebrew and Arabic here to describe the classrooms for ease of description.

28

with animals from the sea created by the students. The wall represents a curriculum
called Duso the Dolphin, an American ctu'riculum program designed to help students learn
to get along with one another". A heating and air conditioning unit hangs between this
and the second bulletin board on this wall on which hang small number posters. The
fourth wall of the room is taken up in part by a group of windows that face the common
space. The windows are covered with kids' name pictures on cellophane-like material that
they created early in the school year. A final bulletin board is covered with phrases and
pictures from an Arabic story the children read in October and November.

Like in the Hebrew room, the tables in this room seat two each. They are arranged
in two long blocks, eight tables per block. Other equipment in the room include two
bookcases, one brimming with books, the other with supplies, a tall supply cabinet,
another cabinet which houses a television and VCR and a group of drawers. On each
drawer is written--in Arabic and Hebrew-~the name of a student. This is where the
students store their various notebooks on subjects such as math, Hebrew, Arabic and
holidays. A computer--with CD ROM and scanner-can also be found in this room.
Finally, in the comer of the room, between the window and the chalkboard, lie a set of
rugs and pillows. Here's where the children gather at the beginning of the school day and
at various other times during the day.

When you enter the "Hebrew" room, the parallels to the first room are obvious.
The Hebrew alphabet, like the Arabic alphabet in the first room, is to the left of the
doorway. The chalkboard then sits beyond that. On the bulletin board on the far side of
the chalkboard are Hebrew resources. On the second wall, facing the door, are again
windows offering another open glimpse of the Galilee region. Above the windows are
examples of student work. On the third wall, across from the chalkboard, are two bulletin

boards. On the board to the left of the heating/air conditioning unit hang pictures of all of

 

'7 The teachers began the year with this particular curriculum and The Green Forest, mentioned later in the
text, but did not use them beyond November, instead opting to create their own based on what they were
experiencing with the particular students in their classroom.

29

the students in the classroom. Each photograph was taken on the first day of school.
Each child has written his/her name in Arabic and Hebrew underneath his/her picture.

This name writing in two languages was a habit the teachers cultivated with the students
fiom the first week of school. At this time in the year, some of the photographs have
been doctored a bit, a green mustache added here, red hair added there. On the heating
unit hangs the most recent whole class story, the one created in this room by the whole
class in Hebrew. On the second bulletin board is a veritable forest environment, decorated
in part with figures created by one of Yaffe's daughters. The exhibit is one prompted by a
curriculum unit called The Green Forest. Like the Duso the Dolphin unit, the purpose is
in part to help kids learn to get along with one another.

On the fourth wall in this room, the windows that look into the common room are,
like in the first room, covered with children's works of art. The bulletin board beyond
that is covered with images and sentences from a Hebrew story the children are currently
studying.

The tables in this room are arranged in clusters. The students have regular
assigned seats in this room. On the backs of chairs, hang the knapsacks the children bring
with them to school each day. It is in this room where the children eat lunch. Like in the
Arabic room, here too there are two bookcases-—one filled with books, one with supplies.
A supply cabinet stands in one corner of the room. A computer--and printer--sits
underneath one of the windows in the room. A set of drawers in this room, again each
one labeled with a child’s name in Arabic and Hebrew, hold additional work by the
children.

The classroom context changes throughout the course of the year as the stories
change, as the seasons change, as holidays appear and then disappear, as the whims of the
teachers change. Later in the year, both computers are moved into one room. The
configuration of the desks changes frequently, perhaps four or five times during the year,
as do the kids' assigned seats. The biggest change, though, is the one described earlier--the

30

movement of Arabic books to the bookshelf in the "Hebrew" room and vice versa and the

pairing of alphabets and numbers18 in both rooms”.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A flu in the Life
Sample Daily Schedule:
8:15 Singing Whole class in one room
8:30-10:30 Math Small groups in one room;
others work individually in second classroom
10:30-1 l :00 Break Students play outside
11:00-12:30 Bilingual Whole class in one room
Activity
12:30-1:00 Break Students play outside
1:00-1:45 Physical Whole class goes with physical education
Education teacher
1:45-2:15 Hangman Game Whole class in one room

 

 

 

 

 

It is impossible to adequately describe a typical day or week in this school context
in large part because there was really no such thing. Because there existed no exact model
for the school other than the Oasis of Peace school with which the teachers had limited
contact during the year, the teachers did a lot of designing and redesigning of curriculum
along the way. Still, their daily schedule had its share of routine.

In the morning, the students gathered in one classroom—the Arabic room—for
approximately fifteen minutes of singing or a short, whole class lesson. The students sat
on the floor during this time, finding space on the rugs or pillows, while Ghaida, Noha or

Yaffe took the lead in presenting the morning activity. Whoever was not leading the

 

'° Two number systems exist in this classroom. In Arab elementary schools, the students learn what the
teachers referred to as Indian numerals that are different than the Arabic numerals most of us in the United
States—and Jews in Israel-- are familiar with (l , 2, 3...). Arab students across the country learn one set of
numerals early on and then learn the Arabic numerals, which remain dominant in both cultures, later.

'9 In the second year of the school, each grade only had a single classroom. Therefore, Arabic and Hebrew
appeared side by side in both classrooms from the beginning of the year through the end.

31

activity was often engaged in preparing the next activity. On certain days after the
morning lesson, the students were told to get their math notebooks fiom their drawers and
were instructed by one of the teachers to work on specific worksheets or math activities.
The instructions were often repeated in both languages, until students learned the routines
and grew more comfortable with understanding directions in both languages. The teachers
used both classrooms during these lessons. Often, Noha would sit in the classroom in
which the students were working on individual math work while Ghaida and Yaffe each
met with a separate group of students in the second room to work on math story
problems. Yaffe met with the Jewish students, conducting their math work in Hebrew,
and Ghaida met with the Arab students, doing their work with them in Arabic”. On non-
math days, during this time the students were often working on activities in either
Hebrew or Arabic. For instance, this would be the time when the teachers might have
students work on a project related to a holiday. Students would be doing an activity in
which they had to work individually on projects related to the activity. The resources
would be in Arabic if it was an Arab holiday, in Hebrew if it was a Jewish holiday. In
either case, if all of the students were working on the same project, they were working in
the same classroom. During this time, students were generally free to talk some with their
neighbors, provided they were getting their work done, and move across the room at their
leisure, borrowing supplies from one another or using various resources around the
classrooms.

From 10:30 until 11:00, the students had a break during which time they would
eat lunch and then have some time to play outside or in the classrooms. All of the
students ate sitting at their assigned seats, each Arab between two Jews and vice versa, in
the “Hebrew” classroom. During this time, the teachers shared glasses of tea and talked

about school related topics and even non-school related topics. They used this time too

 

2° Further description of math work can be found in chapter three.

32

to meet with parents as need be and to organize activities for the rest of the day or the
week. Inevitably and often their discussions and work was interrupted by students who
came to them with playground tales or scrapes. Usually, one of the teachers would sit
with the children at the playground. Sometimes we would all sit outside and talk while
watching the children play.

After the break, sometimes students would begin working on their first language
skills, reading texts in their first language. Usually the teachers would meet with the
students in small reading groups while the other students in the meantime worked on
individual projects. When students were working on individual projects, they sat in one
room. When they met with the teachers in small groups, they met in the second room or
in the open space between the two rooms. Students would meet in these small groups for
a portion of the lesson and then the teachers would switch the groups, making sure to
meet with all students during the course of the lesson. These lessons would often include
students reading a text together with the teacher pointing out specific words or word
constructions. Later in the day, the students. might have their sports lesson which they
had twice a week for forty-five minutes. Or, as was often the case, they might be
working on a project in small groups or pairs, designed in part to have them develop their
cooperative learning skills. Other activities included the teachers reading a text to the
whole class in two languages, one page in Arabic, the next page in Hebrew. Afterwards,
the students would discuss the text with each other and with the teachers and then the
teachers would engage the students in a hands on or discourse related activity that
stemmed from the story. Another whole class activity was the whole class story
development which the teachers did with the students after each field trip they would
take, which amounted to quite a few during the year. The students would sit in their
assigned seats and share sentences to add to a whole class narrative about a recent trip.

Sometimes these stories were written in Hebrew, other times in Arabic. Participation was

33

to be in the language of the story. Yaffe facilitated the Hebrew story development, Noha
or Ghaida the Arabic story development.

Other activities during the week included visits to the bunny cages, a weekly art
lesson and a weekly journal writing activity. The last half hour of the day—fi'om 1:45
until 2: 15—was often devoted to a read-aloud or students’ playing games, including a
whole class hangman game that became quite popular. A student would choose a word in
either language and the rest of the children would guess the letters, eventually knowing
enough of the correct letters to guess the word.

The teachers utilized both classrooms equally. Students were divided into
separate rooms for small group activities but remained together for most other activities.
Within the classrooms, students used Arabic and Hebrew, generally choosing whichever
language felt most comfortable to them. Thus it was not unusual to hear Arabic and
Hebrew spoken simultaneously as students worked in cooperative groups. Language
patterns shifted somewhat as the students grew more confident in a second language”.
Noha and Ghaida in particular moved back and forth between Arabic and Hebrew.
Ghaida often tried to use only Arabic when speaking with all her students, though, like
Noha, translated when students did not understand her and became fi'ustrated in their lack
of understanding. The students responded most often in their first language. Yaffe
spoke mainly in Hebrew, given that she herself was only developing fluency in Arabic.
The Arab students could speak with her in Arabic, however, and if she didn’t understand
something, she referred them to Ghaida or Noha. Students were encouraged to practice
speaking and writing in both languages.

The teachers worked fairly fluidly with one another. Yaffe assumed most of the
control of the Hebrew language activities and Jewish cultural activities, Ghaida of the
Arabic language activities and both Noha and Ghaida, the Arabic cultural activities. Yaffe,

 

2' As described later in the text, this did not happen across the board.

34

due in large part to her previous classroom experience which included eight years of
elementary school teaching in contrast to Ghaida and Noha’s limited elementary school
experience, constructed most of the math activities. Ghaida would often translate the
math word problems into Arabic so that all students were working on similar skills and
problems. Noha was responsible for developing many of the cooperative learning
activities, given that this was an expertise of hers. The teachers talked about the activities
and did some brainstorming together in snatches of time, but one teacher assumed the lead
on each project in most cases. When shared leadership happened, the teachers had more
opportunity to plan for this. A couple of examples are illustrated in chapter four.

Much happens within these classrooms—they are noisy, energetic, sometimes
messy places where children laugh, scream and cry, where they listen to stories being read
and tell many of their own, where they work silently at their desks some hours, loudly
others. In many ways, this is a typical first grade classroom in which students are
learning to read, learning to write, learning to add and subtract, all critical tasks during this
time. They are also learning what it means to be in school. In these classrooms, the five
year olds turn six, the six year olds turn seven. Friends become sudden enemies, enemies
friends and back again. The uniqueness or extraordinariness of this school is that it is a
place where two cultures meet and where students, in addition to learning their first
language, are working to learn a second. It is within the space of these classrooms, the
hallways and corridors of the building and the playground just outside that students and
teachers began to develop an understanding of one another’s cultures, developing an

ability to more fluidly cross from one culture into the other.

Mflrmrlxemsnt
I entered the bilingual/bicultural school in October, 1998 and spent my time there

initially as an observer but quickly moved into the role of a participant observer. I

entered the setting interested in learning what the teachers did to engage students in cross-

35

cultural learning and further interested in what this experience meant for the teachers who
were themselves immersed in opportunities that could lead to their own cross-cultural
learning. I spent three days a week”, if not more, at the school, engaged most often in
taking fieldnotes and videotaping classroom activities. The teachers were my primary
informants. My discussions with them before, during and after lessons provided me with
critical insights into their work.

When in the classroom, I paid close attention to when students worked in cross-
cultural groups or pairs, noticing in particular the non-verbal interactions between the
students given their lack of fluency in each others’ language as well as my lack of fluency.
When with the teachers, I paid close attention to their experiences working together
across cultural boundaries. I followed their work not only inside but also outside of the
classroom, attending parent meetings, planning sessions and professional development
workshops, all mostly conducted in Hebrew, a language with which I grew comfortable
during the year.

My analysis began in the field in conversation with the teachers and continued
when I returned to the United States. I began systematic analysis by reading my
fieldnotes over and over again, noting key themes that appeared in these notes. I then
triangulated this with other data sources, open-ended and more structured interviews in
particular, developing an organized and more thorough portrait of what it meant for the
students and the teachers to be in each others’ company as Jews and Arabs within and
around a school context, discerning how they engaged with one another and what it was
that they might have learned through their cross-cultural engagement over time. So too,
with the use of fieldnotes, personal journals and e-mail correspondences, l reflected on

my own cross-cultural experience, coming to understand what it was that I learned

 

’2 I chose to spend three days at the school in part so that my presence wasn’t overly intrusive for the
teachers and the students. In addition, in order to be able maintain some reasonable control over my data
collecting, I found it imperative to spend one day a week at Haifa University, working on the computer
there. Also, one day a week I spent working in Haifa at Nisan, an organization for Arab and Jewish young
women.

36

through being in the company of the teachers and students. What follows are the stories

of the company we kept”.

 

’3 Further discussion of my own cross-cultural learning and my research methodology can be found in the
two appendix chapters.

37

CHAPTER3

EXPLORING APPROACHES THAT SUPPORT THE DEVELOPMENT OF
CULTURAL FLUENCY: STUDENTS ENGAGING
IN EACH OTHERS’ COMPANY

It is nearly 8:00 AM. Buses and vans full of elementary school children arrive in
the school parking lot. Each driver pulls into his or her designated spot and lets the
students--some still wiping sleep from their eyes, others shouting greetings fiom the open
windows--out the door to begin another day of school. The first graders from the
bilingual/bicultural school are among the many children carried back and forth to the large
school complex each day by public transportation. The thirty-one children attending the
bilingual/bicultural school hail from seven different nearby communities. The children
from Rakefet, the moshavz‘ directly next to the school complex, are the only ones who
arrive at the school on foot. From the North arrive the one child from Shorashim and
those from Kibbutz Tuval, from the South come the child from Avtalyon and the two
from Kaukab, from the East arrive the children from Sakhnin, and from the West, those
from Sha’ab.

Cg-existgnge

In Israel, Arabs and Jews frequently live near each other but not quite next to one
another. This is the experience of the majority of the parents, the teachers and the
administrators of the school. Though the settlements and villages in which the children
live are in close proximity to one another, there is a great divide between them. There are
no Arab families living in the Jewish settlements of Avtalyon, Shorashim or Rakefet or in

Kibbutz Tuval. With the exception of the few families where couples have intermarried--

 

2’ Briefly, a moshav is a community established through certain bylaws created by the founders of the
community. A family must interview to become part of the moshav. A Kibbutz is a communal
settlement, often supporting its residents through their involvement in a single industry, often, but not
always, related to farming or agriculture.

38

Jewish/Arab--there are no Jews living in the Arab villages of Sha’ab, Kaukab or Sakhnin.
The contact between Jewish and Arab individuals in this particular region of the Galilee
generally happens on two levels: economic (i.e. an Arab veterinarian is on the staff in
Tuval) and through extracurricular exchanges (i.e. the SHEMESH program that brings
together Arab and Jewish children from the area in a summer program each year).
Face-to-face encounter experiences in Israel--often referred to as co-existence
opportunities--have been in existence for many years. Co-existence work-~pursued most
often to reduce prejudice between individuals--has been defined as anything from “a
relationship established on toleration, rather than on acceptance” (Yaron, 1993, p. 69), to
opportunities that “[get] people to participate in an intimate encounter with their ethnic
enemies” (Weiner, 1998, p. 13), to work that “attempts to call forth habits, skills and
qualities of character that form effective democratic citizens,” (Weiner, 1998, p. 20).
These experiences--both their type and their frequency--ebb and flow depending on the
political atmosphere. More recently, during the administration of Yitzchak Rabin, co-
existence programs flourished, prompted by a hopeful outlook and developing policies
towards peace. When Likud, under the leadership of Prime Minister Binyamin
Netanyahu, gained the majority after Rabin’s murder in 1996, the popularity of co-
existence programs waned. The outlook for peace under the Likud government appeared
unlikely and in particular for Arabs involved in grassroots efforts of this sort, there began
a stronger movement towards the development of unicultural programs. A number of
Arab leaders I spoke with suggested that thus began a move towards Arab ‘existence’
which was necessary before pursuing efforts towards co-existence. As Amin, one of the
school’s founders, comment , “. . .if you want to make a partnership, the two sides have
to be strong. . .It’s important that they are in some ways in an equal position” (Interview,
July 1999). Arabs in Israel are essentially treated as second class citizens, thus their
status in co-existence encounters is lower than rather than equal to that of the Jews with

whom they would come in contact. Existence would mean things such as equal access to

39

jobs, educational opportunities and other public services. Generally speaking, existence
would mean an acknowledgment of Arabs in Israel in terms of both their language and
culture, and a social and viable presence in the pubic discourse. History shows, however,
that the road to this end continues to be long.

In Israel, people have long been working toward co-existence through projects
which bring Arabs and Jews together for anything from brief one-time visits to monthly
or weekly meetings. These extra-curricular co-existence encounter experiences in Israel,
grounded most often in the tenets of intergroup contact theory, number in the range of
300 (Abraham Fund guide). Examples of projects within the State of Israel—not including
the Palestinian Authority area of the West Bank or Gaza—and more specifically in Haifa
where I lived during the 1998-1999 school year, include Nisan, a leadership program for
young women where participants meet in binational groups for one segment of their year,
Reut Sadka, an organization that brings together groups of Arab and Jewish teenagers in a
variety of out of school encounters, and Beit HaGefen, a site in Haifa that hosts Jewish
and Arab activities. All activities provide some sort of contact--virtual (i.e. via the
Internet) or rea1--between Arabs and Jews.

Formal contact does not happen within traditional schools, though sometimes
across them (i.e. through a one-time meeting between students). For instance, the Jews in
this area of the Galilee would attend the Misgav schools and the Arab students--with the
exception of the few who choose to attend the Misgav schools--would attend
homogeneous schools in their home villages. During the 1998-1999 school year, of the
600 students attending the elementary school, one student was Arab (Dumai, Interview,
July 1999). The bilingual/bicultural school offers a more formal opportunity for contact
within the context of an educational setting during the entire school year.

In an effort to do more than provide casual and infrequent contact, too often the
approach with co-existence work, the bilingual/bicultural school, only the second school
of its kind in Israel after the school that was opened in the 1980’s in the Arab/Jewish

40

village of Oasis of Peace, is making an effort to bring Arabs and Jews together in intimate
contact with one another in a traditional school context. In other words, those involved
want this to be more than an experience where Jews and Arabs only briefly encounter one
another which, according to Tami, the principal, often has little long term effect in
influencing the beliefs that Arabs and Jews have of one another, sometimes only
solidifying stereotypes (Interview, July 1999). She commented on an experience that
happened only a few years ago. “Some organization wanted [the Jewish elementary
school] to have contact with the Arab children in Sha’ab. We liked the idea. The children
met a few times throughout the year. The last time they met was terrible...The Jewish
children here started the project [with] very good perceptions about Arabs and by the end
of the year, it changed and they didn’t want to meet the Arabs anymore. So what did we
gain? Nothing” (Interview, July 1999). One of the major differences between the
bilingual/bicultural school and other co-existence efforts is, as Ghaida explained, that “here
the kids live together” rather than "visit" with one another (F ieldnotes, November 1998).
The contact between the students occurs five days a week, six hours a day. Tami
remarked: "The children come to school everyday, every single day, day after day, year
after year. It's not that they meet once every two months for two hours. They really get
to know each other. They grow up together" (Interview, July 1999). I argue through this
chapter that the students ultimately have the opportunity to do more than be in contact
with one another in this setting. Whereas some activities in which the first graders engage
leave students at the level of contact, others provide them with opportunities to be in
each others’ company.

Contact may be considered an initial phase of this cross-cultural work. The
existence of the school itself enables contact between two cultures to happen in a place
where it might not happen otherwise (though the students live in close proximity to one
another, it is rare that these children would have many opportunities to interact

regularly). The teachers then used this institutional level of contact to move students to

41

what may be considered a second level of contact, in particular seating and pairing
students cross-culturally. Once these levels of contact were achieved and were the
practiced norm, at least within the context of the school, the teachers took the plunge
with the students, organizing activities that asked students to truly be in each others’
company, to engage with one another in cooperative and meaningful activities in which
students were encouraged to commit themselves, as joint participants, to the task at hand
and to one another essentially. As Duckitt (1992) encourages, “[t]he traditional
approach of whole class instruction. . .tends not to improve intergroup attitudes in
desegregated classroom, particularly when majority and minority children differ in social
status. . .On the other hand, research on cooperative education has shown that, when
learning and teaching situations are structured so that children cooperate with each other
in mixed-ethnic groups, there are marked gains. . .in intergroup acceptance” (p. 256). A
close look across the educational system at the bilingual/bicultural school which is
grounded in social constructivist tenets of cooperative learning and knowledge
construction through student engagement in meaningful, collaborative tasks (V ygotsky,
1978)——in this case in cross-cultural groups—may enable us to see what can ultimately be
gained through these experiences of students first being in contact with one another and

then being in each others’ company.

W

Upon entering this setting, I set my sights on observing the interactions between
the Arab and Jewish students. That is, after all, what makes this school particularly
unique. The trouble I found with many co-existence opportunities in Israel and with
traditional multicultural practices in the United States is that they tend to remain at the
surface level, never intense enough, long enough, critical enough (both situations avoid the
political often (see for example, Ben-Ari & Amir, 1986; Shor, 1993) and the

uncomfortable (see for example, Giroux, 1988)) to move beneath the surface, beneath

42

casual and uncommitted contact with the other, be it real or virtual contact. In addition,
both approaches tend to focus on gazing at the other (Boler, 1999) rather than looking at
the self while looking at the other. I wondered what would happen here in this context as
Jews and Arabs met, as Tami remarked, “every single day, day after day, year after year”
(Interview, July 1999). That is not to say that the students never interacted in
homogeneous groups—Arabs being with Arabs, Jews with Jews. Indeed they did,
sometimes assigned to these groups by the teachers, other times forming them on their
own.

Students were asked to work in homogeneous groups when they were learning to
read or speak in their second language and when they were practicing reading in their first
language. Later in the year, as students became more proficient in their second language,
the teachers organized some heterogeneous reading groups. The students also worked in
homogeneous groups for math because the teachers were using two number systems in
the classroom: the Arabic ntunerals (l, 2, 3, 4...) and what the teachers referred to as the
Indian number system that is taught in Arab elementary schools (see Figure 1). Though
the students were introduced to both number systems, the teachers had students practice
math in one system or another. During the course of the year, the issue of which numerals
to use with the students became a point of discussion among the teachers themselves and
between the teachers and various educators who were hired to help support the teachers
in their work. Because the Arabic system is the more commonly used system across the
country (i.e. found on calculators, telephones, etc.), a number of individuals felt that all
the students should become familiar with that system. The teachers consistently argued,
however, that the number system is a part of one's language and thus a part of one's
culture. Therefore, they insisted on teaching both systems, a decision that reveals their
commitment to developing a community where the cultures of the students are valued.

The Jewish students were encouraged to use the more common Arabic numerals while the

43

Arab students used the Indian numerals, though later in the year, some students opted to
use both.

Arabic Numerals

012345678910

Indian Numerals

)tfiAV'tOiT'T)

Figure 1: Number Systems

Students also met in homogeneous groups one day each week all year. The Jewish
students attended school alone on Fridays, the Moslem day of rest, while the Arab
students attended school alone on Saturdays, the Jewish Sabbath. The children met at
school in the morning for four hours, two hours with Noha and then two hours with a
nature teacher. The same program was conducted on both days. When describing the
differences she noticed as students worked in all Arab or all Jewish groups, Noha
explained:

It was more comfortable for the kids to be in this homogeneous group...They act
[especially] at the beginning [as if] they were so fi'ee. You would see the
difl'erence in their being in the whole week and on Friday or Saturday. We'd feel
that they [were] losing every single thing that felt fiightening....They really felt at
the beginning intimidated [by] the other group...You would feel as if they [were]
more restricted. I'm talking in a general sense because some of the children were
the same. But most of them, the whole picture was that they had more freedom,
[a] more "normal" in quotation marks atmosphere because they only had one
language to deal with and they would have the chance in these two days to ask
questions about [the other] without having this fear...They were curious about the
other but didn't dare ask it while the other was here (Interview, July 1999)

44

Noha’s comments here are reminiscent of what Vivian Paley writes in the voice of one of
her African American students: ”it is good for me to be with other black girls right now. I
feel safest with them” (Paley, 1979, p.101). It was only after discussion with Noha and
analysis of cross-cultural interactions that I came to realize the value of these
homogeneous occurrences in conjunction with opportunities that allowed for cross-
cultural interaction and engagement. Despite being in homogeneous groups in these
settings, consciousness of the other appears to still exist, perhaps in large part because of
the institutional structure that promotes consistent cross-cultural awareness (see Noha’s
comments above). I’ll return to the topic of homogeneous groups later in the chapter.
Within the school itself, initial and critical cross—cultural contact happened within

and across a number of different contexts as delineated in Figure 2:

 

 

 

 

PLAYGROUND

 

 

 

 

CLASSROOM

 

 

 

 

Figure 2: Nested Contexts at the Bilingual/Bicultural School

Within and around the school itself were two contexts in which contact occurred: 1) the
classroom and 2) the hallway/playground. A third context where contact occurred lay

beyond the playground and even beyond the parking lot of the school. I am using the

45

broad term community to describe contact that occurred outside of school and beyond
regular school hours. This contact at various times was initiated by the teachers, by
children themselves, by parents and by school officials. These experiences included out-
of-school joint birthday parties, playdates, parents’ meetings, family outings (i.e. a family
beach trip organized by school officials) and field trips. Across all three contexts,
physical contact between Jews and Arabs occurred”. However, in the inner contexts I
witnessed how contact moved into the area of company as the teachers structured
experiences that fostered joint and shared participation in a task to which the students
could potentially be committed.

The form and flavor of the students’ experiences across these different contexts
will be seen through detailed descriptions of activities in which lay the potential for
students to learn in each others’ company: 1) in the classroom and 2) on the playground.
Certainly the learning that occurred reflects learning that may occur in first grade
classrooms throughout Israel and throughout the world. Through their participation with
one another in the broad learning community (Lave & Wegner, 1991), the students had the
opportunity to develop literacy and math skills, for instance. What was of particular
interest to me, however, given the nature of this bicultural/bilingual school was what
specific learning opportunities within the larger learning community might allow for
students to learn about one another’s culture. In particular, I wondered what individuals
might learn by being in each others’ company as Arabs and Jews. Though I agree with
Lave and Wegner (1991) who argue that learning is a social practice, I was concerned by
the notion that this social practice might prompt the individual to focus primarily on
becoming a member of the larger group, the social community (Lave, 1991; Lave &
Wegner, 1991) or to become, essentially, the master. What happens to the cultural self

within that or through that process, particularly when members of a minority and

 

‘5 In fact, one of the goal’s of the school is for it to ultimately have a ripple effect, its’ influence resonating
outside the four walls.

46

majority come together? Does the minority member necessarily feel the need to become
like the majority? I wondered if the experiences of the students at the school, as created
for them by the teachers and firrther self-designed, allowed for an interplay between self
and other, between individual and community. How would the delicate balance between
knowing yourself, knowing another and being part of a larger hybrid community (though
one still embedded within a larger unequal power structure) play itself out in this
classroom? The detailed descriptions and narratives below reveal the way company was
kept in the classroom and are followed by a description of what these experiences
potentially allowed Jewish and Arab students to learn about themselves and others,

indicated most often in their actions and sometimes in their speech.

1 on

In the school context, teachers initiated regular contact between Arabs and Jews
through: a) designing seating arrangements that had an Arab student sitting next to a
Jewish student and vice versa; b) placing children in Arab/Jewish pairs for field trips; c)
designing and implementing activities where children had to work in small, heterogeneous
groups; and (1) creating a number of pair activities, again assigning students to
Arab/Jewish dyads. In addition, the teachers facilitated group activities that included all
students or a large number of students. Children also initiated their own cross-cultural
contact within the classroom in part because the teachers created a space in which
students were in proximity of one another. Often, for instance, a Jewish student would
enlist the help of an Arab student when writing something in Arabic. The same occurred
when an Arab student was working on writing a text in Hebrew. I will discuss examples
of student-initiated cross-cultural opportunities later in this chapter.

The cross-cultural interactions that I observed were both sinrilar and different to
one another. Throughout the year, when the teachers designed these opporttmities for

their students, they had specific goals in mind. The main objectives the teachers had for

47

students as they worked in cross-cultural groups were that students would learn to
cooperate and share with one another and strengthen their second language skills. In
addition, some of the activities the teachers developed related to issues of culture in
addition to language. Students had opportunities to learn about one another’s religions,
for instance, through the interactive activities structured by the teachers.

The teachers designed cross-cultural learning opportunities in very similar ways.
These experiences were constructed to provide opportunities that engaged students with
one another through their involvement in some meaningful work. Many have suggested
that learning occurs through relationships (i.e. Burbules, 1993; Dewey, 1938; Hawkins,
1974; Vygotsky, 1978). This may be particularly true when considering the development
of cultural understandings. Cooperative learning in particular can improve learning in
general (i.e. Galton & Williamson, 1992; Vygotsky, 1978) and intergroup relations in‘
particular (Cooper, Marquis & Ayers-Lopez, 1982; Sharan, 1990). For example,
“[n]umerous studies of fiiendship between students of different backgrounds have
confirmed that students in cooperative classrooms are more likely to make fiiendship 1
choices outside their own ethnic group than do students who have been taught in the
traditional didactic mode” (Cowie, et. al., 1994, p. 61). The teachers assigned students to
work on specific activities within heterogeneous groups. They provided students with an
engaging It (Hawkins, 1974) around which learning could unfold. As Hawkins (1974)
explains “without an It there is no content for the context, no figure and no heat, but only
an affair of mirrors confronting each other” (p. 52). This It, however, must meet the
students where they are, linking to their lives and capabilities (Dewey, 1938; Duckworth,
1996). It is this engaging It that is not considered often enough in intergroup contact
work.

The teachers helped students move into and beyond simple contact with one
another through the ways they designed the classroom and the tasks that the students did
within it. They assigned students to specific groups and they assigned the projects that

48

students worked on in those groups. Once the students met within these groups, the
teachers and the students co-constructed how the interaction functioned. As might be
expected given the nature of classrooms, when teachers act as facilitators, spending a lot
of time with the groups, the students have less say in the outcome—in what actually
transpires within these experiences. However, when students work in pairs or small
groups, they have considerable control over what happens in the moment: they “act,
resist, rework and create” (Thorne, 1993, p.3). Thus there can be a different feel between
those activities where the teachers acted as facilitators and those when the students acted
on their own. Both need to be explored as potential opportunities for learning in the
company of others.

As will be seen in the remaining portraits, the students’ experiences during the
year offered different opportunities for learning. They provided different things at
different times depending in large part on the cmriculum or the engaging It (provided most
often by the teachers), the way the teachers structured the curriculum, and the students
themselves. In the remainder of the chapter, I describe in some depth many of the
experiences when students engaged in each others’ company. Some opportunities left
students still at the edge of contact. Others moved students into company. It is in the
overlap of these latter sorts of experiences that students began to put together the pieces
of cultural fluency.

Seating Arrangements

The children, full backpacks hanging from their shoulders, make their way from
the bus stop up the steps of the school before school begins at 8:15. In the Hebrew
dominant classroom, they transfer their packs fi'om their own backs to the backs of their
chairs. Here, like in many early elementary school classrooms, the children have assigned
seats in clusters. “Like other aspects of classroom organisation, the seating arrangements

in the typical primary classroom say something about the prevailing ideology which

49

governs a teacher’s primary practice” (Galton & Williamson, 1992, p. 4). Though the
configuration of the room changed more than a few times during the course of the year,
one thing remained constant: the children sat at assigned seats mixing Arabs and Jews.
The usual pattern was for a Jew to have two Arab children on either side and vice versa.
The teachers used the same pairing technique when assigning partners for field trips or for
the weekly visit to the bunnies on the other side of the school complex. Any cross
cultural engagement beyond the occasional elbow touching that occurred in these contexts
was most often initiated by the students. It was not unusual for students to ‘play’ with
their seatrnates as in fighting with pencil swords or rolling a water bottle back and forth.
It was not out of the ordinary, either, for one student to push another to achieve more
space or for one to refuse to hold his partner’s hand during the walk down to the bunny
cages.

The teachers were not explicit with the children about the way they arranged the
students. Students, though, were very conscious of the cross-cultural pairing that
happened in the classroom. One day as Ghaida assigned students to seats, one student
commented after Ghaida had called the name of a Jewish student “Now an Arab student,
then a Jew, then an Arab.” Furthermore, the students would ask about the assigned pairs.
In early November, one Jewish student asked why they had to be in Arab/Jewish pairs.
Ghaida responded by explaining simply that they were in the school together—Arab and
Jew—and would be working together. The deliberate cross-cultural pairing was perhaps
one way for the teachers to make evident the overall philosophy of the school and,
furthermore, to provide a next level of contact beyond the larger school structure.
Ultimately, this arrangement of close contact enabled opportunities for students to
potentially learn in each others’ company which students then capitalized on later in the
year.

When students were given the opportunity to choose their own partners, as was

the case when a visitor came to the classroom to do an activity with the students, they

50

paired themselves down cultural lines. On that particular day, I counted one Arab/Jewish
pair". When students chose seats for individual work, they often clustered in
homogeneous groups. For example, on December 15, three months into the year, the

students in one room grouped themselves at two large tables as follows:

J J J J
J J J J
J J J
J A27
J A J
A A
A A

On January 13, the students chose the following seats for themselves, revealing more of a
mixed pattern, likely due to the fact that students had grown more used to sitting near and

' next to one another, having been assigned seats since the first day of school:

 

‘6 The other pattern evident in this choice pairing is that students also aligned themselves according to
gender. Girls paired themselves with girls, boys with boys. This gender patterning was something I only
paid peripheral attention to during the year as I was interested in looking at the way the Arab/Jew
dichotomy played itself out in this bicultural school, created for the stated purpose of creating a new context
for the interaction of Jews and Arabs. Work in the area of gender relations in schools has been done by
Thorne (1993), Gallus (1998) and many others.

27Student A in both diagrams, having attended a Jewish kindergarten, was fluent in both Hebrew and

Arabic. She frequently played with the Jewish students as much as, if nor more than, with the Arab
students.

51

J J A
J A J A
J A A J
A J A J
A A A A
A J

A J

Once all the students had entered the room, Noha then asked students to sit as follows:

A J A J
J A A A
A J J J
J A A A
A J J J
J A A A
A J J J
J

A J

The teachers consistently scaff'olded (Cazden, 1988) the students’ choices, remixing the
students across cultural lines. Evident later during the school year were examples of
students drawing less strict cultural boundaries, sitting in more mixed patterns. Still, one
can surmise that without the teachers’ scaffolding, the students would sit in culturally

homogeneous groups, thus engage less often with one another across cultural lines.

52

Though the move to pair students cross-culturally was very conscious though not
always made explicit, the outcome of that pairing was not as clear as when the teachers
constructed opportunities for students to work with one another in a particular activity.
These activities included having students create a common text in pairs or small groups,
having students engage one another in a teacher-facilitated discussion, and having students
work on a common project like a class play. A closer examination of six activities, as
mapped in Figure 3, will enable the reader to see how the students moved from being in

contact to one another to being in each others’ company and what each instance entailed.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

CONTACT ' COMPANY
Computer Activity Pair Drawing Whole Class Class Play
Discussion
Holocaust Narratives Group Drawing

 

 

 

 

 

 

Figure 3: From Contact to Company

Developing a Written Text: Maintaining Contact At the Computer Keyboard

It’s the beginning of January. Nuri and Abdalla sit side by side at one of the
computers in the classroom. Ghaida has explained to the children that they will be
working in pairs this morning to create stories on the computer in Arabic for the first
time, commenting that the Arab students will really have to take the lead since they are
fluent in Arabic. A couple of the Arab students mentioned how they might be able to
help those who don’t know Arabic, suggesting in particular that they could point out
specific letters on the keyboard for their partners to press. Ghaida reiterated these ideas
and then organized students in their pairs. Since there are only two computers in the

classrooms—one in one room, one in the second room at this point in the year—only two

53

pairs of children work on this activity at a time. The remainder of the students work on
other projects and activities. The teachers hope that this activity will prompt students to
practice each others’ languages and strengthen their ability to work collaboratively and
they explain these objectives to the students.

I |

Abdalla Nuri

(Arab) (Jew)

 

Abdalla, a wide-eyed Arab student dressed today in his navy blue jacket, sits with the
computer keyboard in front of him. Nuri, his Jewish partner, a hair elastic lightly
gripping her short dark hair, sits to Abdalla’s right. Abdalla turns for a moment to find
Ghaida and confers with her about the assignment. She explains in Arabic, addressing
Abdalla. Then Abdalla redirects his attention to the computer screen in front of him. As
Abdalla begins to enter a couple of Arabic letters, Nuri takes her turn too then points to
the screen, then the letters she and Abdalla have just punched and asks him in Hebrew
what they typed. She tells him firrther, in Hebrew and using elaborate hand gestures, that
he needs to explain to her what it is he is writing. Abdalla shrugs his shoulders, pauses
for a moment, and then returns his attention to the keyboard as does Nuri. She pushes a
key, seemingly at random, and asks Abdalla, again in Hebrew pointing from the keyboard
to the screen, what the letter she just pushed is. Rather than answer her, Abdalla searches
the keyboard, presumably for the next letter, and points to it, signaling to Nuri that that is
the letter she should now push. She moves her chair a bit closer to Abdalla’s. The
pattern continues—-Abdalla points to the letter and Nuri enters it. Stuck for a moment,
Abdalla turns to an Arab student—Khaled—who walks by at that moment and seeks his
help in finding a particular letter. Khaled points out the letter and then tells Nuri in
Hebrew that she should watch—“teeree”. Abdalla and Nuri continue further until the
next point of indecision. They search for a particular letter, one that sounds like the
English “d”. Again, Abdalla turns and employs the help of an Arab peer—Waal. Waal

54

points out the correct letter, explaining in both Hebrew and Arabic. As Abdalla and Nuri
construct this text, it appears—given their physical closeness to one another and the fact

that both utilize the keyboard—that this is a shared text, however the text is Abdalla’s

creation.

 

 

 

 

Zaina (Arab)
Ari (Jew)

Meanwhile, in the second room, Ari, an energetic Jewish boy, a frequent participant in
class discussions of all sorts, sits with Zaina, a shy Arabic girl who participates
infrequently in class. Zaina sits facing the computer and the screen. Ari, uncommonly
quiet today, sits with his body facing Zaina, his head twisted to see the screen Whereas
in the previous example, Nuri invites herself into the experience, here Zaina ‘invites’ Ari
in by employing the same model used by Abdalla. Ari enters initially by pointing to a
letter but Zaina shakes her head no and instead enters a few letters on her own. Soon she
points to specific letters on the keyboard and then Ari pushes the specified key. There is
no verbal conversation between these two students as they work. Ari’s physicality is
interesting. During the course of their interaction (less than 10 minutes long), Ari turns
away from the screen a number of times whereas Zaina is fully focused on the screen and

the keyboard, looking away only once. This is Zaina’s text. . .with a little help fi'om Ari.

 

 

 

 

Khaled Yael

(Arab) (Jew)
A third pair—two of the brightest students in the class—work together later in the
morning. Yael, a Jewish girl, and Khaled, who was one of the boys helping Abdalla and
Ntui earlier, sit head to head at the computer. They begin by searching the keyboard

55

seemingly for a letter. Khaled begins to type a couple of letters. Yael’s hand is poised
above the keyboard, waiting, but Khaled does not invite her to join. She looks intently at
Khaled for nearly a minute, hoping perhaps that this will prompt him to invite her to
participate. Essentially, Khaled creates the story on his own; Yael never touches the
keyboard and no words pass between them. As time passes, Yael repositions
herself—moving from being head to head with Khaled to sitting back in her seat to then

moving back from the computer.

 

 

 

 

Khaled Yael

Later Yael dips in close again, only to retreat shortly thereafter. This is Khaled’s text.
The teachers initiate pair work in this case hoping that students will be able to
learn from one another, specifically that the Jewish students may learn some additional
Arabic. One of the concerns Ghaida has raised at this point in the year—and continues to
raise throughout the year—is that the Jewish students in particular are learning Arabic at
a much slower pace than the Arab students are learning Hebrew. The reasons for this are
many. First, Hebrew is the first national language, Arabic the second. “Despite the legal
status of Arabic as the second language, Israel is not in fact a bilingual society. Hebrew is
the dominant language” (Bar-Yosef, 1994, p. 121). The Hebrew language can be found
everywhere, less so in Arab villages but still evident (i.e. at bus stops). Telephone
recordings—answering services, number information—are in Hebrew as are bills from the
electric company and gas companies, among others. Everyday survival in Israel is made
much easier if one speaks Hebrew. Furthermore, it is required that students in
schools—both Arab and Jewish—study Hebrew through high school. Therefore, the
parents of all of the students at the Misgav school—Arab and Jewish—are fluent in

Hebrew. In short, to succeed in many arenas in Israel, knowing Hebrew is mandatory.

56

This is the language of the culture of power (Delpit, 1988). Finally, because the
bilingual/bicultural school is situated in the Jewish regional council area, Hebrew is the
dominant language. It surrounds everyone and everything.

The case of Arabic is different than that of Hebrew. Arabic is the dominant
language in Arab villages. Here you can find Arabic phone books, store signs and
billboards. In mixed cities, like Haifa for instance, Arabic can be found in certain enclaves
but is not nearly as common as Hebrew. “In Jewish schools, Arabic is an elective course”
(Bar-Yosef, 1994, p. 121) thus not required. The Jewish parents of the children at
Misgav are overwhelmingly not fluent in Arabic and thus cannot support their children's
learning of the language. Yaffe explains “The problem is that the Jewish parents, only
some of them know reading and writing in Arabic. . .And it’s a problem because you can’t
help your child so how will you support him?. . .It won’t be easy” (Interview, July 1999).
Thus whereas Arab children have multiple opportunities to practice their Hebrew even
within their own villages, the Jewish children have many fewer opportunities in their
communities to practice their developing Arabic.

It is in part this language gap that prevents the possibility of equal status between
the students in the bilingual/bicultural school. Though the teachers struggle to promote
equity in language within the school, the world outside seeps through the school walls.

At the Level of Contact

The computer work was not joint work as the teachers had hoped it would be.
The activity was an example of very casual contact—the children did the exercise in close
proximity to one another but there was little engagement with one another across cultural
lines through the activity. For example, any at-length communication that happened was
that which was initiated, for example, between Abdalla and Khaled or Abdalla and Waal
as these Arab boys walked by and helped Abdalla with what was essentially his text and

not his and Nuri’s, the Jewish student’s.

57

Clearly pairing across cultural lines was not enough to prompt the sort of
engagement that the teachers were hoping for—engagement that would encourage students
to practice their second language skills and complete a task collaboratively. Instead
students remained steeped in their first languages and engaged in a task that turned out to
be very individual rather than collaborative. Furthermore, the students were not together
committed to the project or to one another, two critical factors if contact is to become
company. For instance, Khaled in the final example made no effort to invite Yael into the
text. His commitment was to the text only—getting the story written--and he perceived
Yael as irrelevant to that.

This activity contained all three of the possible conditions (keeping in mind that
equal status is ultimately an improbable condition at any time and in any context)
necessary for contact to be potentially transforrnative, conditions previously outlined in
the introduction. It occurred within an institution that supports contact between Arabs
and Jews, it allowed for acquaintance potential and it was, at least in name, a collaborative
project. A close look at how the activity unfolded, however, reveals that the third
condition is not quite met. This work is not as collaborative as the teachers might have
hoped. There are many reasons for that. First, the task is one that asks students——not
yet proficient writers in first language and certainly not in their second language——to
create a collaborative story. The students—emergent readers and writers—are very
focused initially on finding the correct letters on the keyboard. In addition, not only are
they new to reading and writing, they are becoming familiar too with a keyboard, a
keyboard on which each key has the letter symbols for three different languages on
it—Hebrew, Arabic and English—each in a different color. In addition, this is a new task
for these students; though they have written stories individually, sometimes on the
computers, in their first language, this is the first time that they have written collaborative
stories. They have no model for how to do this work. “For successful collaboration to

take place pupils need to be taught how to collaborate” (Galton & Williamson, 1992, p.

58

43). Though the teachers described the assignment to the students and circled the room to
answer students’ questions, they didn’t explicitly teach the students how to do this
difficult work. The task is new to the students; this is their first stab at it. In addition,
it’s new to the teachers. As mentioned earlier, these teachers are creating much of the
curriculum they are using this year, having few models for how to do this cross-cultural
work. A lot of what they do is improvised and intuitive. Yaffe relies in part on the work
she has done with first graders in the past. Noha relies often on the work that she did
with students in the after school program in which she worked previously. Ghaida often
relies on what feels right—on her gut instinct about what might work well for these
students. As it turns out, the teachers don’t have the students return to this particular
activity--that remained only at a basic level of contact--at all during the year, indicating
their understanding of the challenging nature of the task and its inability to meet the

students where they needed to be met.

Sharing Holocaust Narratives

In the middle of the spring, Jews in Israel remember ancestors who were killed in
the Holocaust. The students at the bilingual/bicultural school learned about the Holocaust
in two ways. First, Yaffe read them a story of a child who hid in the forest during the
Holocaust. Second, she asked the Jewish children to ask their parents about the
Holocaust and come to class the next day prepared to share what they learned.

On April 13, the students sat together in the Hebrew classroom. Yaffe asked one
Jewish student to share his narrative with the class. Tal came to the front of the room
and read the story he had written down on paper with the help of a parent, the story of
his great grandmother who was born in Germany. He stood next to Yaffe who encouraged
him at moments by helping him read his text or by placing her arm around his shoulder.
The story was of the experience of a relative who had lived during and survived the

Holocaust. Yaffe perused a second story Tal was going to share, a story about other

59

relatives who did not survive the war, and encouraged him not to share this one”. Tal
returned to his seat and Leah resumed his spot at the front of the room, sharing her family
story with the class. Yaffe read aloud the story from the sheet of paper that Leah had
brought with her, a story about Leah’s relatives who had gone to South Afiica to escape
the war. Only three of thirteen children survived. Next came Yael, sharing a story of a
relative who was taken to a Christian school to hide from the Nazis. Only after the war
did this relative find out she was Jewish. Sara then shared a story as did Ruti.

At the end of the storytelling, Yaffe rose to set up a series of six memorial candles,
one for each of the six million Jews who were killed during the Holocaust. She invited six
of the Jewish students who had shared their stories to come and light one candle each.
One Arab girl sitting at the front of the room whispered to her closest Arab asking why
those students got to light the candles. Whereas the Jewish students were at the
periphery in the computer exercise, the Arabic language—thus the Arab culture—being
held front and center, in this case the Arab students were on the periphery, unable to
participate fully due to a lack of history in this case, a lack of experience, so to speak,
with the Holocaust. The Arab students could do no more than listen to the stories being
told which, though important, are also hard to grasp. I remember my own difficulties in
imagining anything like the Holocaust, despite my own Jewish identity.

Like the computer exercise, this one too remained at the level of contact. It is as if
there was simply “a light pressure upon the skin” experienced by the Arab students here.
Certainly there were differences between these two activities as I discuss later in this
chapter however neither provided opportunity for real engagement (in the form of
discussion or joint activity) with the other or commitment to the other, an interest in

bringing the other individual into the folds of the activity. Though students have the

 

2’ The topic of the choices the teachers make in the classroom and why they make them will be taken up in

chapter four.

60

opportunity to learn in both contexts, neither allowed for students to truly be in each

others’ company.

ed 111 n ?
Drawing in Pairs

Another example of cross-cultural work employed on a regular basis in the
classroom—nearly once a week for the first half of the school year—was students
drawing together. They shared a single piece of paper and together created one drawing.
For this activity, used to create drawings for visitors, for students or a teacher who may
be absent due to illness, for decorating the classroom or for learning about a holiday,
teachers generally assigned students to Arab/Jewish pairs again to help them learn to
cooperate and to practice speaking their second language. What occurred during these
activities varied across the year, depending on the activity and on the students involved.
Some examples will serve to illustrate that variety.

The Moslem holiday of Ramadan, lasting thirty days when Moslems fast during
the daylight hours”, presents an opportunity to teach about the Moslem religion and
aspects of Arab Moslem culture. In late December and into January, the teachers engaged
students in a number of activities related to the holiday throughout the month—from
creating a ‘midnight’ feast for the students complete with specific foods and prayers to
having students work on puzzles that showed scenes from Ramadan to showing a film
about the holiday. One activity the students did was to work in groups of two to create a
drawing of what they remembered—from previous activities——about Ramadan and its
symbols. The teachers explained the activity to the students and asked them to try to use

Arabic as they worked together.

 

‘9 I don’t recall any of the Moslem students fasting while at school.

61

Abdalla, an Arab student, works today with Gil, a blond haired Jewish boy who
wavers between being fairly shy and in need of help to being somewhat mischievous.
Right away the two boys begin by negotiating with one another, making some decisions
about what they will draw on this single 8 by 11 sheet of white paper. Abdalla points to
something on the display that stands behind them. By the windows is a display of
Ramadan symbols that the teachers created—lanterns to light the way as the callers walk
the streets to wake up people to eat breakfast before the sun comes up, Moslem prayer
beads, Arabic phrases from the Koran, pictures of foods eaten in the evening. Gil asks
Abdalla——in Hebrew—“necklace?”. Abdalla repeats the word in Hebrew, nodding, then
’ gets up to point out what he means. He taps Gil on the shoulder, signaling his move from
the table. “This,” he says to Gil in Hebrew, pointing to a plate that hangs beneath the
prayer beads—or necklace, as Gil calls them. To make his point more clear, Abdalla
walks over to the display. Gil gets up to join him and points out too what he plans to
draw. The two return to their seats, smile at one another, and then begin to work. A few
minutes later, Gil makes a joke, using hand gestures only, and the two boys giggle to one
another, stifling their laughs a bit as they see the video camera on them. As they work
together, the two boys point to different parts of the drawing they are creating and also to
the display behind them. They question one another—through hand signals and some
Hebrew—about crayon color and the like. They also watch each other draw. At one
point, Gil takes the crayon Abdalla is using and ‘fixes’ it for him, peeling back some of
the paper so that Abdalla will have an easier time drawing. The two negotiate everything
through hand gestures and some Hebrew speech and even decide together when they think
they are done. They bring their final product—a mosque at the center of the paper,
symbols surrounding it—to Noha who asks them questions in Arabic about what they
have drawn. Gil responds in Hebrew, followed by Arabic after Noha tells him the words
he’s looking for. Abdalla answers in Arabic. She sends them back to their seats to write

their names. They write one right after the other in the same corner of the paper.

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Tal, a Jewish student, and Samar, an Arab student, sit side by side at a nearby
table. Noha is reiterating the assignment for them—to create a drawing that includes
pictures of Ramadan symbols. Together the students must negotiate what goes on the
page, be aware of what one another is doing. The teachers have asked the students to
participate in Arabic. Noha, speaking in Arabic, suggests that the two boys go to the
resource board decorated with Ramadan symbols. Samar gets up and tells Tal in Arabic
“taala hone” ——“come here.” Tal, concentrating on his drawing, does not move. Samar
waits a few seconds, looks to Noha who encourages him, and repeats “taala hone” again.
Then a third time. Meanwhile, Tal draws bits and pieces on the paper, presumably
assuming Noha and Samar are having a conversation in which he is not a participant.
Noha and Samar wonder together for a moment about what Samar’s next move should be.
One gets the sense that if Noha weren’t present, Samar would have given up already, or
maybe switched to Hebrew. He wants to get Tal to go with him to look at the symbols
so they can be sure of what one another will draw. Samar repeats the word for a fourth
time. This time, Tal looks from Noha to Samar and back and again assumes he is not part
of this conversation. It becomes clearer that he does not know the meaning of “taala
hone” and yet Samar refuses to give up, perhaps strengthened for the time being by
Noha’s presence. As Samar repeats “taala hone” for the fifth time, he pokes Tal lightly
and then reaches down to grasp his hand, saying the word one last time as he and Tal
walk hand in hand to the resource board. Tal willingly follows, as if he is being taken on
an unknown adventure. Once there, Samar pauses and Tal, now understanding, points to
the object he has begun to draw. When Noha arrives by their side, the two point to this
together. Then the two boys return to their seats and draw silently onward.

Another type of negotiation is going on nearby. Sara, a Jewish student, and
Manhal, an Arab student, are working on the floor today, their paper spread out in front
of them. The two are literally moving around it—and each other—as they work. Rather

than communicate verbally or move the paper, the children themselves move, their bodies

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circling the paper as they draw their Ramadan symbols. The art itself may act as the
language (Holrns, 1994) as they watch each others’ drawing moves. This common
space—both the floor and the paper—is physically negotiated here. They also negotiate
using speech as a mediational tool (Cole, 1996). At one point, Sara asks in Hebrew,
“Here?”, pointing to a spot on the paper before she draws further. “No, here,” corrects
Manhal, also in Hebrew, as he points to the correct spot.

At a table across the room, Waal, a determined and somewhat serious Arab boy,
and Michal, a chatty Jewish girl known for sharing markers and ideas, are assigned to
work together. They have done pair work together previously. Waal taps Michal on the
shoulder and points to something on the display across the room. Michal shrugs and then
redirects her attention to the paper in front of them. Noha asks what she is drawing and
explains that Waal needs to know too. Michal pauses, looks at her paper, looks to Waal
who has begun to draw, looks away then finally turns to him with “Waal?”, getting his
attention. She points to the sketch she has begun to draw on paper and asks Waal,
through pointing and nodding, if he approves or understands what she is drawing. Waal
nods and the two continue to draw. As she begins again, Waal meanwhile gets up and
walks across the classroom to get a closer look at the display. Michal first draws prayer
beads, making freehand circles and connecting one to the other. Waal, who has returned to
his seat, takes out his ruler and with tight lines, begins his picture. Michal watches him
for a minute and then, realizing what he’s drawing, says “ooohhh,” and smiles. The two
continue for five or six more minutes, tapping each other every once in awhile to get one
another’s attention. They work side by side, head to head, on this single piece of paper.
Though they draw different symbols, they are fulfilling the assignment: filling the page
with symbols of Ramadan that they remember. And they are making each other aware of
what it is they are drawing, ‘checking in’ with each other every so often. Michal asks
Waal in Arabic when she is done “tayeb?”—“finished?” Waal doesn’t respond, still

immersed in his drawing.

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Moving From Contact to Company...and Back Again

In these examples of pair drawing, in contrast to the example of the computer
work and the Holocaust narrative sharing, students had the chance to engage in each
other’s company. The palpable difference between the computer activity and the
Holocaust narratives—both which remained at the level of contact—and this activity
which I believe began to move into company is the fact that the text that was created in
the end was a shared text. This experience was indeed “a body of persons combined or
incorporated for some common object, or for the joint execution or performance of
anything” (Oxford English Dictionary). The jointness revealed through this
interaction—indicated by attempts at communication, a borrowing of markers and ideas,
negotiation of a task rather than an assigning of a task, and the playing around with the
task (i.e. cracking jokes and such as they move through the task) indicated a moving
beneath the surface of contact and into a more intimate relation between individuals.
Also, there was a commitment to the task and to one another revealed, for example, in
Gil’s small but critical move of peeling back the paper on Abdalla’s crayon, allowing him
to be a full participant.

Certainly other pairs worked differently than those described above. As I
mentioned earlier, students responded differently to different tasks and activities.
Whereas in these instances, there was some form of negotiation taking place, in other
pairs that was not the case. I noted in my fieldnotes in November when I first watched
Waal and Michal work together that “I don’t think any of the other groups—with the
exception of Or and Amira. . ..worked as well. In fact, the whole experience made me
wonder about the number of times that Arabs and Jews are brought together to engage in a
‘nice’ project which they seem to do fine. The finished product, the photographs [of it],
look great. But what’s the reality? Does the ‘same page’, so to speak, the same drawing,

65

the same production, mean anything?” Later in the year, Ghaida raised the same question,
remarking “the pictures look great—but what about the process?”

One example of this process unfolding differently in different dyads occurred in
February. When King Hussein of Jordan died, the teachers designed an activity in which
students would work in pairs and prepare cards to send to Hussein’s family. Once again,
the teachers were hoping to support students’ second language learning and cooperative
skills. Some students worked similarly to those groups described above. Two students
in particular, however, worked independently on a project that was to be a joint
construction. Though the teachers had reiterated on a number of occasions that the
students were to create a single drawing together on the shared sheet, Leah and Maja
began by drawing a line down the center of the paper. Leah worked on one side, drawing
freehand and writing in Hebrew. Maja worked on the other side of the sheet—in Arabic
and using cut outs fiom the newspapers supplied by the teachers for the assignment.

The most notable communication that occurred between the two happened when Maja
moved to cross the ‘line’ to add something to the part that Leah had been working on.
Leah screamed and then was asked by one of the teachers to leave the room until she
calmed down. Later, the two finished the drawing without speaking to one another.
Though the two students shared a single sheet of paper, the text—like the computer
text—is not common. Thus the drawing in pairs at times resembles a contact experience,
as was the case with Maja and Leah, rather than a more intimate experience of company.
There are indeed multiple ways to interpret or analyze this experience—and similar
ones—when participation is so uneven. Briefly, this could be a reasonable aspect of life
in first grade (or second, or third, etc.). Children—and adults, for that matter—do not
always share work equally on a collaborative task, something teachers must be conscious
of when making assumptions about the potential strength of cooperative learning
experiences. Another way to look at this particular event is fiom the standpoint of the

specific students involved. How do different individuals, with different personalities,

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influence whether or not an experience becomes one of company? Thus perhaps the more
often drawing experiences like this were done, offering students opportunities to work
with different students at different times and on different subjects, the more chances
students had to have an experience of truly working in the company of another.
Collaboration in these drawing dyads, however, was more probable than at the
computer, given the abilities of the students at this point in the year. Unlike with the
computer work, all participants in this case knew how to draw and had the appropriate
tools—both tangible and mental—to complete the task together. They came to this work
prepared. In addition, drawing enabled the students to overcome some of the language
barriers that they still encountered as they struggled to learn one another’s language
(Holms, 1994). They didn’t have to rely solely on language, but instead used other signs
and symbols (V ygotsky, 1978) including hand gestures, drawings and physical resources

in the classroom to communicate with one another, critical tools in a bilingual classroom.

Drawing in Groups

It was not unusual for students to be assigned to work on projects in small
groups. Often, the teachers would define the task and then students would work together
in teacher designed groups. In these cases, teachers would circulate around the room as
students worked. One such activity occurred in late November. Ghaida had been
fi'ustrated by the fact that the students hadn’t yet begun to dig into the large number of
Arabic texts that the teachers had ordered for the classroom. The teachers designed an
activity where students would, in groups of four or five, look at a text, especially the
illustrations, given that students were still struggling readers at this point. Once students
had ‘read’ the texts, they then had to draw their own impression of the story. Each

student was to participate in the drawing, culminating in a single page for each group.

67

 

 

 

 

Yael—a pensive Jewish girl, Amira—an Arab girl sporting two long braids on this
particular day, Samair—an energetic Arab boy, Fozi—a pensive, quiet Arab boy, and
Ruti—a Jewish girl who never tired of waving to the videocarnera throughout the year,
were assigned to work together on this particular project. After flipping through the text
which each student had a copy of, the students then began to figure out what to draw.
Amira began drawing a house, modeled on the illustrations from the text, in the middle of
the paper. Meanwhile, Samair decided that he would write something in the small sun
that had been drawn in the upper left hand corner of the paper. He took the black marker
from the hands of Ruti who sat to his left and wrote a word in Arabic. When he finished,
Ruti used the same marker and wrote in Hebrew directly underneath Samair’s words.
Though the page was small, these five students figured out how to negotiate that space.
At times, all five worked together on different parts of the paper, their heads practically
touching. On the paper, they drew a single house with windows and door, trees and
flowers beside the house, a cloud covered sky and the sun above the house. They
engulfed the paper, their hands and arms at work on the drawing, their bodies flat against
the table top. At other times, one or two of the students would rest his or her chin on
his/her hand and watch as the others drew. On two occasions, Amira got up from her
spot and moved to the right of Samair to work on that part of the drawing. The students
shared the page, shared the table, shared each others’ markers. Amira, fairly fluent in
Arabic and Hebrew, translated conversations within the group at times though other
conversation took place through gestures.

A couple months later, in mid-January, the teachers introduced another group
activity to the students. In the front of the room, Ghaida and Yaffe modeled the activity

68

rather than simply describe it as they most often did. On the white board, Yaffe began to
draw a design. When she finished, she handed Ghaida the marker and Ghaida, first asking
Yaffe if she could add something to Yaffe’s drawing, began to add to Yaffe’s picture, thus
collaborating on a single picture of a tree. Yaffe then explained that the students would be
designing a single picture in groups of ten. Each group would work with a different
teacher. On a sheet of paper divided into a number of sections, students were to draw
something together. In some ways, the activity mimicked something that one of the
parents, a local artist, had designed earlier in the year for the students. She had created a
puzzle and each student and teacher was given a puzzle piece to construct the whole.
Thus each section fit together with the others, creating one single picture.

Ten students—five Arab, five J ewish—sat in a circle with Noha, surrounding the
large sheet of white paper that had been divided into ten sections. Noha reiterated the
task and then asked who wanted to begin. One student volunteered. She began to draw.
Her peers watched carefully, quietly. When this student was finished, a second student
stepped up to the paper and, rather than add to the drawing that the first student began,
this student drew something of his own in a different square. The process continued.
Only one student chose to add directly to another’s drawing rather than draw something
in a completely different square. These students drew their designs first in pencil and
then switched to pen.

The same process was unfolding in the second room where Yaffe worked with a
second group of ten—four Jews, six Arabs. When these students appeared to be through
with their pencil drawings, related but drawn individually, Yaffe asked if they were done.
She then explained that everyone was to choose a particular color to use to begin to color
in one of the drawings. They had the option of coloring any one’s picture but first had to
ask.

“Amira—what color do you want to use and for which picture?” Yaffe asked

Amira in Hebrew. Amira responded also in Hebrew that she’d like to color in Maja’s

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design. “Ask her,” Yaffe said. Amira asked in Arabic, Maja and Amira’s first language;
Maja gave her the go ahead, also in Arabic. Two turns later, Waal, a native Arabic
speaker like the two girls before him, asked Eli, a native Hebrew speaker, if he could color
in his drawing. Eli said yes. The short exchange was conducted in Hebrew. Once
everyone had chosen a place to draw and a color, Yaffe told the students they could begin.
At that point, eight of the students dove onto the paper, markers ready. Meanwhile,
Waal prepared his marker while Dov conferred briefly with Yaffe. Yaffe then left the
students to their work. While they colored, the students negotiated work space by way
of their bodies and their voices. At one point, two students vied for the same opening
and ended up taking turns to draw. . .until one of the children decided she’d had enough

and left the circle, choosing instead to play with some dolls nearby.

Intermingling of Contact and Company

One of the things not illustrated in the above sketches is the conversation between
the students. This is in part due to the fact that there often wasn’t a significant amount
of verbal conversation across cultural lines. Instead, Arabs spoke with Arabs in Arabic,
Jews with other Jews in Hebrew. When the students worked without teachers, they
often engaged with one another within cultural lines rather than across them. This was
particularly true during the activity when the students were in the larger groups. Despite
that the students drew on a large piece of paper, their creations appeared to be their own
rather than that of the group, thus the activity remained mostly at the level of contact.
The teachers, however, acted as facilitators for moving this work closer to an experience
of company keeping, asking students to engage in conversation with one another and
prompting them to essentially enter into each others’ spaces, coloring one another’s
drawings for example. Thus the teacher’s role in moving an experience of contact into one

of company is critical.

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In contrast, the example illustrated above of the smaller group work seems to be
an example of more consistent company. As described, the students move across border
lines by, for example, sharing resources (i.e. Ruti and Samair using the same marker as
they write). This was one of the things that I paid attention to while in the classroom.
Did students share resources with one another when working either individually or in
cross-cultural groups? Initially, the common pattern was that Jewish students would
share with Jewish students, Arab with Arab students even to the point that some
students would take a long trip around the room in search of a marker or eraser or bottle
of glue rather than borrow fiom the neighbor seated directly next to him or her. This
pattern eased during the year. Students began to share resources across cultural lines,
often beginning by asking a neighbor rather than take a trip around the classroom. This
practice moved to the point where asking for permission to borrow became somewhat
extraneous. Once initial permission was granted, the resources were considered nearly
common, readily borrowed by Jews and Arabs alike. Particularly since these young
elementary school students took such pride in their wares, took such ownership over the
resources they brought to school, this sharing across boundaries led me to believe this was
one marker of students moving towards being in the company of one another. Students
too indicated sharing practices as indication of friendship. Though I do not argue that
being in the company of someone else implies that you are inevitably fiiends with that
individual (or that friendship is necessarily a marker of cultural fluency), I do think the
students’ conception of sharing and its relationship to friendship is interesting. I believe
this is perhaps an indication of students’ willingness to move across borders, to conceive
of fiiendships beyond cultural boundaries. In a conversation that occurred in April,
students sat in groups of eight or ten with Noha and talked about fiiendship. “Who is a
friend?” Noha asked. “What do friends do for one another?” More than one student
commented that, among other things, fiiends are those with whom you “share your

markers”.

71

A further indicator of the children engaging in each other’s company lay in the
way they drew together, specifically watching each other draw. They were not
uninvolved in each other’s activities. At one stage, as described, a couple of the students
sat with chins in their hands and watched as their peers drew before settling in to add to
the drawing. The final picture revealed a single setting, a single text”.

Finally, a close look at the ‘photograph’ of the group work in progress reveals a
physical contrast to the experience of the students working on the computer activity, for
example. Whereas students then were in some cases physically distant from one another
by the end of the activity, here students only moved closer to one another, into a shared
space. These examples of group drawings, like the pair drawings, reveal engagement at

both the level of contact and company.

Developing An Oral Text: Engaging in Whole Class Conversation

During the course of the school year, I had the opportunity to listen to—even
participate in—a number of conversations that felt to me difficult, easier avoided than
entered into. These conversations occurred between parents, between parents and
teachers, between teachers, between teachers and students, and between students. They
are conversations marked by changes in tone—from mild to loud or mild to a near
whisper—by changes in tempo—from well spaced to rapid or from rapid to sudden
halting—by changes in body posture——from casual leaning to tightened facial features and
crossed arms and legs, for instance. Some conversations are planned, as in many of the
cases between teachers and students, while others are unanticipated. I believe that these
difficult conversations, often avoided in classrooms (Britzrnan, 1992; Giroux, I988;
hooks, 1994) are potential windows of opportunity to cultural fluency. Conversation

about specific challenging topics was enabled in part by the socio-historical context in

 

3° Of course not all small groups worked together similarly. As in the pair drawing, in some cases
students collaborated and truly worked to build a common text. In other cases, the text was less common,
the participation less shared.

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which the school—and its inhabitants—are situated. Israel is a country fraught with
political and racial tension. It is a country where discrimination and prejudice rise to the
surface“, a country where history—particularly between Arabs and J ews——is not easily
agreed on or forgotten. Interestingly, the teachers often spoke about not wanting things
to get “political” within the context of the school. Some researchers have suggested that
the most effective coexistence work between Arabs and Jews happens when politics are
left by the wayside (Ben-Ari & Amir, 1986). Furthermore, there is a perception that the
teachers are not supposed to ‘get political’ in the classroom. Noha explained “You can’t
talk about politics in class. . .I think we’re very influenced by it but they [Ministry of
Education] don’t want us to” talk about it (Interview, July 1999). However, talk of
politics is essentially unavoidable, and perhaps more desirable as an engaging It (Hawkins,
1974) because it is the ‘forbidden fruit’. It enters the conversation at the school fairly
often as it turns out, given things like elections, various holidays and even the death of
King Hussein of Jordan. The teachers address the issue differently, however, at different
times, not always addressing it head on as they do in the discussion described below.

It is late March, a few days before Land Day which commemorates an event
which took place nearly 25 years ago. In 1976, the Labour government in Israel made
land in northern Israel available to Jews in order to try to shift the ratio of Arabs and
Jews in the area. Though Arabs represent less than 20% of the Israeli population (Abu-
Nimer, 1999), in the lower Galilee region where the school is located the ratio of Jews to
Arabs is 1:4 (Bard, 1998). The land that the government made available for new Jewish
settlements in 1976 had at one time been Arab land but had been redistributed for military
purposes. Though some of the land was used to build military sites, other land was
offered at reduced rates to Jewish residents living in other areas of Israel as a way to

encourage them to relocate to the Galilee region. On March 30, 1976, there was an Arab

 

’ 'An example: During an election campaign in early 1999, one woman running for office in a town called
Ranana, just outside Tel Aviv, ran under the campaign "Keep the Haredi [religious Jews] out of Ranana".

73

general strike throughout Israel in protest of the land resettlement in this region.

Members of the Israeli army were posted in the lower Galilee region. Arabs held
demonstrations in a number of villages in the area. Multiple versions exist as to what
transpired on that day that led to the shooting death of a number of Arabs at the hands of
the Israeli army. Some argue that the army was provoked, others say that the
demonstrators were peacefirlly demonstrating”. In Sacknin today, there stands a statue
in memory of six residents who were killed on this day. Every year, on March 30, Arabs
hold demonstrations both in this area and all over Israel. This year, nine Arab children
from Sacknin—as students in this bicultural/bilingual school—take part in a discussion
about Land Day at school with their Jewish classmates.

My fieldnotes on that day in March begin:

The classroom door is closed. That’s not unusual but might be expected given the
tone in the room and Ghaida’s apparent anxiety about the morning’s discussion. I
have never seen Ghaida so nervous. “Maybe next year it will be easier,” she tells
me. She asked me not to videotape this morning. She told me that she wants to be
able to be as “natural” as possible. Usually, when kids file into the room to sit on
the rug for an activity, they sit where they want. Today, though, as they come in
a few at a time, sent in from the other room by Yaffa, Ghaida tells them where
they should sit. Ari points out as he sits down “Aravee, yehoodee, aravee,
yehoodee. . .” [Arab, Jew, Arab, Jew] and continues till he points to everyone
sitting on the carpet He’s right. Ghaida is sitting the kids in that order, to the
extent that that’s possible on the rug.

As mentioned earlier, the students are perfectly aware that there are two distinct cultures
within this setting. Thus differences, often avoided in contact situations in favor of
seeking similarities, cannot be avoided here. The students are also quite aware of the
moves that the teachers make to integrate them at the very least through the way they
assign students their seats.

I continue further in my notes:

 

3‘ For more information on Land Day from the perspective of Arabs involved in the demonstrations in
Sakhnin, see the Arabic text The Black Book of Land Day, 30til of March, 1976 published by Al-Etihad,
September, 1976.

74

Ghaida and Yaffa sit at the front of the room. . . [They] wear dark colors today,
which though not unusual, is very noticeable to me today given the ensuing
discussion. Ghaida begins by saying that this morning, she will be talking about a
subject that is difficult, even sad. She says she realizes that some kids will want
to talk, others might want to just listen. She then asks who knows something
about Land Day and what it is.

Tal, a Jewish boy , a voracious reader, speaks first, stating in Hebrew that land was taken
from the Arabs and given to the Jews to build houses. F ozi, a quiet, introspective Arab
student speaks next in Arabic”. All students in fact speak their native language during
this discussion, a practice that was fairly common in any class discussions. Fozi explains
that a long time ago, Jews took land from the Arabs and that five people were
killed—some fiom Sacknin. Nibeela, in his native Arabic, corrects Fozi and says that six
people were killed. Two other Arab students explain from where the six who were killed
came. Sara, a Jewish student, mistakes Land Day with Yom Siveeva—Environment Day.
Yaffe corrects her. Ruti, another Jewish student, has the final comment before the
teachers speak saying “Jews —“ and then backtracking and saying “other people took
other people’s land.” It is as if through this switch, Ruti works to maintain the
fellowship of the classroom.

I believe Ruti’s word choice here, like Eli’s pointing out “Jew, Arab, Jew, Arab”,
is an indication of her awareness of a tension that exists between Jews and Arabs and an
understanding that both populations exist here in this classroom. By naming the “Jews”
as the oppressors, and by being a Jew herself, Ruti becomes the oppressor of those who

sit beside her. I have no way of knowing at what level Ruti perceives this but as an

 

3" I recorded this conversation in my fieldnotes through writing down specific phrases I heard and
understood and through jotting down the names of the speakers and words that they spoke that I could
cepy in transliteration. Immediately following the conversation, I asked the teachers to walk through it
with me. In this case, all three teachers sat down with me to debrief the discussion, filling in the blanks as
needed and adding their own commentary on the experience as well. The direct quotes here are most often
translations of the students’ words based on whatever initial phrases and words I was able to capture as I
watched and listened and then on the teachers’ remembrance of the talk. Because all three teachers debriefed
the experience with me, it was a collaborative remembering of sorts.

75

onlooker, I was struck by this change of wording, reminiscent of an experience that
happens with the teachers as will be described in chapter four.

Ghaida then begins to explain the story of Land Day in Arabic and then Hebrew.
She tells the kids that 50 years ago, Arabs and Jews fought about the land. She explains
that some people said it was their land; others said it belonged to them. “Some said I was

here first, others said that they were there first”.

Eli ask[s]: “Why didn’t they just split it half and half?” Ghaida responds by
saying that that’s a good idea. There was an idea to do that, she explains, but lots
of people didn’t want to do that. Leah ask[s]: “Did they agree?” Ghaida
explain[s] that some did, some didn’t. Some of the Jews said that they wanted all
of the land and some of the Arabs said that they wanted all of the land.

Ghaida continues her discussion. “Thirty years ago,” she explains. “The
government that was there...” She stop[s] here and ask[s] if the kids under[stand]
what memshallah means. [Some students offer their thoughts on what the
word—govemment—means]. [Sara] says “someone who wants to make peace”.
Ghaida and Yaffe explain that that’s not correct. [The teachers follow with an
explanation].

Ghaida continues: Before 20 years, the memshallah, a long time ago, before you
were born——

Yaffe: When we were young children.
Ghaida: The memshallah took lots of land from the Arabs.
Eli asks: Why did they need land? Why not sand and rocks?

Yaffe explains the need for land to build houses. Michal then asks, “Why do
people want more land if they have some?”

Ghaida explains that there are people who want more land because that would
mean more power. Many Arabs thought that Jews wanted to take more land to
gain more strength.

Ghaida continues, “—the memshallah, before 20 years took a lot of land and then there
was a demonstration.” She asks if the children know what a demonstration is. Together,

they sort out the definition in both Arabic and Hebrew.

76

On the same day as the demonstrations, [Ghaida] continue[s], the soldiers came
into the villages... [S]he names the villages. Yaffe comes in here and explains [she
tells me later] why the soldiers came in. She says they came because the
demonstrations were violent. Ghaida whispers to her that they weren’t violent.
Yaffe explains that the demonstrations were loud, with many people which is
why the soldiers came in. Ghaida then explains that some people were killed.
Ghaida tells me afterwards that she did not use the words “soldiers killed some
Arabs” or that these were Jewish soldiers. Instead, she chose to use the word
people, given that most of the Jewish kids know soldiers—are relatives of people
in the army“.
Ghaida’s comment here about language is reminiscent of what Ruti had done earlier in the
conversation. Ghaida, aware of the potential power of language in promoting a rift
between the students in front of her, chooses to use the neutral word people rather than
the term Jews. Given Ruti’s earlier comment, however, I wonder whether or not the

‘cover up’ is in fact not really that at all. These kids are very aware, “very politically
aware,” says Ghaida to me in February.

Ghaida then reminds the kids that this was a long time ago.
Eli says: “More than 20 years ago you said.” Yaffe says yes. Ghaida explains
that she was just a little girl.

Throughout the conversation, Ghaida and Yaffe make a consistent point of suggesting this
is an experience that happened a long time ago. Eli’s comment indicates that the students
have indeed gotten that point. Land Day happened “a long time ago”. When I asked the
teachers about their repetition of the length of time, they suggested they did this
consciously, not wanting the children to be fearful of one another as Arabs and Jews.

Thus though the teachers venture into these controversial waters, they do what they can

 

3"In fact, the father of one of the students in the class is employed full-time by the army. During the year,
dressed in his army uniform, he would come to the school to pick up or drop off his child. Some of the
Arab students had confided to Noha in particular that they had been afraid of this student's father. Arabs-
not allowed to serve in the Army unless Bedouins, an Arab sect who live in secluded communities or
Druze--learn in multiple ways to be fearful of Israeli soldiers whereas Jews often look forward to their
required army service. In a conversation prompted by Noha that took place after Israeli Independence Day,
or Day of Catastrophe as it is referred to by a majority of Arabs, one of the Arab students said aloud to the
whole class that at one time he was afraid of this Jewish student's father but now that he is fiiends with this
student, he is no longer afiaid.

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to deter any possible repercussions of a discussion such as this that might serve to
separate the students who, by this point in the year, are beginning to feel somewhat
comfortable with one another, indicated by something as simple as sharing resources and

snacks.

The conversation, near its end, moves out of the past and into the present.

Ghaida comments that today things are somewhat different.

“like we’re together here,” she says. “Now what’s good about the relationship
between Arabs and Jews?” she asks the kids. Michal says that “We’re
fi'iends—Sakhnin and Rakefet”—they come to us and us to them.” Sara says that
children——Arab and Jew—want peace. Zaina says that people shouldn’t hit one
another. . .Leah [then] says that this school is an example of peace between Arabs
and Jews. Yaffe responds: “Kol hacavode, Leah,” [Literally “all the honor” or
“good for you” more figuratively]. They ask her to repeat it again—Ghaida
translates into Arabic. Nibeela says that Jews and Arabs should live together.
Miriam says that now there is peace between countries. Yaffa asks where and the
kids respond Egypt and Jordan. . . .Yaffe [concludes] that “now we are together,
respect one another. Our class is an example of how this is possible, how to be
with one another.” Ghaida translates into Arabic.

Ghaida gives a big sigh then turns to Yaffe. They decide quickly where kids will
work for the next activity when they will have the opportunity to work with clay
or markers to create something related to [the topic of] land. Yaffe explains the
activity and Ghaida gets up to open the door---

Land Day is a topic rarely discussed in classrooms—Arab or Jewish. Ghaida explained in
a conversation we had at the end of the year that she told everybody that they had talked
about Land Day at the school “because it’s not common even in Arab schools to talk
about Land Day. . .Everyone I told about that said ‘you also told the Jewish kids about
Land Day? Wow.’” (Interview, July 1999). Land Day is a “hot lava” topic35 (Glazier,

 

3 5 Another topic considered hot lava is the topic of a Palestinian State. Ghaida explained to me "when I
was in school, we didn't even think of, mention, a Palestinian State" (Discussion, February 1999). This
topic came up from a conversation about King Hussein of Jordan. One student drew a comparison between
Hussein and Yassir Arafat, Chairman of the Palestinian Authority. Realizing that students weren't entirely
clear who Arafat was, Ghaida explained that to them, mentioning the term Palestinian. This is turn
brought questions about what and where was Palestine. Ghaida pointed out the area of the West Bank in
particular as the potential site of a future Palestine.

78

1998; Glazier, et al., 2000), something no one is willing to touch because it’s so
controversial, particularly in this school where the families of some of the Jewish
students are indeed living on land once owned by families of some of the Arab students.
In fact, the land on which the Misgav school complex sits was once Abdalla’s family’s
land, taken away from them by the government years earlier. And yet the teachers risked
bringing the topic into the classroom, in part because of personal and very conscious
commitments to making students aware of the reality of the world outside of the school
and in part because of an obligation they had that extended beyond themselves. Some of
the parents expected the topic would be addressed in the classroom.

The discussion is ‘allowed’ to happen here for a number of reasons. First and
foremost, the teachers—-with varying degrees of trepidation—approach it. Two days
before the discussion, Noha and Yaffe conferred about whether or not they should cancel
the plan to discuss Land Day. Due to a national teachers’ strike which caused the
teachers to lose a half day of school, they had to postpone the discussion one day and
they wondered, given the upcoming vacation, if they would have time to talk about Land
Day and allow the students to move beyond it. Ghaida, the most politically vocal of the
three teachers, was determined that they pursue the discussion. The discussion also
happened in part because of the ‘low status’ of the school. Ironically, it may be easier to
speak about this topic here than in other places, other schools. Because of its novelty,
individuals—particularly those unsupportive of the idea—may dismiss the school’s
potential and therefore may pay little attention to what occurs at the site. In addition,
because it is an elementary school, it automatically ‘earns’ low status in part because
elementary schools have traditionally been places filled with female teachers. The
feminization of teaching (Grumet, 1988) has influenced the status of these schools in
particular. Furthermore, because there are indeed three female teachers working at the
school, they may suffer from what American female teachers suffer from—a low

professional status, resulting again in a dismissal of their important work. Finally,

79

because of the school’s location in the less populated, less politically heated area of Israel
(in contrast to Jerusalem), it may not be as closely scrutinized, again its potential
dismissed. All of these factors make it possible in part for this ‘hot lava’ topic to be
pursued in this classroom. All of these factors combine to allow for a break in the school

silence traditionally surrounding Land Day.

Building Company Through Talk

Through this discussion, these students—Arab and Jew alike—have the
opportunity to learn about the history of the very area in which they live and of the
people within that area. Speaking about the topic enables the teachers to clarify some
misconceptions as they are able to do when Sara equates Land Day with Environment
Day. Students too are able—through the discussion—to further understand why it is that
Arabs and Jews are segregated from one another, why one group may fear another. And
they hear this from multiple perspectives—not just the Arab story or the Jewish story,
as they might in segregated schools if indeed the topic was addressed at all. The
conversation in part helps the students further realize the lack of equal status between
Jews and Arabs. These particular students, however, are also encouraged to think about
how things can be transformed, how they themselves, as students in this class, represent
an image of possibility. These students are fully aware that they are Jews and Arabs in
this classroom, as indicated by Eli’s comments, for example. Despite the teachers’ efforts
to sometimes refer to the students as the more general “human beings”, even saying
“we’re not Jews and Arabs here—we’re people” and to help minimize the dichotomy, the
children carry their cultural identity—and that of their classmates—with them, making
comments such as “All the Jews are bothering me” or “I can’t hear the movie. The Arabs
are making too much noise.” F urtherrnore, they can’t escape the society that unfolds
around them—from parents to siblings to other adults in the children’s lives to the press

and television. They live in a world where an Arab/Jewish dichotomy exists. Ghaida

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once commented about the students “these kids are aware of the world” (Discussion,
April 1999). By bringing this dichotomy to the forefront, in the form of a real historical
event, the teachers—albeit a bit uncomfortably—allow the topic on the table. And then
they can move forward rather than stay planted in the past of Land Day, suggesting that
the future, of which these students are a critical part, may hold something different.

In this instance, again with the teachers acting as facilitators, the students learn in
each others’ company. They engage in a discussion that crosses borders——it’s a
discussion about ‘us’ and ‘them’. They are physically near and next to one another
through the discussion. Together they construct an understanding of what Land Day is
and, firrthermore, what their school is—what they represent together. They develop a
single text together, particularly at the end of the discussion when they ‘create’ a common
understanding of who they are as students together in this classroom. In this end, they
reveal a shared commitment to a new future, committed, as Sara says, as Arabs and Jews,
to peace.

And the students seem to continue to keep each other company even after the
discussion. As they work on individual projects with the clay, creating scenes that came
to mind when thinking about the topic of land, the students looked to one another’s
structures. In one case in particular, both Samair and Yitzchak, one Arab and one Jewish
boy, sitting across from one another, both construct bridges, an appropriate metaphor
perhaps for what this being in the company of one another ultimately allows.

After the Land Day discussion, I noticed the way some students, though clearly
not all, quite easily interacted with one another, jotting in my fieldnotes for example “Ruti
and Awla [Arab girl] play together during recess—~first time I’ve seen these two play
together actually” (March, 1999). Perhaps through acknowledging the past—and the
Arab/Jewish dichotomy which permeates the world outside of the school—along with the
present and the way the school seeks to interrupt history, the teachers acknowledge the

students themselves—as Arabs, as Jews, as children caught in this shared tension of old

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and new. The children too are pioneers, experiencing both the benefits and consequences

of that role”.

A Barrier to Company

One of the things not enabled by this conversation is the opportunity for students
to have shared space on the conversational floor (Edelsky, 1981), something that would
be critical in an experience of firlly being in the company of others. Ghaida told me that
after the discussion, she had the sense that the Jewish students participated more often
than the Arab students. We counted the participation and, indeed, her hunch was correct.
The Jewish students spoke nearly twice as often as the Arab students. When I asked
Ghaida why she thought that was the case, she suggested it had to do with students’
preparedness for school, for this school in particular. The teachers ask the students open
ended questions often and ask them to be active participants in constructing texts,
broadly speaking. Whereas the Jewish students enter the school having had these
practices reinforced at home, a cultural capital of sorts (Delpit, 1988), the Arab children
are not expected to participate in discussions in their villages in this same way.
Therefore, not only is their ability to participate in discussion influenced but their ability
to learn within this context may also be affected. The Jewish students enter into this
particular school setting—where activities mimic the experiences they might have at
home—with an advantage. This finding is similar to research work done in classroom
settings where students as members of minority and majority groups meet. Often the
latter “dominate the classroom scene, and the disadvantaged are more passive” (Sharan &

Rich, 1984). This suggests the need for the teachers—in concert with the parents—to

 

3‘ Unlike the teachers who made explicit the consequences they experience in doing this work, the children
did not make that explicit. The parents offered some insights into the ways their children are “different”
from the kids in their villages or communities who do not attend the school. I wondered about any
ambivalence the students felt about attending the school, marked in part by the decisions students made
about whether or not to attend certain days of school (i.e. during a holiday celebration) or out of school
birthday parties.

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help better prepare all students with the skills to enter fully into the conversation.

Otherwise, an imbalance is maintained and full company not achieved.

Te er nitiat d m n .
A Common Project: The Sunflowers

Sunflowers grow everywhere in Israel from the end of May through the end of
July. Driving down roads, it is not unusual to see row after row of tall, yellow flowers,
faces turned toward the sun. These flowers also grew—literally and figuratively—in the
classroom. The teachers had chosen to use the theme of sunflowers toward the end of the
school year. The students planted sunflowers in plastic bottles, drew pictures of
sunflowers, read a book—in Arabic and Hebrew—about sunflowers and put on a
production at the end of the year about sunflowers. The children knew both texts well.
Noha developed a bilingual script that incorporated ideas and characters from two of the
stories the students had read during the last month of the school year—one text about
clouds and the second text about sunflowers. Noha assigned students their roles, their
lines, and then the whole class was a part of putting together the production.

The students spent days drawing pictures of sunflowers to cover the walls of the
classroom. They spent hours rehearsing their lines and learning dances that Noha had
choreographed for the play. The three teachers, the art teacher and I spent hours
preparing the students and preparing the stage. When students would rehearse the play,
they would tap each other, or shout across the room, to remind one another that it was
time to speak. They would sometimes mouth the lines as their peers spoke them. Or
sometimes even correct one another as they spoke. Students spoke their lines in both
Arabic and Hebrew.

The preparation for the production seemed endless—for the students and the
teachers. And yet the teachers really were not sure what the actual performance, in front

of parents, siblings, peers and school board members, would look like. Would the

83

children remember their lines? Would they remember their dance steps? Would they be
quiet when they were supposed to be? Would they fool around back stage? There was
an endless list of unknowns.

And yet when the curtain opened, the performance was as flawless as first grade
plays go. Noha as director sat in the audience. Instead of being able to rely on her for line
cues or for choreography hints, the students had to look to one another, be fully in each
other’s company. And the children did exactly that. From the stage, they waved their
peers in from backstage. They tapped each other as necessary to remind a peer it was his
or her turn to speak. When they stood to dance, they lined each other up. They passed
props to one another as need be. They whispered to each other when to sing and when
not to sing. They negotiated the space on the stage, making room for one another. They
looked to one another as they moved in time to the music as they had practiced many
times before. They relied on one another as a theater company might, committed to the
production and each others’ participation in the production.

In the final number of the play, the children raised their hand-held streamers,
waving them back and forth, practically entwining them with one another as space where
the children sat on stage was at a premium. Arab, Jew, Arab, Jew, girl, boy, girl, boy,
child next to child. Borders had been crossed for the moment. Their experiences of being
first in simple contact with one another—sitting side by side in the classroom, for
example, or even at the computer—and next in each others’ company, learning each
others’ languages, drawing together, being in the same space, sharing resources, sharing
stories, enabled them to communicate with one another across cultural boundaries both
through limited speech and through non-verbal gestures, the latter a truly imperative tool
when trying to be quiet while on stage. By the end of the school year, the students had
well begun to learn the dispositions one might associate not only with contact but

necessary to move contact into company.

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The teacher-initiated work, all done in mixed Arab/Jewish groups, served the
purpose of helping students learn to cooperate with one another and communicate with
one another. Students were well aware of what the teachers expected when they assigned
joint work. One student remarked during a discussion with Noha “When you [the
teachers] put us in groups, we work together” (Michal, April 1999). A teacher’s attempt
to “manipulate situations. . .is always detected and understood by children” (Paley, 1979,
p. 109). What would happen if students made the choices themselves about with whom
to work? How would students work with one another when the teachers were not
present? One of the concerns I had as a teacher trying to help my own students work out
issues of prejudice and bias within my classroom was what they would do when in the
hallways of the school. As good students often do, my high school students “talked the
talk” of political correctness in my classroom. What they did outside that realm,
however, I often perceived as being beyond my control. Having learned to “work
together” as Michal suggests due to the teachers’ interventions, would the students do the
same outside of the teachers’ sight?

Throughout the year, the students themselves created opportunities to be in each
others’ company, often doing it behind the teachers’ backs in the classroom and on the
playground. “Adults exert much more control over classrooms than over playgrounds”
(Thorne, 1993, p. 55). The playground is the domain of the children. Teachers rarely get
involved in the structure of play here. Tami, the school principal, remarked to me “What
always interests me is to see if and how the children play or learn together, Arab and
Jewish children, in official time and unofficial time. Official time is when the teachers give
them assignments. . .and they work together very nicely. However, when they are
off—recess, on their way to the bus—they don’t always mix” (Interview, July 1999). It
was quite usual for students to segregate themselves on the playground in particular,

playing in homogeneous groups rather than heterogeneous groups, a practice not

85

uncommon in integrated schools (Rogers et. a1, 1984). Initially critical of this pattern on
the part of the students, I came to realize its value, the importance of students having
opportunities to play and engage in spaces that feel wholly known and comfortable to
them, linguistically and culturally”. At this school, one goal is for the children to enhance
their understanding of their own culture while at the same time come to know the culture
of the other. Thus it makes sense that there should be opportunities for them to both
maintain cultural divides and cross them.

What is particularly interesting, given the nature of the society from which the
students come, are those times when students themselves chose to “cross over”,
prompted not by the teachers, not by parents but by themselves. Just as the teachers
capitalized on the contact made available by the existence of the school, thus creating and
sustaining for the students opportunities for company keeping, the students sometimes
did the same. At the school together and furthermore assigned to sit next to one another,
the students could either maintain at the level of contact or move beyond that. In some
instances, they maintained the former. Because this is probably the more common
approach in desegregated schools everywhere (see for example Tatum, 1997), I choose to
describe here the moments when students chose to keep one another company, leading to
further instances that lead to code-switching and peer collaboration and learning. This is
particularly important in a classroom such as the one described here. Certainly, the
opportunities are such that students can in fact engage across cultural borders—the
existence of the school and the practice of the teachers provide images of the possible,
opportunities for initial contact, which no doubt influence students’ actions and
interactions (Hallinan & Tuma, 1978, p. 280). In addition, the resources provided by the
teachers enable students to use these resources to help one another, to learn fi'om one

another. However the students must choose to capitalize on these opportunities. A

 

37 I am reminded of a comment of a respondent in an article by Beverly Tatum (1997). He said “if you
don’t know your language, who are you?” (p. 140). I would suggest the same holds true for the rest of
one’culture in addition to language.

86

Jewish student, for instance, must make the decision to walk his or her Arabic speaking
neighbor to the Hebrew alphabet letter board at the front of the classroom in order to
point out a letter the Arab student is struggling to remember.

“Vygotsky’s view is that learning is a cooperative venture. . .achieved through
cooperation with others in a whole variety of social settings. In other words, the child’s
capacity to learn is embedded in his or her capacity to learn with the help of others”
(Cowie, et. al. 1994, p. 44, emphasis in original). Certainly students have multiple
opportunities to work with one another and learn from and with one another within the
curriculum as established by the teachers. In addition, though, students learn from and
with one another in opportunities that they themselves initiate. Researchers (i.e. Cooper,
Marquis & Ayers-Lopez, 1982; Greenwood, Carta & Kamps, 1990) have suggested the
important role peers play in supporting each others’ learning. It is in these instances
“[w]hen children go beyond themselves to share experiences, ideas and opinions, [when]
they engage in most of their intellectually demanding work (V ygotsky, 1978)” (Dyson,
1987, p. 396). These often happen in moments that occur behind the teachers’ backs as
students interact with one another outside of the official curriculum. In order to maintain
control, teachers enforce classroom rules that inhibit children’s ability to interact freely
with one another unless it happens within the confines of an established, teacher-directed
activity (Cusick, 1992; Dyson, 1987; Galton and Williamson, 1992; Jackson, 1968;
Sedlak, Wheeler, Pullen, & Cusick, 1986). In this classroom, however, the teachers have
made clear through the activities they have structured through the year that they value
collaborative work. Furthermore, by decorating the room with helpful resources
displaying text and pictures, they provide students with cultural mediational tools and
artifacts (Cole, 1996) to help one another. Towards the end of the year, the teachers at
times asked students to help one another if they had a question and the teachers were

occupied with other things for the moment.

87

June 27, 1999

Miriam Khalil

 

Ruti

 

 

 

Manhal Yitzchak

It’s 11:30 in the morning, six days until the end of the school year. The children
are in the ‘Hebrew’ room and are involved in one of their final individual writing activities
for the year, in essence writing about what they have learned this year. A Jewish boy,
Yitzchak, in his striped t-shirt sits next to his Arab neighbor Manhal, dressed in blue.
These two boys have played soccer together often on the playground below the school,
sometimes amicably, other times not so. Today, they sit at their assigned seats, side by
side. They’ve shared this table for months. Yitzchak looks up fi'orn his sheet on which
he is writing in Arabic. Students could choose in which language they wanted to write.
Yitzchak looks over to Manhal and asks him how to spell ‘Ia’, the Arabic word for ‘no’.
Manhal uses his pencil and writes the word on the table in front of the two boys.
Yitzchak leans in closer to Manhal to get a better view, his head nearly touching
Manhal’s shoulder. Manhal looks from his writing to Yitzchak and back to be sure
Yitzchak is watching. As he writes, Manhal repeats “la, la”, emphasizing the letters for
Yitzchak’s benefit. Yitzchak points to what Manhal has written and says aloud “low”, or
the Hebrew word for ‘no’. He playfully mispronounces the word. He turns then to
Manhal and smiles, revealing the gaps where his two front teeth will soon grow.

Gripping an eraser, Yitzchak then turns his attention back to his paper. Manhal follows
Yitzchak’s gaze and says “Lllllaaaa,” really emphasizing the letters. Yitzchak erases and
Manhal watches as Yitzchak works. Manhal repeats again—4wice—“la” as Yitzchak
writes. Yitzchak’s gaze, meanwhile, moves from his paper to the table where Manhal has
written the text, and back again. He pauses to reach over Manhal to borrow Manhal’s

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eraser and, as he relaxes back into his seat and his writing, Manhal reinforces his teaching
by repeating, verbally, “llaa” while at the same time, going over again in pencil the table
text he has written for Yitzchak. Seconds later, as Yitzchak completes the task, Manhal

rubs the word out, leaving little trace of what transpired between the two.

Khalil [Yitzchak]

 

Ruti

 

 

 

Manhal

At the same time, across the same table, stands Khalil, paper in hand. Dressed in
a black and white T-shirt, he holds his paper in one hand and points to a word on it with
his forefinger. Ruti, in sleeveless pale blue T-shirt and hair held back in a pony tail, is his
audience. Khalil has asked Ruti how to write a specific word in Hebrew. Though Arabic
is his first language, and a language he continues to struggle with when he reads and
writes, Khalil has chosen to do this exercise in his second language, in Hebrew. Ruti,
sitting, writes the text on the table in pencil. Khalil stands over Ruti as she writes. She
points to a word on her own paper and then writes on the desk. Across the table,
Yitzchak writes what I presume is the same word on his table. As Ruti writes, Khalil
stands and moves his eyes from his own paper to the desk and back. He then points to a
letter on his own paper which he has placed on the desk for the moment and asks in
Hebrew “mah zeh?” “What is this?” At this point, Yitzchak leans further across the
table and joins the conversation. Ruti writes further on the desk and Khalil cross checks
his paper against what Ruti has written on the desk. Yitzchak walks across to the other
side of the table.

Yitzchak, in the middle, writes the word on the desk and Khalil looks over
Yitzchak’s shoulders in a way that parallels what Yitzchak was doing moments before

89

with Manhal. As Yitzchak writes, Khalil moves in search of an eraser to use on his own
text. As Khalil walks around the room in search of what he needs, Yitzchak continues to
write, using the word Khalil has written on his paper as a guide of sorts. Ruti,
meanwhile, has returned to her own work. When Khalil returns, still standing, he begins
to write again. Yitzchak and Ruti return to working on their own papers.

These two examples are like a number of similar episodes that occurred during the
year when students, working on independent projects, sought help from one another,
particularly when working in their second language. Essentially, the students entered into
one another’s zone of proximal development (V ygotsky, 1978) and supported the
learning of their peers. This is the space in which one individual, more knowledgeable
than the other, provides support for the less knowledgeable other. “[T]wo learners
whose zones of proximal development overlap may have more to offer one another than
two whose ZPD’s are. . .generations apart” (Clark, 1999, p. 7). The resources around the
room—organized and provided by the teachers—helped enable the students to do this.
Often, students would escort one another to the various letter boards around the room to
point out a letter to a peer. Or students would use the chalkboard to write a word for a
friend. Rarely did they violate a peer’s text by writing directly on it. It’s as if the paper
itself in these instances was the ‘private’ domain, the ‘separate’. They would, however,
seek alternative resources to help one another, writing on the desks, for example. The
desk appeared to be the public domain or the common space.

In addition to helping each other on specific tasks, students capitalized on
opportunities of close proximity to ask each other questions, particularly in the second
half of the year. In one instance, Eli, sitting at his assigned seat at a table with Marwan,
Saleem and Nibeala, turned to Nibeala and asked how to say “table” in Arabic. Before
Nibeala had a chance to respond, Ghaida, who was sitting nearby, provided Eli with the
word. Minutes later, Eli whispered his next word to Nibeala and Nibeala responded. In

these examples, what is evident in particular is the ease with which the students

90

communicated with one another. The one seeking help acknowledges his peer’s ability to
help him/her. Furthermore, the students make a commitment to help each other, in sharp
contrast to a lack of commitment revealed in the computer pair activity detailed earlier in

the chapter.

What is particularly interesting to me in these examples of student initiated
company keeping is how they have borrowed from the experiences they have had
previously in the classroom. Through their experiences of being in each other’s company
under the eyes of the teachers, they have grown accustomed to sitting next to one another
as Arab and Jew and to sharing resources—tangible and intangible—across cultural lines.
They have experienced being in one another’s space, working together to create a single
text. They have also come to see the classroom—and the resources within it—as a shared
space. The table belongs to no one in particular but rather to all of them. They have
learned to listen to one another as they did in the context of class discussion and so can
better assist one another. They have learned to communicate by being in contact and
company with one another consistently through the year. They have learned that they
can rely on one another as they did during the class play. They bring these tools with
them to their unchaperoned experiences of company keeping which happen most often in
the latter part of the school year. They can be intimately engaged with one another

because they have practiced doing so through a number of different activities”.

en I 'ti o n n th a
I stand outside by the railing overlooking the playground and witness the
following: Samair, Abdalla, Amir, Nibeala and Salech, five Arab boys, begin to get ready

to play a game. Eli and Tal, two Jewish boys, are also there, eager to play. As the first

 

3' This intimate engagement does not happen all of the time. Most often this occurs when an independent
activity requires students to engage in their second language. In these cases, it is as if they almost have to
seek the help of their peers. In the instances described here, however, the students chose to use their second
language but were not required to do so for the activity.

91

five begin to set up the game, counting off in Arabic, Eli and Tal say in Hebrew “us too”.
Amir continues to count, essentially ignoring these two. When they say it again, Amir
says “ a”, Arabic for no. Eli says “cane”, Hebrew for yes. Amir, accompanied by Samair
this time repeats “Ia”. Eli and Tal repeat “cane” at which time Samair says “la—rak
araveem”, “No—only Arabs,” in mixed Arabic and Hebrew. At this point, Eli and Tal
put arms around each other in a statement of camaraderie and say with emphasis and
standing-up-straight pride “we’re Jews”. The five Arab boys are just about ready to
begin their game. They are deciding who will count, the dreaded job in this game of hide
and go seek. Eli leaves Tal’s side and stands closer to these five. He just won’t give
up—it’s clear he wants to play. He’s silent for a short while and then when the five boys
are still trying to decide who will count, Eli says he will. He’s persistent—he repeats
himself again. Amir acknowledges him and something transpires—they agree that he will
serve this role. All of this happens in a matter of minutes.

Eli puts his head down on the stone wall, shielding his eyes, and begins his job of
counting “echad, staim, shalosh” he begins in Hebrew in a loud voice. Then he pauses and
begins again, this time in Arabic “waahid, tinein, talaata...” in a voice that seems almost
louder to me. The hide and seek game grows larger, more kids join at the periphery,
helping the seeker find his hiders.

I record the following response in my fieldnotes:

I was so heartened by this experience. After I watch part one—and the rejection
of Eli and Tal by Samair—I hurt for them. I feel this pain deep in the pit of my
stomach. I want to cry, to do something more meaningful—to intervene somehow
and yet I watch, amazed though sadly not surprised. I cannot believe that this is
happening in front of my eyes. This short interchange forces me to question
everything, to wonder what difference this school experience is making for these
kids. . ..

Mesmerized by the event, I keep watching. I watch as Eli mills at the side of this
group, wanting to play, refusing to take no for an answer. And then he gets to

play and he begins to count...in Hebrew and then, as if he knows the rules, as if he
does some code switching himself, he begins to count again in Arabic. I feel ready

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now to burst into tears. I can hardly contain myself, my emotions. Is this a
triumph? What does Eli’s move say? It’s what gives me hope, essentially. It’s in
the individual moves, perhaps, that peace—not the word I want, though—comes.
I can barely contain myself, this story.

What Eli does here, and what other students do at other times, is cross a cultural divide
through, in essence, code switching (Gumperz & Hemandez-Chavez, 1972). He seeks
“earnest crossing, with the intent of full participation” (Thorne, 1993, p. 121), using
language to cross boundaries and be in contact with Arabs. Language is the mediating tool
(Cole, 1996; Vygotsky, 1978). Later in the year, when the students participate in a
sports day while the teachers have a meeting in the classroom, I witness Gil use language
to mediate on behalf of his Arab peers. At the beginning of an organized soccer game, the
Hebrew speaking referee introduced himself to the players. Gil jogged “all the way from
across the field” (fieldnotes) to the referee to explain to him that he had to say to the
Arab children “anna shofate”—I am the referee rather than “annee shofate”—the same in
Hebrew. Though Gil used the Hebrew word referee, he translated the 1 into Arabic.

Again in these experiences, students take the tools learned through multiple
interactions and experiences of being in each others’ company in the more traditional
school context and bring them out into the schoolyard. Eli has learned to code switch in
large part because he has learned the codes through heterogeneous contact even with his
seatrnates. Remember that he was the one that asked his neighbor the word for “table” in
Arabic.

Sometimes students take their border crossing even a step farther. Yaffe reported
to me that Gil’s mother had said to her “’You won’t believe this—yesterday, Muharn
[Arab student] came to us after school and they [Gil and Muharn] sat and were eating
together. So Gil asked him “Do you want a shnitzel? Do you want this, do you want
that” but he was speaking Hebrew in an Arab accent.”’ Yaffe continued “She told me she

said to him ‘Gil—you can speak normally—Muham understands you.”’ It is quite

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possible that the children code switch and try out one another’s accents in service of
themselves and others, to develop a sense of ease for everyone. If that is the case, indeed
this too is an example of being in company. On the other hand, if this action is done in an
effort to become more like the other and less like oneself, it would be problematic. I read
this episode with Gil in light of what else I know about him.

Certainly there are multiple readings one could make of events that occur within
the school context. Another example would be in the case of the hide and seek game.
When the teachers, perceiving the event as I did as an example of crossing cultural divides,
asked me to share what I saw with Tami, the principal who did not experience the
everyday of the school setting, she remarked that she was troubled by the boys’
comments “No Jews can play—only Arabs.” Understandably, she read this as an
example of division rather than one of inclusion. However, Eli’s persistence and the
boys’ eventual willingness to let him play is the part of the story that differs fi'om the
societal norm. Therein lies the story of inclusion. The boys ultimately engage in each
other’s company. A third, perhaps more critical reading of this episode would be its
resemblance to the status quo: here is a Jewish boy “hunting” Arabs. However, in this
case the Jewish boy is playing by the Arabs’ rules—he is not the master of the game, so
to speak. My readings of classroom events are no doubt informed by the whole
classroom experience as well as by my understanding of the societal norms and the

similarities and differences between the school and the world outside of it.

thglhdrh' g Thghghts: flfhe Additivg Eotgntial hf ghmpany t9 ngelhp Cumin]
fluency

A lot of intergroup contact happens within and across contexts associated with
the bilingual/bicultural school. The existence of the school enables participants to live
together, with one another five days a week all year. It’s more than a meeting in shops or

in short term extracurricular activities. We fear the other most often when we don’t know

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the other, when our contact with that other is limited as it is between Jews and Arabs in
Israel. These children are experiencing each other ways that are entirely different from
what their parents had the opportunity to experience and what most other Jews and
Arabs—past and present—have the opportunity to experience.

What did students have the opportunity to learn as they engaged with one
another? In that respect, this classroom was no different than any other classroom
around the world. Students engaged in activities differently. Not all forms of integrated
activities provided the same learning opportunities for all students. Some activities
necessarily engaged the learning of some students, other activities of other students.
Sometimes students worked amicably side by side; other times students left the room
crying, refirsing to work with a given partner. An across the board—or across the
classroom—analysis of these cross-cultural interactions initially left me feeling as if I held
multiple pieces of different puzzles. How did these experiences fit together as a whole?

What did they add up to essentially?

Reviewing Experiences of Company

In the introductory chapter, I discussed the extended intergroup contact theory
which suggested that four conditions-~equal status, acquaintance potential, collaborative
atmosphere and institutional support--were necessary in intergroup contact to potentially
transform its participants, leading to a reduction of prejudice. I argued that though equal
status was not feasible, the other three conditions seemed both possible and important
when asking people to begin to cross borders. However, I wondered if prejudice
reduction was enough of an endpoint, a too abstract endpoint at that, or if it instead left
us at a very surface level, leaving borders between individuals essentially intact. I argued
that rather than simply destroy something, we needed to create something that would

bring those from different sides of the border into more meaningful and ongoing relations

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with one another. I suggested we needed to strive for the development of cultural
fluency, a concept I will return to shortly.

Contact alone, I argued, will not allow us to arrive at cultural fluency, will not
move us across the borders. Instead, it is through individuals engaging in meaningful tasks
in each others’ company over time that they have the opportunity to build and develop
cultural fluency.

Let’s return for the moment to the experiences of company keeping in which the
students engaged, remembering that the three viable conditions of contact are subsumed
under company. I remind the reader that contact too serves its place in the development
of cultural fluency. The computer pair activity in particular may have seemed initially
like a failed effort—students did not really cooperate with one another as the teachers had
hoped, nor did the Jewish students practice their second language. And yet the specific
experience, remaining at the level of contact, allowed for something else to happen. I
believe that the computer activity potentially enabled the Arab students to have their
language—and thus their culture—validated. It was a way “to honor their language”
(Yaffe, Interview, July 1999). As the more knowledgeable others (V ygotsky, 1978) in
the experience of pair computer work, the Arab students found themselves—and their
language—in an unusually powerfirl position. It allowed them to be in a position of
control, a position rarely experienced by Arabs in Israel and thus was a reminder of the
difference between the school and the world outside the school. Whereas they were
becoming fluent in Hebrew, the Jewish students were not growing fluent in Arabic. I
noted in my fieldnotes often how the tone the Jewish students used in speaking Hebrew
with the Arab students was almost a tone of expectation—it was as if they expected the
Arab students would understand them. And, soon enough, the Arab students did. This
led to a number of Jewish students commenting during the course of the year “Why do
we have to learn Arabic? They [the Arab students] speak Hebrew.” A few Arab

students even chose at times to speak in Hebrew rather than Arabic when communicating

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even with the Arab teachers, even though teachers had asked otherwise. Ghaida had told
me a story in November about one Arab student who came to her speaking Hebrew, not
Arabic. When Ghaida asked the student why she was speaking Hebrew, not Arabic, the
student said that she thought speaking Hebrew was better.

These experiences in which the ‘dominant’ language of the activity was Arabic
could serve to remind students of the importance of the Arabic language, and thus of the
Arab culture, and of the Arab students themselves. Gloria Anzaldua (1987) reminds us:
“Ethnic identity is twin skin to my linguistic identity—I am my language. Until I can
take pride in my language, I cannot take pride in myself” (p. 59). The Arab students
could feel validated and the Jewish students witnessed the validation of the Arab
language, the Arab culture. This witnessing is particularly critical given the perceptions
and negative stereotypes about Arabs that abound in the Jewish community. Thus
witnessing this validation done by teachers whom they respect (N oha commented at one
point that first graders “love their teachers. . .” (Interview, July 1999)) may act as a
reminder if and when Jewish students hear negative stereotypes about Arabs.

Just as the Arab culture was validated through the computer activity, the Jewish
culture was validated during the Holocaust storytelling episode. By experiencing the
spotlight and having their stories validated, these children could continue to feel validated
as Jews whose history includes moments of celebration and those of deep sorrow. In
both of these instances, the students had the chance to think further about their own
identity.

As students moved beyond contact and engaged in each other’s company, they
had further opportunities to learn about themselves--their distinct cultures--a critical
piece of the cultural fluency puzzle. The students’ close proximity to one another in the
classroom enabled them to enlist each other’s help as need be. In doing the asking, and
eliciting a response, students had the opportunity to learn the language, and more broadly

the culture, of the other. In the process, the students became further experts on their own

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lives, on their own language, on their own cultures as they were questioned by their peers.
Vivian Paley (1979) explains that in heterogeneous settings, individuals are “constantly
called upon to explain [their] differences to each other. In an all-white or all-black [or all
Jewish, all Arab] there is, I am certain, less likelihood that we will look for ways to
explain who we are” (Paley, 1995, p. 56). It was through both contact and questioning of
one another that students came to learn more about themselves, their ideas and their own
culture (Sidorkin, 1999). To explain something to someone else, you first must
understand it. And often it’s only when another asks you about yourself that you reflect
on who you are. Tami Dumai, the principal of the school, commented “You strengthen
your identity much more if you know the other people, not just if you’re with your own
all the time. It’s really. . .absurd but it is [true]. I’m sure it does because if you live in
your community all the time, you don’t even ask questions because there’s no reason.
Once you meet other people, you start asking questions ‘who am I? What do I stand for?
What’s my heritage?’ and so on and that makes you stronger “(Interview, July 1999).

In other experiences of company keeping, students had the chance to learn too
about each other, particularly one another’s language which in this context was critical.
As mentioned, they had opportunities to do that when they worked side by side and
sought one another’s help as in the experiences of Ruti and Khalil, Yitzchak and Manhal.
This learning about other also occurred through the opportunities students had to work
together on projects related to the holidays, for example, as was the case during the
Ramadan drawing exercise. This learning also occurred through dialogic activities such as
the Land Day discussion. Discussion was one means by which, in company with one
another, students had the opportunity to develop further an understanding of their own
lives (past, present and future) and the lives of others. This was particularly true during
the discussion of Land Day. Not only did the discussion enable students to learn things
about one another’s history and experiences from one another, learning for example that

some of those who died were fiom Sakhnin which is where a number of the Arab students

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in the class come, but the discussion also enabled the teachers to clarify any
misconceptions the students had. Furthermore, the discussion enabled students to bring
to the table broader questions related to why things exist as they do. I am reminded in
particular of the question Eli asked about the land “Why didn’t they just split it in half?”
This discussion also provided an opportunity for students to conceive of a different
future, one in which Arabs and Jews get along, a future that they themselves are building
as members of this class.

Much of the learning that was enabled in this classroom setting was the result of
the curriculum and pedagogy, two critical components often left out of the intergroup
contact equation. Students were allowed, encouraged, and prompted to be in each other’s
company and learn about self and other because the teachers constructed opportunities
for them to do so. The activities designed by the teachers enabled students, once
together, to begin to develop cultural fluency within each others’ company. Pedagogical
moves that the teachers made—in this case through first providing multiple and varied
contact points for the students—can influence students’ “affective fiiendships” (Hallinan
& Tuma, 1979, p. 280). Generally missing from discussions of contact theory is the role
of curriculum and pedagogy and yet these are the means that ultimately allow students to
begin to develop cultural fluency within the school setting.

As I mentioned earlier, as Dewey, Duckworth and Hawkins mentioned long before
that, the curriculum needs to connect to the students’ lives, a task made more complicated
in this setting due to the sometimes radical differences between the lives of the children as
Arabs and Jews, as members of a minority and members of a majority. I argue, though,
that this classroom is not so different than others across the globe. Too often in diverse
classroom settings, teachers aspire to a stance of colorblindness (F rankenberg, 1995;
Paley, 1979) in an effort to uncomplicate a complicated classroom reality. Too often
teachers reach for an uncomplicated It that, due to its bland nature, can never be engaging.

There were moments when the teachers at the bilingual/bicultural school too employed a

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stance of colorblindness, remarking to students who commented “all the Jews are
bothering me” that there are no Jews and Arabs in the classroom--only human beings. On
the other hand, the teachers often employed engaging Its that served to reveal differences-
-avoided often in intergroup contact (Pettigrew, l986)--and controversies.

One of the common topics of conversation around which students were engaged
was that of the holidays. I, like others (i.e. McLaren, 1994; Singer, 1992; Sleeter, 1995),
have been critical of multicultural approaches that remain at the surface, those that
become opportunities for food fairs and holiday celebrations. Ironically, a lot of the
cross-cultural learning that occurred in this particular school context happened around the
topic of holidays. Here, though, holidays were often observed and analyzed in a way that
flew in the face of the safe multiculturalism teachers often practice--multiculturalism that
moves away from the real challenges underlying multiculturalism. In Israel, and in this
classroom, holidays have a critical edge. Whereas in the United States they are most often
add-ons to the curriculum, in this school, they are central to the curriculum, particularly in
the spring. Rather than create an artificial event or bring a holiday into the classroom for
the sake of political correctness, these teachers addressed what naturally entered their
school context. In holidays lie contentiousness that we choose not to address in the
United States context. Rather than deal with the complicated nature of Thanksgiving for
example, we choose to create elaborate apolitical holiday feasts in the contexts of our
classrooms. Furthermore, even if we were to choose to approach these occasions with a
critical edge, we’d find it hard to do so given a certain lack of resources that allow for that.
In regard to Thanksgiving, most of the children’s books I have perused create images of
harmonious relations between scantily clad Indians and ‘properly dressed’ pilgrims.
There are no notes in the margin, no lines in the texts about the contentiousness of the
holiday, about the problems that the pilgrims caused the Indians (i.e. the illnesses they
brought over with them that wiped out many in the Indian population). The issue of text
availability is one that also plagues the teachers at the bilingual/bicultural school. Thus

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they often created their own texts or chose not to use texts, instead using their own
narratives and those of the children as was evident during the Land Day discussion and in
a discussion later in the year about Independence Day/Day of Catastrophe”.

Another instance not previously discussed when students had the opportunity to
explore their differences occurred through field trips organized by the teachers. The
teachers organized multiple fieldtrips for the students during the year. At the beginning of
the year, the teachers wanted the students to be able to visit one another's villages and
settlements to see where each other came from. Parents would host these visits, inviting
the students to their homes during the course of the outing for what was often a small
feast. The children had the Opportunity to see one another's houses and, in a couple of
cases, one another’s places of worship. In addition, when the students visited Sha’ab,
they had the opportunity to visit the local elementary school where the children from
Sha’ab would have attended school had their parents not chosen to send them to the
bilingual/bicultural school.

Ghaida mentioned to me during one of our many discussions that during one of the
trips to an Arab village, two of the Jewish students held their noses, saying "peew" as
they entered the village. In contrast, when visiting one of the Jewish settlements, one of
the Arab students asked Ghaida "Why are the houses so big?" The villages fi'om which
the Arab students come are much more heavily populated and tightly compressed than
the settlements where the Jewish children live. Whereas the Arab children often live in
apartment buildings, often with other family members living in floors above and below
them, the Jewish children live in single family dwellings. Arab villages, with narrow
streets, are much busier and more crowded than the Jewish settlements. Thus through
these fieldtrips, students became witnesses to the inequalities that exist outside the

classroom. As Ghaida explained, “[the children] should know where everybody comes

 

’9 See chapter four for a brief discussion of this day.

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from and they should know that what’s equal. . .in this class is not equal. . .out of the
class” (Interview, July 1999). Though the discussion of this was not pursued in the
classroom, the opportunity for students to see, hear, feel and smell the differences is a
critical beginning. Interrogation of these differences, leading ultimately to change, will be
critical in the coming years of the school. Certainly keeping one eye on the similarities

between groups must also be maintained.

Developing Cultural Fluency Through Sustained and Varied Interactions

The teachers are consistent about upholding and furthering intergroup interaction
within the school setting. Committed to the idea of school integration, they make sure
that students have multiple opportunities to engage with one another, from assigning
students seats in class so that they sit together, Arab and Jew, to having students work
together in heterogeneous groups. This consistent and varied interaction between peers is
a “trigger for change” (Foot, Shute, Morgan & Barron, 1990).

I wrote in my field notes in November as I watched the students draw together: “I
wonder if these kids are just going through the motions of this work. They draw together
often. Have they simply mastered the practice?” When visitors entered the classroom,
not unusual given the novelty of the school, they would often “want to take something
with them” (Y affe). Frequently the teachers would ask the children to draw, in pairs, a
picture for the guest, often writing ‘welcome’ in both Hebrew and Arabic. I wondered
whether this practice became pedestrian over time. And then I started thinking that
perhaps its ‘pedestrianess’ actually enabled other things to happen within these groups
as kids no longer really had to focus on the task at hand entirely, no longer had to figure
out how to negotiate space, how or whether or not to share markers. The routine
performance potentially enabled the students the opportunity to ‘play’ across borders, to
test boundaries, something they weren’t able to do, for instance, in the computer activity.

During the activity when students worked together to create cards for the family of the

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late King Hussein, I noticed the way individuals, in some cases, did more than complete
the task. In part, they helped each other complete the task doing anything from the
simple (i.e. one student helped another open a bottle of glue when he saw his partner was
struggling with the cap) to the more challenging (i.e. helping a student with a language
task). Thus the task was no longer joint in name only but also in action. Also, I noticed
students teasing one another, being playful, doing anything from making fimny faces at
one another to making jokes about their drawing. Familiarity bred of practice-~missing
from the contact experiences of the computer activity and the Holocaust narrative

sharing--allowed students to move beyond the task into each others’ lives, even if only

kg.

Figure 4: A Company Zone: Overlapping Experiences of Company

momentarily.

Different cross-cultural experiences enabled different things to happen, different
learning to occur. Offering only one form of either contact or company, I believe, is not
sufficient for helping students develop cultural fluency. It is the overlap of
experiences—and of both common and separate spaces within these—that enables
learning about self and other. Each allows a different opportunity“. Some experiences
allow us to learn further about ourselves while others allow us to learn both about

ourselves and others. Both are critical. The influence of the specific arrangement of that

 

” Interestingly, when listing variables related to the effectiveness of a contact situation on prejudice
reduction that still needed to be explored, Allport (1954) mentioned the notion of the “variety” (p. 262) of
the contact. However, this concept is not explored beyond its mention.

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overlap, something I did not pay attention to in this particular study, deserves further
exploration in the future.

Too often, traditional efforts at providing cross-cultural work and experience look,
feel, sound, taste and ultimately are the same. It is perceived that there is one route to a
certain end. For example, a discussion group between Arab and Jewish youngsters or a
home building event to bring together blacks and whites. Whereas individuals may benefit
from these experiences, they will likely not touch everyone as was evident in the pair
drawing examples. Simply put, each learner experiences the world differently and through
different means of learning. One model won’t suffice, particularly when we are concerned
with something as deeply personal as one’s cultural identity and one’s relations to others
who hold different cultural passports. Ultimately, it is the overlap of experiences of
being in each other’s company--thus the creation of a company zone--that allows
students to begin to develop cultural fluency".

As stated in the introduction, cultural fluency is the ability to move back and forth
between two cultures, to embrace your own culture while understanding its relationship
to the cultures of others—the differences and similarities. It is first about being able to
examine who you are, examine your own cultural identity which, perhaps ironically,
cannot happen without being in the company of another (Bakhtin, 1984). The experience
of the computer activity and the Holocaust narratives in part allow for this self-
exploration as do other classroom experiences described. Cultural fluency involves
becoming multilingual, not simply in terms of verbal discourse but also in terms of non-
verbal communicative styles, as revealed in the drawing exercises. It is about an ease of
movement—a code switching that happens without much strain and without giving up
who you are, as in the case of the game of hide and seek. It is about being able to

communicate both with and for the other, as Gil does during a soccer match, and it’s

 

4' Cultural fluency is a construct followed to a small extent in the business field where businessmen and
women work to understand another culture so as to engage productively in that culture. I only came to this
definition of cultural fluency once I had already begun to develop the construct for this study in particular.

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about being able to express another’s perspective alongside your own. It is about
exploring and becoming aware of cultural differences, as happened during the field trip.
Ultimately cultural fluency would also include an understanding of how those differences
impact one’s status and one’s opportunities in society, something not explored really in
this first grade classroom. Finally, cultural fluency is engaging in activities or experiences
in which multiple languages—speech patterns, ideas, physical actions—emerge and
converge and occupy the same, equal terrain as they do in the sunflower production at the
end of the school year. Evidence of developing cultural fluency can be seen across the
examples of contact and company as I’ve described them through this chapter.
Additional examples of students revealing evidence of cultural fluency may further enable
the reader to see this construct as it is literally embodied in the children. Cultural fluency

can be detected in the actions of the students as follows:

0 Though the students learn math in their first language, resources abound for them to
do math problems in their second language. Though they are encouraged in the
former, they sometimes opt for the latter. Samair and Yitzchak wrote answers to
their story problems in both languages, filling their notebooks with both sets of

numerals.

- Students had multiple opportunities to read texts on their own. Reading time became
an early morning activity developed by the teachers. Students could choose
whichever texts they wanted to read—in their first or second language. Late in the
year, students would reach for second language texts, in particular those texts that
they had read previously in reading groups. They would also choose texts to look at
during recess, sometimes 'reading' the illustrations in a second language text more

closely than the words themselves.

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One of the things that different individuals mentioned to me was the notion of
proxemics, particularly among the Arabs. One of the things pointed out to me was
the physical closeness that the Arab male students had to one another, their ability to
throw their arms casually around one another, a move which was rarer for the Jewish
boys. At the end of the year, I couldn't help but notice a change in Gil. Fozi, an Arab
student, had been following him around for a few days, working to develop a
friendship. The two appeared indeed to be friends and yet there wasn't the closeness
that I had noted between two Arab boys, a closeness marked by physical touch. Fozi
would hold onto Gil's shoulder for a moment and Gil would nearly shrug it off. But
this passed. Gil appeared to grow more comfortable over time with the weight of
Fozi's hand on his shoulder, on his arm. On the last day of school, Gil ventured to

put his arm around Fozi’s shoulder.

During one conversation, the teachers spoke with the students about different aspects
of religion, in particular speaking about the differences in the way Moslems and Jews
pray. Noha got up from her chair to demonstrate the way a Moslem would bow in
prayer, beginning standing and then bending at the knee to sit in a bow on the floor.
Later in the day, hours after the discussion, one Jewish student, Dov, stood up from
his chair where he was working on a project and, in the middle of the room, caught up
in his own experience for the moment, practiced the bow as he had seen Noha perform

it.

In April, when the children worked on a project in small groups, Yitzchak left to ask
one of the teachers something and Muham moved to take his space in the circle.
When Yitchak returned, he told Muham to move. Muham moved a couple of inches
into which Yitzchak tried to squeeze but to no avail. Yitzchak told him to move

again. Muham again moved only an inch or so. In the end, after a short squabble with

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more actions and hand gestures than words, the two negotiated and found space for

each other.

It was not unusual for students, after some time, to detect some similarities between
Arabic and Hebrew, realizing similar word and letter sounds and meanings. They

pointed these out on their own.

A group of children was playing a board game before school--the Chutes and Ladders
game famous here in the United States. Rather than Hebrew dominating the game, the
students participated in their first languages, thus Hebrew and Arabic were heard

together.

Three Arab girls came up to Noha and shared with her tidbits of a conversation they
had just had with one of the security guards on the school grounds. "We asked if he
spoke Arabic," they told Noha. "And he said no so then we talked to him in
Hebrew." Then they told Noha that they had said to him "We know both languages--
Hebrew and Arabic. It's funny that we're so young and know how to speak both and

you're older than us and don't."

These instances are further glimpses of the cultural fluency that students begin to

develop in large part because of and through their engaging in each other’s company as

Arab and Jew. I remind the reader, however, that this is simply a beginning. The

students are not yet fluent. Fluency is likely developed through one’s lifetime. However,

there are indeed many challenges to the development of this cultural fluency, both inside

_ the school itself and outside of it. In particular, the world outside this classroom does its

best to strengthen the walls between Jews and Arabs rather than tear them down.

Segregation in and of itself makes it difficult for Arab and Jewish children and adults to

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experience opportunities of being in each others company, thus limiting their

opportunities to develop cultural fluency.

C m th e her

This chapter offered a thorough description of the ways teachers and students co-
constructed experiences for student engagement across cultural borders. It foregrounded
company—or a zone of company ultimately—as the construct that allowed for potential
development of cultural fluency. Whereas I was not sure how far students came along the
path towards cultural fluency, judging from their actions and their words in passing rather
than from interviews with them”, I had the opporttmity to look even more closely at
what being in the company of others ultimately allowed in the case of the teachers. What
follows in chapter four is a description of what the teachers experienced through working

and being in each others’ company as Jew and Arab.

 

’2 I entered the setting intent on studying the teachers. Studying the students came as an afterthought of
sorts. I chose not to interview the students in part because I felt it unfair to subject them to further
questioning--they were the subjects of a few newspaper articles through the year. Furthermore, language
would have presented a barrier for me as I was not fluent in Arabic. Finally, spending time observing
students’ physical interactions in particular, I realized how cultural actions are embodied in action in
addition to thought and speech. Too often we pay attention to the latter as being an indicator of thought
rather than the former which we often overlook. Activity theorists would argue that thought is embodied in
action and activity.

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CHAPTER 4
IN THE COMPANY OF OTHERS: THE TEACHERS’ STORIES

"Teaching, like any truly human activity, emerges from one 's inwardness, for better or
worse. As I teach, 1 project the condition of my soul onto my students, my subject, and our
way of being together. The entanglements 1 experience in the classroom are oflen no more

or less than the convolutions of my inner life... " (Palmer, 1998, p. 2).

QM

I reached in the cupboard for the videocamera and began plugging in the adapter.
Ghaida walked over to me. "Did you sleep last night?" I asked. "Barely, " she replied.
"Do you think you might not videotape today," she continued. "I'm nervous and I'd like
it to be as normal as possible."

And so began the day the teachers had devoted to a discussion and activities
related to Land Day. There are multiple occasions across the school year when the
teachers find themselves--place themselves--at certain crossroads, entering into territories
both unknown and uncertain. As was the case with the discussion of Land Day, the
teachers did not know what to expect. Furthermore, given the fact that this topic of
discussion is rarely, if ever, raised in schools, there were no models available to guide the
teachers' understanding of potential outcomes.

Uncertainty and risk, more often avoided by teachers than embraced (Cohen,
1988), were regular factors in the work of the three teachers at the bilingual/bicultural
school. This was apparent in their interactions with students, with parents, with friends
and with one another. The risks, though, began even before the teachers met in the
context of the school.

One of the reasons more schools like the bilingual/bicultural school don't exist is,
simply, because there are many who oppose them. When Yaffe decided to become a
teacher at the school, she commented that there were a "lot of people who [would] come

to me and say 'how can you do it?'" She continued "One of my uncles doesn't speak to

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me because I am working in this program...He says 'you know you give them [Arabs]
now a better culture"3 and you will see that they'll know better than you and they will
throw you away and give you a kick'" (Interview, July 1999). When I asked Noha if
there were individuals who were critical of her decision to teach at the bilingual/bicultural
school, she explained "I remember one conversation I had in the village with cousins of
mine and they said 'Why do you do this? Do you know that you might develop very
good Shabak people?’ about the Jews...Shabak is people from the Mosad [Israeli secret
police]...by teaching very good Arabic so the [children] would grow up and be very good
people for the Mosad" (Interview, July 1999). The criticism that was directed at both
Yaffe and Noha stemmed from a certain fear of the other--the fear that Jews have of the
Arabs growing more powerful through becoming more knowledgeable and vice versa.

In Ghaida's case, the comments that she heard, that she felt, were more directed at
her, were challenges to her identity, to her loyalty. Essentially, she was marked as a
'double traitor.’ First, as she explained, "lots of Arabs outside of here [Israel proper, not
including the West Bank and Gaza Strip] think of us as traitors because we stayed here"
after the 1948 war and subsequent wars. Second, even some of those Arabs within
Israel-—those who also stayed--marked her as a traitor. She continued "I had a problem
last year when I started working in the school and I had a very painful discussion with
[one of the parents]. Although she sent her kid [to the school], she was afraid I would be
very Jewish and...I will make [the children] lose their Arabic, Palestinian [identity]...and
become Jewish." This conversation was particularly challenging for Ghaida. Rarely one
to cry, Ghaida went home that evening and did just that. We spoke about this further:

 

’3 This comment is quite interesting given the argument I make throughout this text about the need for all
involved in this project to have the opportunity to develop their own cultural identity while learning about
that of others. This comment highlights expectations that are not unique, ones that suggest the minority
interaction with the majority results in minorities becoming more like members of the majority, less like
themselves. Furthermore, there may be an underlying elitism in the statement illustrated through the
man’s use of the term “better”.

110

Ghaida: I think I cried because first of all, she wasn't right. She wasn't right...And
the thing is who is [she] to make me prove that I'm not who [she] says I am...The
thing is, I was fearful of people thinking that I'd be--that they'd take me for
somebody who's lost her identity.

Jocelyn: Because you were working on this project?
Ghaida: Yeah.
Jocelyn: Were there people who said things like that to you?

Ghaida: Yeah, yeah. Even lots of people from Sachnin who I met and lots of
people from Arabee which is near Sachnin. I was working with one of
the...community centers. And in October, I went to see someone from the Arabee
[local government] council and she said "Oh--you're one of them."

Jocelyn: Which means what?

Ghaida: You're one of the traitors....'you're Zionists'“-like a curse or something.

It is in part because Ghaida consistently felt that she needed to live down a certain double
traitor status, to prove her Arab identity, that she, for instance, told everyone about the
Land Day discussion that she and Yaffe facilitated in class“.

Despite these initial risks and negative encounters, and in some cases because of
them, the teachers pursue this work. Noha explained "if I had even a bit of an idea that
we were going in this direction [training Jewish students for the Mosad], I wouldn't [be]
here. But I know what I'm doing. At least I know what these kids, what's going to turn
out of them and they're not going to be Mosad" (Interview, July 1999). The teachers'
beliefs in the ultimate and potential ends of this project outweigh the risks of their
participation in the project. Furthermore, the teachers' own beliefs in what the project
stands for--allowing children to " grow up very open minded and [with] a wide

perspective of the world and people around them" (Noha, Interview, July 1999)--drives

 

“ Briefly, a Zionist is one who believes in the state of Israel as a Jewish state.

’5 This discussion is described in detail in chapter 3.

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them forward into the classroom. As Palmer (1998) explains, "teaching emerges from
one's inwardness...As I teach, I project the condition of my soul onto my students, my
subject, and our way of being together. The entanglements I experience in the classroom
are often no more or less than the convolutions of my inner life...(p. 2)" The beliefs and
internal struggles that the teachers experience, particularly in Ghaida's case relating to
issues of identity, manifest themselves in how the teachers engage with one another, plan
their teaching, decide what and how to teach and how they reflect on that teaching.
When the teachers are in each others’ company, as Arab and Jew, they must come to

terms with sometimes unpleasant and conflicting ideas.

v' x riences Wi h th " r"

Ghaida, Yaffe and Noha each had different experiences interacting with the marked
Other-Jews or Arabs. Noha grew up in a predominantly Jewish neighborhood. She was
the only Arab in her early elementary school classes. Though she remembered knowing
that she "was not the same", she remarked that she didn't feel badly about that (Interview,
July 1999). In order to support her development of her Arab identity and the Arabic
language, Noha's parents had her do "extra things" including spending lots of time with her
relatives in their Arab village. Noha explained "I didn't know how to write my name in
Arabic and I already started reading and writing in Hebrew so [my mother] felt I was
losing my language. It's funny. I always translated fiom Hebrew to Arabic and the
translation was so funny in Arabic and I would say sentences sometimes that had no
meaning...That gave my mother the red light...they decided that I should go to an Arab
school at least in the early years" (Interview, July 1999). Noha continued to attend Arab
schools from that point through high school. In sixth grade, students from her school
went to visit students at a Jewish school. She explained "It's one of those visits-~you go
visit the kids there in their school and see what they do and then you come home. After

two or three months, they come to visit you and you don't remember who the kid was"

112

(Interview, July 1999). This model of co-existence work, revealing a surface level of
contact, continues in schools across Israel today. After high school, Noha chose to attend
an intensive two week trip to Crete with a group of Jews, Palestinians and Jordanians, a
trip arranged to facilitate discussion between these groups. Though a positive experience
for Noha, she suggested "It's a great place to be [but] it's not like you're here in the middle
of all the crisis and we have to live together" (Interview, July 1999).

Yaffe is a Jew who grew up in the city of Tel Aviv which was and continues to be
predominantly Jewish. She "knew there were Arabs in Jaffe [a neighboring town] [but]
we didn't mix" (Interview, July 1999). Her family was from Iraq and therefore Yaffe grew
up hearing Arabic spoken at home. Though she understood the language fairly well, she
spoke it infrequently. She recalled for me how a few houses fiom where she grew up
lived a young Arab couple who lived in the home of their Jewish employer. The young
woman used to come to Yaffe's home and speak Arabic with her mother. Yaffe was
familiar with many Arab manners and cultural symbols, learned through her interactions
in particular with her mother. Despite this, when Yaffe and her family moved up to the
Galilee area in 1994, she recalled feeling afiaid initially about driving through certain Arab
villages (Conversation, January 1998). Yet almost as soon as she had settled into the
area, she began work in the SHEMESH program where she worked together with an Arab
art teacher"6 to design and implement summer activities for Arab and Jewish youngsters.
Yaffe chose to pursue this work because she "realized that [to build] the relationship
[between Arabs and Jews] in the area, it's necessary to do mixed meetings" (Interview,
July 1999). She continued this work for three summers before beginning her teaching at
the bilingual/bicultural school.

Ghaida grew up in Nazareth, a large Arab city. She attended a private Catholic

school, despite being a Moslem, a not uncommon pattern. She recalled an initial formal

 

’6 This teacher was hired to teach art at the bilingual/bicultural school.

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meeting with Jews when she was in 10th grade. Before that, her informal contact with
Jews occurred in cities other than Nazareth. For example, she would go shopping on
Sundays with her father to Nazareth Illit, a predominantly Jewish community where,
interestingly, Ghaida and her husband and young daughter now live. She had never had a
"real conversation" with Jews previous to the 10th grade encounter when her class went
to a place called Givat Haviva, an organization established to promote and facilitate
encounters between Jewish and Arab high school students in particular. Ghaida explained
"When you get to 10th grade, you have to go there. It was three or four days. Well we
only talked in Hebrew. I remember two guys-Jewish. One was very right wing and he
always talked about "we are very frightened [of you] --you have to understand that we are
frightened'. And I said to him "don't you know that I'm frightened of you too now?" I
told him but he didn't accept it--he was very fiightened of Arabs" (Interview, July 1999).
In 11th grade, Ghaida was involved in another school organized encounter experience
during which time she went to visit the home of a Jewish student fiom a different school.
Later that year, that student came to visit Ghaida and her family. This was not unlike
the co-existence experience Noha described. Ghaida spoke of fearing Jews (Discussion,
March 1999), in large part because of her lack of encounters with them. She was also
intimidated to use her Hebrew around them. At the university, Ghaida interacted with
Jews more regularly. Often, it is in the university context where Jews and Arabs have the
most consistent contact with one another as many of the universities provide integrated
educational opportunities". Ghaida majored in Hebrew Literature at the university,
prompted in large part by her high school Hebrew literature teacher who was himself
Arab.

 

4fi'Though Jews and Arabs both attend university, the number of Arabs in higher education is much lower
than the number of Jews who go on to universities. In 1997, the percent of non-Jews with sixteen or more
years of education was 6.1%. For Jews, the number was 16.6 %. In addition, of a total of 5,000 lecturers
in the universities throughout the country, only 16 are Arab (Abraham Fund information).

114

These three teachers encountered one another the summer of 1998 when they
began planning the first year of the bilingual/bicultural school. Yaffe and Ghaida were
hired first. Then, when the school enrolled 32 students instead of the intended 26, to
appease potential conflict with the parents, the steering committee of the school (which
included, among others, the founders, the principal, and a couple of parents) hired Noha,
initially as a teacher’s aide. Soon after Noha accepted the position, however, the decision
was made to consider her a full time teacher alongside Ghaida and Yaffe. Private
donations were the funds used to pay Noha a regular teacher’s salary. Ghaida and Yaffe
were being paid by the Ministry of Education which pays the salaries of teachers
throughout the country. “The expectation was that [the teachers] would build a
relationship. . .define [their roles] in each others’ company”, suggested Lee Gordan, one of
the school’s founders (Interview, April 2000). Since the steering committee was
comprised of more non-educators than educators, it left the decisions about teacher roles
and curriculum primarily up to the teachers themselves. The informal decision was made
among the teachers that Yaffe would be the main Hebrew teacher, Ghaida the main Arabic
teacher and Noha most in charge of the social development portion of the curriculum,
indicating the teachers’ belief in the importance of both the academic and the social pieces
of the curriculum“. Though each teacher assumed leadership of various parts of the
curriculum, a significant portion of what they did remained to be discovered and
negotiated through their work together. The teachers would often collaborate on
comtructing activities.

Though some domains appeared to be one teacher’s or another’s (i.e. I cannot
recall anyone but Yaffe preparing Hebrew language activities for the Jewish students and
do not think I can recall any examples of anyone but Ghaida preparing learning-to-read

activities for the Arab students), there were certainly many domains that were shared.

 

" The social piece may indeed be considered academic as well, as part of Noha’s main responsibility was
to create activities for students to work cross-culturally. As described in chapter three, students learn quite
a bit through being in each others’ company as Arabs and Jews.

115

They worked together to develop and redevelop learning objectives, struggled together to
figure out the best ways to teach second language skills and organized together long term
classroom activities such as the unit on sunflowers which lasted through June and the
beginning of July. They also planned together the activities for the challenging days of
commemoration. Initially, Yaffe assumed much of the planning leadership given her years
of classroom experience. Noha, in part due to her cautious personality and in part
because she was hired later than Ghaida and Yaffe and initially hired as an aide, took much
less initiative in planning than the other two. Still, she contributed steadily.

The teachers’ collaboration often happened on the fly or during breaks in the day
or the year. Interestingly, it was their work together—their teaching together, their
planning together, their learning together at workshops, their talking together with me and
with multiple visitors to the school—that acted as an engaging It for them. It was in the
context of their work together through the year, as they worked in each others’ company
committed to the school’s mission and to one another, that these teachers ftuther
developed their own cultural fluency, a process that is at once fulfilling and

complicated“.

Collahuratienjnflimemd—Dacbine

I don't have to go beyond my own teaching experience to know that teaching is
hard. It is a profession with few extrinsic rewards to support the amount of time and
effort needed to do a good job in the classroom and the intrinsic rewards of teachinguthe
feelings of accomplishment that accompanies a student's learning-are never guaranteed.
The world of teaching is an isolated one. Though teachers teach in schools, they teach
more specifically alone in classrooms. This isolation, however, can be both a curse and a

blessing.

 

’9 Because I fleshed out the notion of company in chapter three, I focus in this chapter on exploring what
happens as the teachers engaged in each others’ company, working as three individuals committed to the
mission of the school, to their students and to one another. They share participation in the everyday tasks
of teaching and the more long term tasks of school and community development.

116

This job of teaching is made even more challenging in the context of the
bilingual/bicultural school in part because the teachers, rather than work in isolation, work
directly in each other's company. Here, three teachers must work together to teach a class
of thirty-one children. On one hand, the smaller teacher to student ratio offers greater
opportunity for teachers to interact with their students. Furthermore, it suggests that
responsibilities will be divided. No single teacher will be responsible for shouldering the
burden of the entire curriculum, of the decision making, of assessment, of the classroom
management, of parent management. But there is a certain price that comes with this
teaching in the company of others, particularly when that company has for so long been
perceived as an uninvited guest in your house.

I argue for the remainder of this chapter that it is because these three teachers are
consistently in one another's company--and under the scrutiny of a larger community--
that they are forced to reflect on the meanings of what they teach and, furthermore, on
their own lives and experiences. Their experience is not unlike that of the students they
teach. Through planning together and enacting those plans, the teachers must make
compromises, maintain silences and, through forced reflection, develop a consciousness
related to who they are as Arab and Jew as well as a consciousness of the other. This is
perhaps the ultimate experience of coming to know the other and coming to know the self.
Through their joint work, the teachers develop cultural fluency.

The work that the teachers did this first year in particular was witnessed by a
wide audience that consisted of the principal of the school, the founders of the school, the
students, the parents, the Ministry of Education, other teachers, potential donors and
citizens of the entire country in some respects, some of whom hoped for the school's
success, others for its demise. During the year, it was not unusual for visitors fiom
around the world to come spend an hour or two in the classroom and then some time
speaking with the teachers about their work. Often, potential donors from the United

States, cameras in hand, would drop in as would teachers from Misgav or from other

117

cities and villages. A cable television camera crew set up shop in the classroom one day
in early May. Parents were also frequent visitors, both those who had children in the
school and those who wondered if they wanted their children to attend the school.
Sometimes too, students from the Misgav schools would venture into the
bilingual/bicultural building in order to interview the children and the teachers for a school
newspaper. The children in the school itself were witnesses to their teachers' teaching.
Noha explains "You have to watch every word you're saying, every move you're making
because you are watched during the whole day by these small, walking things. We don't
notice that all day but we should be aware of that because they are always looking at us"
(Interview, July 1999). Suffice it to say that the school was not a private affair for the
students or for their teachers.

In addition, of course, the teachers worked together in each others' company,
teaching in the same classroom, a contrast to the traditional model of teaching. The
"dominant cultural view of the teacher" is one who is a "rugged individualist" (Britzman,
1986, p. 442). A teacher is often perceived as one who is autonomous and in control of
her classroom domain in which she alone is the expert. Teaching is an isolating
profession, often done behind closed doors within a school context that perpetuates
isolationism by separating teachers like eggs in an egg crate (Lortie, 1975). Though much
criticism has been thrown in the direction of this model (i.e. Britzman, 1986; Lortie, 1975;
Tyson, 1994), the model persists. Clearly, there is something enticing about this model
that serves teachers and schools well. I suggest that one of the reasons we maintain this
individualistic notion of teaching is that it prevents us fi'om having to deal with the
challenges of an alternative, more collaborative approach to teaching.

There are structural and practical factors that make collaboration between teachers
problematic (Little, 1987). School structures keep teachers physically distant from one
another. In addition, the structure of school time often prevents teachers from interacting

with one another. When teachers do have or make the opportunity to collaborate,

118

researchers have suggested the positive results of that discourse, often leading to changes
in teacher practice and a developed sense of professionalism (Little, 1987). Collaborative
inquiry and talk as pursued in particular in professional development opportunities for
teachers allow participants to gain insights into themselves, their own learning and further
understanding of their students and their students’ learning (DiShino, 1987; Duckworth,
1996; F eatherstone, 1996; Florio-Ruane & deTar, 1995; Reischl, 1999). DiPardo (1999)
suggests that collaboration between teachers benefits individuals and schools alike

throu "...stimulating change, managing ambiguity [of teaching] and promoting an ethic
of care" (p. 158).

Less documented in educational research are the challenges associated with
collaboration. These challenges may be particularly illuminated when collaboration occurs
between individuals who hold different amounts of power as in the case of a novice
teacher working with an experienced teacher or of a minority teacher working with a
member of the majority, both of which occurred in the context of the bilingual/bicultural
school. Ghaida, Noha and Yaffe knowingly entered into a setting where they would have
to work collaboratively. The collaboration was made more complicated than the norm by
the differences between the teachers. Whereas Yaffe has more than eight years of regular
classroom teaching experience, this is the first year that Noha and Ghaida are teaching full
time in their own primary school classroom. Though both women have teaching
experience, this is their first time teaching first grade full time. In addition, while Noha
and Ghaida speak and write fluently in both Hebrew and Arabic, Yaffe is gaining fluency
in spoken Arabic. She is unfamiliar with the written language. Still, though, Yaffe is a
member of the majority in Israel while Noha and Ghaida are members of the minority.
These factors complicate the collaborative nature of these teachers' relationship.
Sustained collaboration and joint work suggests that individuals confront one another's
ideas and, tied to this of course, one another's person. Thus, often collaborative

experiences become sites of "contrived collegiality" (Hargreaves & Dawe, l990)-where

119

conflicts are avoided--rather than opportunities for transformative work. Central to
collaborative teaching is discourse, an often unstable medium. Too frequently as Tannen
writes "...people prefer not to say exactly what they mean in so many words because
they're not concerned only with the ideas they're expressing; they're also--even more--
concerned with the effect their words will have on those they're talking to. They want to
maintain camaraderie, to avoid imposing, and to give (or at least appear to give) the other
person some choice in the matter being discussed" (Tannen, 1986, p.21). This can be
particularly true in a situation where individuals share a classroom. Thus one potential
outcome of collaborative work is avoidance of conflict. One means to this end is self-
silencing.

If teachers are willing to enter into the challenging terrain of conflict together,
particularly as they work in the same classroom, a couple of things may result. First,
they need to develop a language to use to engage in discussion of potentially conflicting
ideas. Second, it is inevitable that these teachers, to maintain the joint work, will have to
seek compromise or "'fmd the middle ground'" (DiPardo, 1999, p. 46), engaging in
activities that may not be their first or even second choices. Third, it is possible that
A these conflicts will result in a change of self, requiring each individual at different points
to rethink his or her notions about teaching in particular and ideas about the world more
generally. These experiences can be painful and life altering. In confronting another,
another's ideas, you also confront yourself and some of your long-standing beliefs,
perhaps for the first time. Working in each other's company for these three women
translates into making compromises, maintaining silences and consistently reflecting on

their work, leading ultimately to a developing consciousness of self and other.

Wuhan
The teachers, like the students they teach, enter into the context of the

bilingual/bicultural school with a certain knowledge of who they are. As Noha comments

120

as the teachers consider the idea of separating the students-Jews in one room, Arabs in
another--for discussions of Independence Day/Day of Catastrophe”, "they know about
their own, they need to learn about the other" (April, 1999). The teachers have lots of
knowledge about who they are as Arabs and Jew in particular, forced to confront this
cultural recognition in a country where cultural divides are so prominent“. For example,
having grown up in a religious household, Yaffe continues the Jewish traditions that were
practiced in her home. While in Israel, I spent quite a few Friday evenings with Yaffe and
her family, welcoming in the Sabbath. Noha and Ghaida, though not practicing Moslems,
do know much about that part of their background. I spent evenings during the month of
Ramadan breaking the fast with Noha and her family or rolling balls of dates to be made
into the filling of a traditional Ramadan cookie. Interestingly, though perhaps not
surprising given that we often become 'experts' in the process of preparing to teach
another, Ghaida developed a greater understanding of Islam as she set out to teach her
students about various customs, stories and beliefs. She often talked about having
discussions with her father to gain a better understanding of a topic that she planned to
teach.

What these women know about each other as Arabs and Jews varies. Based on
multiple conversations I was fortunate to partake in or listen to, it became clear to me
over the course of the year what it was that the teachers knew about the other and how
they knew it. Initial experiences with the other, as described earlier, identify in part what
it is that the teachers know and believed they knew and how they knew that. Though all
three teachers entered into the experience with significant amounts of cultural knowledge,
what they had the opportunity to learn in each others' company, when they came in

consistent and disciplined contact with one another while engaging in the difficult task of

 

5° This is the day when Israel was declared a state in 1948. For the Jews, it is a day of celebration; for the
Arabs, a day of mourning.

5'1 was forced to recognize this divide immediately upon my arrival in Israel. See Appendix A for further
description.

121

creating a new and controversial school, was quite visible. Some of that knowledge, as
one would expect in particular given Ghaida’s and Noha's status as teacher novices,
related directly to teaching methodology, to the culture of teaching. What interests me in
particular is what the teachers learned about each others' cultures and about themselves,
something often lacking in teacher education programs which inadequately prepare
teachers to work with students fi'om diverse backgrounds (F lorio-Ruane, et. al., 1997;
Paine, 1990; McDiarmid & Price, 1990). I believe, with others (e.g., F lorio-Ruane, et. al.,
1997; Hoffinan, 1996; Spack, 1997), that to help students develop cultural fluency,
teachers themselves must be in the process of that same learning. Teachers void of
cultural knowledge and of the desire to develop that knowledge have little business trying
to help students become culturally fluent. These teachers entered into this process of

development alongside, though certainly at a different place then, their students.

W' s i for Teach r arnin t r

Literature about teacher learning runs the gamut both in terms of subject matter
and context—what is learned and where the learning takes place. Much recent literature
has focused on teacher learning within the context of professional development
experiences and teachers learning in the company of their peers through discourse and
collaborative inquiry groups (e.g. Britzrnan, 1986; Connelly & Clandinin, 1994;
F eatherston, 1996; Reischl, 1999). Generally, this work—with the exception of pre-
service teachers learning within experienced teachers’ classrooms—takes place out of the
classroom, perhaps after school or during an arranged time block. Teachers bring with
them to their meetings their individual stories of classroom work. The research done on
teacher learning within these contexts has focused on episodes of teachers’ learning to
teach, especially pre-service teachers learning to teach in the company of a more
experienced, mentor teacher within the context of a university-based teacher education

program that creates some boundaries and opportunities for that learning. Less

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frequently studied are the learning opportunities of teachers who collaborate to co-teach
within a single classroom“. “The closer one gets to the classroom and to central
questions of curriculum and instruction, the fewer are the recorded instances of
meaningful, rigorous collaboration” (Little, 1987, p. 505). Furthermore, there are few
studies that explore what it might mean for teachers with very different cultural
backgrounds to work together.

What did these teachers have the opportunity to learn in each others’ company
during the year? One result of co-teaching is that you are often in the position to explain
something to someone else. You need to articulate those ideas that are most often
implicit, ideas about teaching (Feiman-Nemser, 1996) and those about one's beliefs more
generally. Ghaida, Noha and Yaffe often prompted one another to make explicit what
was tacit and unspoken, both as regards their teaching and, of special interest to me in this
study, in regard to their lives as Jew and Arab.

When surrounded by those "like us", we can make assumptions about those
"unlike" us. It is in each others' company, however, when we are prompted to check
these assumptions, if we choose to. Often there are topics we do not broach, though, in
the company of others. We believe that our silence may keep us safe from
embarrassment, from offending the other or, perhaps worse, being perceived as
unsympathetic toward the other. We engage in "passive empathy" (Boler, 1999),
assuming an understanding of the other without ever exploring that understanding.

Yaffe made a point during one of our conversations in April, a month fraught with
learning opportunities and connected to these, moments of discomfort”. She suggested
that Jews, in a sense, think they know what is best for the Arabs, though their

interactions with Arabs are often few and far between. This comment came soon after

 

52One recent and provocative account of this work has been done by Anne DePardo (1999).

53 I remind the reader that it is early spring when many holidays/days of commemoration occur, including
Land Day, Holocaust Memorial Day and Independence Day/Day of Catastrophe.

123

Yaffe had realized—or been reminded——that not all Arabs in Israel, Ghaida in particular,
perceived the Palestinian flag as their flag. In a recent parent meeting, Ghaida mentioned
that the Arabs in Israel had no flag at all really. “We’re here,” as opposed to in the
Palestinian territories, she said, asking aloud, rhetorically, if the Palestinian flag
represented the Arabs in Israel. Like many other Jews in Israel, Yaffe had held the
assrunption that all Arabs hailed the Palestinian flag as if it stood for both Arabs inside
the state of Israel and those in the West Bank and Gaza.

As members of the minority in Israel, Ghaida and Noha suggest that they have
less to learn about the Jews than the Jews have to learn about the Arabs. They have
learned about the Jews, their customs, literature and language through schooling. Though
Arabs study Hebrew literature in school, Jews are not required to study Arab literature.
When students take Bagrut examinations at the end of their high school careers, leading to
possible acceptance into universities, they can opt to take an examination in Hebrew
literature. No such option exists in Arab literature. Ghaida mentioned in a discussion
she, Yaffe and I had in January "Arabs know much more of Jews than Jews of Arabs.
They read their newspapers, watch their television shows...Arabs are in more need of
Jews than Jews are of Arabs. There's a sense that they need to know more"
(Conversation, January 1998). Ghaida's argument here mimics those of scholars who
study the experience of minorities in the United States and elsewhere. Beverly Tatum
(1997) writes: “The truth is that the dominants do not really know what the experience of
the subordinate is. In contrast, the subordinates are very well informed about the
dominants. Even when firsthand experience is limited by social segregation, the number
and variety of images of the dominant group available through television, magazines,
books, and newspapers provide subordinates with plenty of information about the
dominants. . .However, dominant access to information about the subordinates is often
limited to stereotypical depictions of the “other” (p. 24-25). F urtherrnore, “not only is

there a greater opportunity for the subordinates to learn about the dominants, there is also

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a greater need. Social psychologist Susan Fiske writes, ‘it is a simple principle: People
pay attention to those who control their outcomes. In an effort to predict and possibly
influence what is going to happen to them, people gather information about those in
power’” (Tatum, 1997, p. 25). It is for these reasons why Yaffe's moments of epiphany
about the other stand out more for me than Ghaida’s and Noha's moments in their learning

about Jews and Judaism.

Learning Through Planning

Yaffe has assumed the stance of learner since entering this school. She commented
in her end of the year interview that she "came to this program with the idea of trying to
..change the attitude--to try to look on things differently...[change] parents' attitudes, our
attitudes, our being adults. Everyone. To try to knock out the stereotypes" (Interview,
July 1999). I believe Yaffe experienced a number of powerful learning opportunities
particularly between late March and late April when Land Day and the Day of
Catastrophe are commemorated by Arabs. She learned both through teaching about the
days and through preparing for that teaching. She learned through her interactions with
Ghaida and Noha in planning sessions, during classroom lessons, in the context of parent
meetings, held often on the topic of the challenging days of the year, and through
discussions with classroom visitors—including me. Discourse is a primary tool that
enabled her learning, but it is discourse that happens in multiple contexts in multiple
installments. During a planning conversation in late February at Yaffe's house, discussion
of planning of class activities coincided with the deeper and more challenging discussion
of ideology and historical 'truths'. The emerging curriculum was the engaging It (Hawkins,
1974) around which conversation unfolded.

Around the table, spread thick with home baked goods thanks to Yaffe's prolific
cooking talent, the four of us sat on a Friday morning, something we had done a few times

before this and would do a few times afterwards. With initial glasses of tea and coffee in

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hand, the teachers slowly begin their discussion, moving from teacher gossip to the crux
of the morning's agenda--planning for Land Day, Memorial Day, Independence Day and
Holocaust Memorial Day. These days all fall within six weeks of one another, making for
a particularly tense time of year. I perceive Yaffe as the teacher who sees the glass as
half full, Ghaida as the teacher who perceives it as mostly empty. Or perhaps Yaffe is
the idealist, Ghaida the realist. Noha, the least vocal of the three teachers, stands
somewhere in between the two though leans more towards the side of the dreamer. The
contrast between Ghaida and Yaffe in particular is illustrated in the way discussion moves
this morning. The teachers begin by discussing the upcoming Land Day in an effort to
determine how and what to present to the students about the day. Yaffe poses the
question to Noha and Ghaida, the 'more knowledgeable others' (V ygotsky, 1978) on the
topic given their Arab status, what it is that they would like the students to know about
the days“. Ghaida offers that she believes students should be made familiar with the past,
present and future. Yaffe follows by suggesting the special importance of offering this
class as an example of what is possible--of the potential future. Ghaida reminds us that
the teachers do not want to give the impression that the present is utopian "because it's
not," she says. Yaffe reiterates the notion of the classroom as being a site of peace. Her
insistence on this point, which she precedes and follows with curricular ideas, suggests
on the one hand, her wish to consider her students and the fact that they are first graders,
full of dreams and nightmares. On the other hand, I believe her insistence on future-
looking prevents a deep look at a not so bright past. This strikes me as a desire on Yaffe's
part to avoid a difficult topic, an area of "hot lava" as in the children's game when the
object is to avoid stepping on spots that represent places too hot to stand (Glazier, 1998;
Glazier, et. al., 2000; Florio-Ruane, in press). If she approaches the topic of Land Day,

she may have to take a deep look at injustices committed by Jews, her own people.

 

5‘ Most of this planning conversation, like the others, took place in Hebrew, with a smattering of English
that I introduced into the conversation now and again.

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And yet it is precisely because Yaffe is in the company of Ghaida and Noha—and
committed to them and her work at the school—that she is forced to step into the hot
lava or at least come close enough to discover it. Ghaida moves further into the
conversation and asks, point blank, "How do we explain to the children that the land was
taken away from the Arabs by the Jews? That's the dilemma--how to explain that. I
think about that at night." Yaffe responds that they can't open that topic, because these
are children in first grade and because the topic is political—-a "forbidden" topic.
"Avoiding politics" is something the teachers have been "doing" or suggest they are doing
all year. Their reasons for doing so range from the fact that these are first graders, not
"members of the Knesset" (Ghaida, February 1999) to the fact that "you can't talk about
politics in the classroom" according to the Ministry of Education (Interview, Noha, July
1999). The fact is, however, that education is about politics (books, 1994; Shor, 1993).
Furthermore, there is no way to avoid politics given the socio-historical context in which
the school exists. It rears its head unexpectedly when history happens (e.g., the death of
King Hussein of Jordan, the national elections, potential military strikes from Iraq) and
expectedly, perhaps, when days steeped in the political occur during the course of the
school year including Land Day and Independence Day/Day of Catastrophe. Yaffe
herself suggests during a conversation we have in January "It's hard not to involve
politics."

The planning discussion between the three teachers continues further. Ghaida
shares a personal narrative about her grandfather who once had a lot of land but who no
longer has that because he and his family were displaced by the Israeli army. She
wonders aloud about what they will do if a child in the class shares a similar story. Noha
follows with a narrative about a student in the school--Abdalla--whose family once
owned the land upon which now sits the Misgav school complex. She continues with a
narrative about another Arab student at the school whose parents one day went to visit

the home of a Jewish student and his parents in Rakefet. While sitting in this house, the

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father of the Arab student realized the familiarity of the area surrounding the house. He
realized that this house sat on land on which he once used to take his family's cattle to
graze, land on which the Arab families were not allowed to build“. The land had been
redistributed by the Israeli government and offered eventually to Israeli Jews to encourage
Jewish settlement in the north during the 1970s in particular and continuing through the
19803 and 1990556. Ghaida followed with a fourth story about another Arab student
who, when the children went to visit the Jewish settlement of Rakefet from which come
nine children at the school, remarked "wow, what beautiful houses." This is in contrast to
the smaller residences that the student was used to seeing in her own Arab villages,
residences which are close to one another rather than spread out as they are in Rakefet.
The unspoken implication of Ghaida’s last story is that the Rakefet land—now belonging
to Jews—was once land on which Arabs had lived and farmed. Had the Arabs been
allowed to build on that land, would their houses too be “beautiful”, the separation
between their houses spacious?

The teachers' narratives serve multiple purposes as narratives tend to. They
encourage a deeper understanding of the topic of Land Day in that they illustrate some of
the dilemmas in a concrete, specific and personal way. These examples provide glimpses
into the reality of the repercussions of war and redistribution of land. Narratives provide
learning opportunities for the listener and the storyteller (McVee, 1999; Polkinghome,

1991). Yaffe, as listener, acts as witness, validating the stories she hears through her

 

’5 For the most part, land in Israel is leased to individuals by the government therefore the government
makes decisions regarding land use, to whom to lease the land and for whom it will renew leases. Before
the declaration of the state of Israel, those who had lived and farmed land in Israel for years had suddenly to
prove ownership through deeds. Often, they had no such thing. Land therefore was often taken from them
and redistributed by the government. The government then could choose to lease the land to its previous
settlers. Only within the last five years have their been court cases declaring an end to discrimination in
the area of land lease.

5° Due to the law of imminent domain, the government could confiscate land at any time. In the north,
there was a national program occurring in the 1970’s called Yehood HaGalil. Essentially this was an
attempt to “Jewify” northern Israel to shift the ratio of Arabs to Jews in the area more in numerical favor of
the Jews. Interestingly, many of the Jews who moved into the area were interested in co-existence efforts
and living closer to Arab communities (Interview, Gordon, April 2000).

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active listening here, not unlike the validation that occurred as the Jewish children shared
Holocaust stories in the classroom. This witnessing leads to a “state of ‘awareness’ that
shatters the silence, bursting open cultural secrets, and allowing moments of insight...”
(Berlak, 1999, p. 107). These particular narratives are potential invitations into
challenging topics of conversation.

Prompted perhaps by these narratives, Yaffe asks Ghaida and Noha "Didn't the
government give something to the Arabs in return for the land?" This is a critical question
for Yaffe to ask. This is one example of many when Yaffe asks questions regarding issues
with which she may be unfamiliar. She mentioned to me in her final interview that she
ultimately felt able and comfortable enough to ask Ghaida the questions she wanted to,
needed to ask, even those as challenging as this one. Though Yaffe's initial entry into this
planning discussion is safe-~she focuses on the topic of peace rather than conflict--this
question reveals her desire to step into the hot lava, to perhaps challenge grand narratives
constructed and preserved by the majority (McVee, 1999). Here Yaffe really assumes the
stance of learner. Interesting too, she is primarily a listener in this part of the discussion.
Whereas she was often the most talkative of the group (N oha the least), in part because of
her teaching experience, she is the quietest in this part of the exchange. Furthermore,
because Ghaida is insistent on pursuing the topic of the 'past', the topic of Land Day and
the challenges of it remain on the table, perhaps longer than Yaffe would have wished.
Because it does, though, Yaffe can wade into the waters rather than jump straight into the
deep end. The fact that the teachers, like the students, are together at least five days a
week (as opposed to the traditional, short term model of co-existence efforts, not to
mention the traditional, short term professional development experiences) enables
difficult learning to occur over time. Time is a critical factor and resource in this work of
cultural understanding (F lorio-Ruane, et. al, 1997). As Yaffe says in response to a

question of whether or not the Arab and Jewish children engaged with one another during

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the year: "children need time. Everyone needs time." I believe Yaffe would include
herself in the 'everyone' category.

Ghaida and Noha respond immediately to Yaffe's question and in unison say "Ma
pitome," the Hebrew equivalent to " What are you talking about?!". The two women then
explain to Yaffe that nothing was given to the Arabs in return for the land that was
taken”. Directly after this exchange, Yaffe changes the topic to focus on the safer topic
of curriculum and what activities the teachers will do with the students for Land Days“.
Yaffe asked me when we were alone after the end of this discussion whether or not I had
noticed that when things became difficult, she changed the topic. Aware of her own
discourse moves, Yaffe confirmed for me what I had indeed noticed--this move of hers
from challenging topics to safer ones. This practice was further evident as the
conversation continued into the late morning.

Yaffe is not the only one who experiences a different perspective taking during
this planning conversation. The teachers begin talking about Independence Day/Day of
Catastrophe, the day commemorating when Israel was declared a Jewish state in 1948,
resulting in a war between Arabs and Jews. At one point in this conversation, Ghaida
suggests that one of the problems with this historical commemoration is that the "Jews
came here afterwards." Yaffe explains that that is not true for all of the Jews. As in the
earlier case when narratives serve as illustrations of the moment in question, Yaffe
explains the experience of her ancestors who had for generations lived in Hebron, Israel.
It is interesting to note that in a March meeting with parents about the challenging days,
Yaffe commented that it is important to be clear with the students that there is no simple
or single truth--rather "truths". Furthermore, it is at this meeting that she suggested the

importance of teaching through personal stories, not through history as it is construed in

 

’7 This may be in part related to the issue of a lack of paper deeds. With no concrete proof of ownership,
the residents could not prove the land belonged to them.

”For a discussion of what unfolds in class during that day, see chapter three and the description of the Land
Day discussion.

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its traditional school sense. Both the option of multiple truths and the telling of
narratives were used by the teachers as they worked to make sense of and plan for
navigating these challenging days.

The February planning meeting makes evident both the complicated nature of
these teachers' work and the multiple opportunities for cultural fluency elicited through a
discussion like this. This development comes at the cost, in Yaffe's case in particular, of
addressing long-standing beliefs tied to being a member of the majority in Israel. I suggest
that many suffer from unconsciousness of their privilege or are dysconscious (King,
1991) of it, unwilling to acknowledge it for fear of having to give it up. Whichever the
case, addressing long-standing beliefs on which you build your life is never simple and

rarely welcomed.

Learning In and Through Practice

Perspective-taking opportunities occurred not only when the teachers met outside
of the classroom but also when they were engaged in the work of teaching at school.
April 12 was an interesting day in that regard. It was the day before the eve of Yom
HaShoah—Holocaust Memorial Day. Conversation about Independence Day/Day of
Catastrophe and other days such as Yom HaShoah had continued since the teachers’
planning meeting in February. This was in part due to the fact that there were a number
of parent meetings since then when parents themselves were sorting out their
understandings of these challenging days, challenging memories and histories, and trying
to work with the teachers and administrators to determine what would be most
appropriate for their children in the classroom. On one evening, the conversation with
parents was specifically about the meaning of Independence Day for the Arabs. One
Jewish parent voiced her concern regarding the use of the word “shoa ” by Arabs to
describe this day. Shoah is the word generally used to describe the Holocaust. The term

holds deep, almost spiritual, meaning for Jews around the world. This parent commented

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on the inappropriateness of using that term to describe the Arabs’ experience of
Independence Day or Day of Catastrophe. Not surprising, given the day, this was the
theme that Yaffe picked up on April 12 when she and Ghaida were together in the
classroom while Noha worked with the students in the second room. Yaffe reiterated the
comment made by this parent, saying that she too felt uncomfortable with the use of the
term shoah to describe anything other than the Holocaust. She commented that Arabs
were allowed to stay in Israel—they didn’t have to leave and those that chose to leave,
she suggested, certainly have it worse than those who stayed in Israel. Ghaida agreed in
regard to the situation of the Arabs in Israel in contrast to those who are now refugees in
places like the West Bank and Jordan. However, she then asked Yaffe a question that
caused Yaffe a moment’s pause. She asked her what it would be like for her if, for
instance, someone came over from Australia and said to Yaffe and her family “This is
now my house—you have to leave’” and even though Yaffe has lived there for a long
time, she has no choice but to leave? Yaffe nodded in response, then said she felt cold and
reached to put on her jacket, perhaps a move to shift the topic of conversation. Again, it
was in the presence of her Arab colleague that Yaffe had an opportunity to see an
alternative perspective that differed from the one with which she may be most
comfortable, most familiar. In the company of Noha and Ghaida, she was confronted
with multiple opportunities to learn, many of which she herself initiated.

Later that same day, Yaffe and Noha explained to the students about the
Holocaust, asking Jewish students, among other things, to share their family stories about
the Holocaust. Parents had prepared their children beforehand, telling them stories about
relatives who had lived through the war. In some cases, parents shared with their children
stories of relatives who had perished in the Holocaust“. At the end of the day, Yaffe

explained to the students that at 8:00 in the evening, they would hear a siren in

 

59 See chapter three for more detail.

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remembrance of those who had died during the shoah. The siren would sound for one or
two minutes, she explained, and could be heard all over the country. Noha turned to
Yaffe then and, in English, said “They won’t hear it,” referring specifically to the Arab
children. “Really?” Yaffe asked. Noha nodded her response. Perhaps living in villages at
the bottom of valleys, the Arab children—whose families would not necessarily be
listening for the siren—would not be able to hear the siren calls as would the Jewish
children living up high in the mountains from where some of the sirens called and from
where the calls would be anticipated. Yaffe had made an assumption based on her own
experience of the world as someone who lives within “culture of power” (Delpit, 1988).
The learning that Yaffe experiences is extremely hard, something acknowledged by
Ghaida and Noha in a discussion they had with me during their commemoration of
Independence Day/Day of Catastrophe. For a number of reasons, a main one being the
preference of the parents, the children were separated for the discussion of this particular
day: Jews in one room, Arabs in the other. For the most part, the discussions the
teachers had with their students was parallel. Yaffe talked about the meaning of the day
for the Jews, Ghaida and Noha for the Arabs. I sat in the room with Yaffe as she asked
the students why it was that they thought the children were separated on this day. One
student began by suggesting “so we don’t have to translate” while another offered that
it’s because the Arabs don’t have a flag--thus they have nothing to celebrate. Yaffe talked
to the children about why this day may be a happy one for the Jews, a not so happy one
for the Arabs. I stepped briefly into the second room where it was evident to me that
Ghaida and Noha had begun by addressing these very same ideas with the Arab students.
At the end of the discussion, Noha said to me that she thought this day was especially
difficult for Yaffe. “I don’t think she’s very happy,” continued Ghaida. Noha explained
that perhaps it’s easier for her and Ghaida because they know both sides of the story, so
to speak. Jews don’t tend to know about Yom Anakba—Day of Catastrophe, Ghaida
explained. Yaffe had confirmed this recently by telling me after a planning meeting that

133

she had only recently learned about Yom Anakba. Ghaida repeated her comment that she
believed the day was very hard for Yaffe “She’s not talking to me today,” Ghaida joked.
Though this is an exaggeration, there is some truth to Ghaida’s comment. Yaffe was fairly
reserved on this day. When I asked her later in the year about this particular day, she
pointed to it as an example of when she had to compromise her teaching style or
approach. Rather than be exuberant about the day commemorating the independence and
creation of a Jewish state as is the case generally in Jewish schools, her tone in school

with Ghaida and Noha was somewhat subdued“.

Making Learning Public

Throughout the previous two sections, I have alluded to the fact that Yaffe had
multiple learning opportunities while in the company of her colleagues. How do I know,
however, whether or not Yaffe capitalized on those learning opportunities? Using the
characteristics of discourse analysis related to evidence of engagement and collaborative
development of the floor (Edelsky, 1981; Tannen, 1989), I believe I can document in part
the way Yaffe appropriates some of Ghaida’s language and stories, revealing evidence of
learning. Yaffe’s repetition and revoicing of Ghaida’s and the Arab students’ stories,
ideas and experiences and her use of the pronoun ‘we’ in descriptions of certain events I
believe are indicators of change and, more specifically, of a willingness to assume the
perspective of another, an “active empathy” (Boler, 1999) which prompts one to look at
one’s own stories in relation to another’s, finding the connection between the two in
terms of cause and effect. This would be a critical piece of cultural fluency.

When the class went on the field trip to visit the village of Sakhnin, Ghaida

wanted to point out to the students the statue that commemorates the death of those

 

6° I believe this response by Yaffe is potentially problematic. Ultimately, developing cultural fluency
should allow for individuals to essentially be themselves. Yaffe, however, was unable to be like usual. I
wonder if in the coming years, Yaffe’s learning will be somehow less abrupt and thus her response will be
more ‘natural’ than it was during this first year. This will be worth further exploration.

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killed during Land Day. Yaffe was hesitant, wondering about the repercussions. Would
this force the teachers to enter into the political? The two compromised. Ghaida pointed
out the sculpture from a distance and explained briefly its importance, not delving into the
history of the day“. In January, a group of potential donors visited the school and asked
Ghaida and Yaffe a question about how they as teachers helped the students develop a
sense of their identity. Yaffe offered the field trip to Sakhnin as an example and described
how the teachers decided to point out to the students the memorial built to honor those
killed during Land Day. Perhaps Yaffe told the story in order to be perceived a certain
way by the donors—to reveal the risks the teachers are taking to provide the students
with both sides of a picture. The donors, after all, come to the class to hear stories of co-
existence. Another way to view Yaffe’s telling of this particular episode is that with
time, she has seen that there was no harm done to the children, or the teachers, by sharing
this memorial with them. Perhaps she realizes her initial fear was unfounded”.

Later in the year, in early April, when a principal from a bilingual school in New
York came to visit the school, she asked Ghaida and Yaffe a question about Land Day
which the teachers had only recently discussed with their students. During that
classroom discussion, Ghaida was the main storyteller—she spoke much more often than
Yaffe and in fact when Yaffe added a detail to the story, Ghaida corrected her at one
point“. Ghaida, named the expert on the topic in their planning session in February,
maintained that role within the classroom. During this talk with the visiting principal,
however, Yaffe assumed the lead. She was the one who explained—with Ghaida’s
scaffolding (Cazden, 1988)—the meaning of Land Day. She became the ‘expert’ with

regard to the historical story, assuming the role of apprentice initially but moving to

 

6' The fieldtrip took place long before March 30, Land Day.

62 During the second year of the school, Yaffe and Noha bring the students to see the statue and organize
Land Day activities in part around this visit. This is perhaps further indication of Yaffe’s willingness to
engage in “hot lava” t0pics, both on her own and with her students.

63 See chapter three.

135

expert, although she gave the floor (Edelsky, 1981) to Ghaida to talk about the curricular

details of the story. This is in contrast to the February planning meeting during which
Yaffe was the curricular expert, Ghaida the historical expert.

Ghaida begins the conversation by talking about what the teachers did with the
students before Land Day. Aware perhaps that this American woman would be
unfamiliar with Land Day, Yaffe interrupts Ghaida and says that first they need
to explain the day.

1. Yaffe: A lot of lands had been taken from [the residents] of Sakhnin. And for
hs, on Land Day, in ‘76-’76?“ She turns to Ghaida for confirmation of the
date.

3. Ghaida: 1976.

4. Yaffe: On this particular day, the 31St of April—30th of April”

5. Ghaida: No, of March.

6. Yaffe: of March, sorry—the 30th of March in ’76, _th_ey took a lot of lands [in]
the area and the people from Sachnin didn’t agree and there were

8. Ghaida: Demonstrations.

9. Yaffe: They demonstrated. And instead of giving them [the right] to
demonstrate, the army went inside and

11. Ghaida: people got killed

12. Yaffe: people were killed and injured and from that year, every day on that
day, they are demonstrating.

14. Yaffe continues a few turns later: For hiit was a very difficult issue because
we have children from Sakhnin. We have very sad stories, I would say.
We have children from Sakhnin and we have children from Rakefet that
their house is built on the land that used to be from families of children
that are learning in the same class. So when we were thinking how we’ll
bring this issue to the class, we were very, very, very tense because it’s
such a difficult issue how we’ll explain to the children and what they will
think.

136

Yaffe turns to Ghaida and says “Now you can [continue] on” and Ghaida does,
discussing what they did with the children in the classroom to commemorate Land
Day.

The joint construction of the floor--indicated in part by latching (i.e. at line 11)
and overlapping speech (i.e. lines 8 and 9)--is interesting in light of the earlier planning
conversation about Land Day when Ghaida and Noha were the ones sharing the historical
and narrative details while Yaffe focused on curriculum and how to present the
topic—specifically, the positive aspects of the topic—to the children. Here, Yaffe and
Ghaida collaboratively construct the floor. Yaffe is initially scaffolded in her performance
by Ghaida. She looks to Ghaida—literally and figuratively—for support. In addition,
Ghaida also enters in uninvited, doing so with the phrase “people got killed,” perhaps
thinking she is saving Yaffe from having to name that. There are moments during the year
when Ghaida has commented that she has not wanted to hurt Yaffe’s feelings. She
assumes a protective stance despite being at least ten years Yaffe’s junior. Interestingly,
not only does Yaffe restate the point Ghaida makes, she also takes it one step further
suggesting that not only were people killed, but others were also injured. What Yaffe also
does in this example is make use of the pronouns “us” and “they." By using “us”, in line
2 she aligns herself with Ghaida, Noha and the Arab population more generally, or at least
those concerned about the issue of Land Day. Through her use of the pronoun “they,” in
line 6 Yaffe in some ways distances herself from the Israeli army (in which she, like most
Jewish citizens, served)—whom she doesn’t mention here by name.

Because Yaffe has made clear to me that she doesn't talk about things she doesn't
understand (Interview, July 1999), I believe her stepping into this conversation indicates
her growing understanding of the complexities of Land Day, something with which she
was unfamiliar earlier as evidenced by Noha’s comments about Land Day, “[Yaffe] was
so shocked when she heard the story of the lands in Sakhnin and what happened and how

it started even. She was shocked, she didn't know what to say" (Interview, Noha, July

137

1999). Illustrated in this exchange between Yaffe, Ghaida and the principal, Yaffe has
found her voice on this topic in large part through her sustained engagement with the

topic in multiple forms (planning conversations, teaching scenarios, conversations with
others) in the company of Noha and Ghaida. I believe this conversation is an indicator of
Yaffe’s developing transformation with regard to gaining an alternative perspective to her
own. It is as though as Yaffe learns about Land Day, she passes through a few of the
phases of the Vygotsky space (Gavalek & Raphael, 1996), moving from appropriation of
others’ (specifically Ghaida and Noha’s) ideas about Land Day and land in Israel more
generally to a more private internalization or transformation of those ideas, essentially
making them more her own and finally, in this example, to publication—sharing these new
concepts publicly. I remind the reader how Yaffe here transforms the story in line 12 in
the conversation included above“. Even through this conversation, however, Yaffe
continues to learn, particularly in Ghaida’s company. Yaffe talks about her learning in
our end of the year conversation. She comments "I do believe I learned this year...about

the situation between Jews and Arabs, what they feel" (Interview, July 1999).

Learn'urgAbuutfist
As I argued in the previous chapter, cultural fluency is in part an understanding of

others and in part an understanding of self. What might you learn about yourself when
you are in the company of the other? Logic suggests that when with someone unlike
yourself, you will have the chance to learn about the other’s experience, the other’s
culture. Bakhtin (1984), among others, suggests that we provide mirrors for one another
and it is iny throhgh angther that one can come to know oneself. When one engages in

the company of others, one must further define oneself. For instance, having grown up in

 

“I don‘t believe Yaffe moves into conventionalization, the fourth phase of the Vygotsky space, which
would suggest her ideas, words become part of a larger social discourse. I wonder if the precarious position
of the school and of Arab/Jewish coexistence efforts in Israel may prevent one from moving to
conventionalization. It seems to me that one must be mindful of the larger social reahn in this regard,
aware of potential consequences of one’s actions (i.e. ostracism).

138

the Arab city of Nazereth, Ghaida had few interactions with Jews. The few exceptions
happened in brief encounters, sometimes arranged by her school. It wasn’t until Ghaida
was regularly in the company of Jews (at the university) that she began to further define
who she was as an Arab. Ghaida told me that she was fairly unconscious of her
background until she arrived at the university in Jerusalem where she was surrounded by
Jews. Only then did she begin to truly define her Arab identity (Interview, July 1999).
At the bilingual/bicultural school, housed for the time being in a Jewish school
complexes, an Israeli flag is prominently displayed above the stairs as one enters. Ghaida
and Noha, along with the sixteen Arab children, though the majority in number at the
bilingual/bicultural school, are very much the minority in the larger setting of the Misgav
complex and of the Israeli context more broadly. This minority status became quite
evident to me during a whole school outing. The bilingual school children and teachers
joined with the students from the rest of the Misgav schools to plant trees on a plot of
land in honor of a Jewish holiday called Tu Bishvat. Noha explained to me that the
holiday is not entirely religious and that Moslems also celebrate a day similar at this time,
devoted to taking care of the land (similar in spirit to Arbor Day in the United States).
For Israeli Arabs and Jews, land is an important—nearly sacred—commodity. At this
event, students from schools fi'om around the region—specifically Jewish
schools—crowded a slope of land, singing Hebrew songs about the land of Israel and
watching a performance by a number of female soldiers whose army service duty is to
conduct community outreach. As I scanned the group of children, I realized almost
immediately how much of a minority the Arab students and the Arab teachers were here.
Noha and Ghaida, I learned, were also well aware of this. Their minority status was
evident throughout the year at the bilingual/bicultural school, in part evident in the fact

that they often served as translators between the Arab children and Misgav school

 

‘5 In its second year, the school has found a new site for the school. They hope to move to this site by
year form

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personnel like the school nurse. It is in part because of their minority status that they
continue to be self-reflective in this context, forced to firrther define their identity as
Arabs. This was particularly true for Ghaida whose concern with the identity of the
Arab students prompted her, I believe, to closely investigate her own Arab identity. In
addition, to live down the label of "traitor" placed on her when she entered into this
program, Ghaida grasped more tightly to an Arab identity.

Ghaida confided to me throughout the year her fear that the Arab children would
experience a phenomenon similar to the ‘acting white’ phenomenon attributed to some
African Americans in the United States who find themselves in the context of a white
majority (Lawrence-Lightfoot, 1994). In November, as we walked with the children to a
local park, Ghaida and I watched the interactions between the Jewish and Arab children
who had been paired together. The children refused to hold each others’ hands, the
Jewish children more vocal in their complaints than the Arab children. The language of the
limited discussion among the pairs of students was Hebrew. Ghaida turned to me and
said “You see? I’m really afi'aid.” She was afiaid of maintaining in the school the same
reality that existed outside of the school, a reality where the Jews are dominant. She was
afraid too of the Arab children losing their Arabic, opting instead to speak Hebrew. She
recounted for me then the story of one Arab student who, fluent in Hebrew before
entering the first grade, approached Ghaida at the beginning of the year and started
speaking with her in Hebrew. When Ghaida asked her why she was speaking Hebrew
rather than Arabic, the student said she thought speaking Hebrew was better. In virtually
all other programs and experiences that bring Arabs and Jews together, the language of
discourse is Hebrew. Ghaida and the other teachers hoped this school would provide
something different, an opportunity for two languages to be spoken equally, an
opportunity for children to develop a sense of their own cultural identity without losing
it or hiding it. Ghaida in particular “perceived her teacher role as including the roles of
admonisher, urger & meddler,” (Galindo & Olguin, 1996, p. 35) for the Arab students in

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regards to their identity. She was adamant that they cultivate their identity in part
through their use of the Arabic language.

I believe Ghaida’s concern about the issue of identity for the Arab children is a
result of—and results in—her paying attention to her own Arab identity. This is perhaps
in direct response, albeit over a year, to early criticisms by others, questioning her
identity and cultural loyalty, such as the comment voiced by a parent at the beginning of
the school year. Ghaida told me in our end of the year interview that she saw this year as
being similar to her first year in the university. She said “There also I had to question my
own identity and struggle to maintain it and to style it.” She continued further, “But still,
it’s not [as] difficult as it was this year because this year, it’s not only my identity. This
year it’s like I’m thinking for Manhal and Muham and Samair and Khalil—for them and
I’m looking at them and at [my daughter] and I’m thinking if they’ll lose their identity. . .it
will be my..“ She paused short of the word “fault”. Then she offered a few examples,
focusing on the issue of language as an indicator of identity. “I don’t remember if I told
you about Samair, what he did. Two weeks before we had the end of the year,. . .he was
doing some paper and he [came] to me and said in Hebrew “siamtee”—I’m finished. And
I looked at him and didn’t say a thing. Then he came back and said “siamtee” and I said
to him ‘Samair—I told you I want you to speak [to me] only in Arabic.” Then he [went]
back and he started laughing and saying “siamtee” and I got really angry.” Ghaida paused
here for a moment then continued. “I thought,” pause “...if this is what they are doing
now in first grade, in sixth grade what will they do?”

While paying attention to the evidence of identity development of her students,
Ghaida was also experiencing identity development or strengthening of her own. One
profound example became known to me through a discussion we were having in March.
We were talking about the number system and the connection between the specific
number system used and identity. The teachers were still getting mixed reviews in

response to their use of the two number systems in the math lessons, but they were

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adamant that the numbers were part of the students’ culture. Therefore, though the
Arabic system was more commonly used in the country by Arabs and Jews alike, the
teachers believed that the Arabs should also learn the system that was being used in Arab
elementary schools. During the conversation, I asked Ghaida which number system she
used. She said “You’ll laugh at me. Until this year, I used your numbers. Only this year
I started using [the other] numbers,” the Indian numerals she was teaching the Arab
students (Conversation, March 1999). In fact, I didn’t laugh at all. I was not surprised
by Ghaida’s response to my question. It seemed to parallel a statement she had made
earlier in the year. As we were leaving school one day, Ghaida and I were talking about
schooling, my choice to go to graduate school and her ponderings about continuing to
study after completing her Master’s degree in Hebrew Literature. She mentioned to me
during our conversation in the parking lot of the school that she was now considering
studying Arabic literature or something related to Arabic studies.

Another indication of Ghaida’s concentration on her own identity development is
revealed through her choice of an additional line of work, pmsued while teaching. Ghaida
was overly busy during the year, splitting her time between taking care of her young
daughter, teaching at the bilingual/bicultural school, teaching at a local college, taking
courses for her Masters degree and for a teacher education program that Noha attended as
well. In addition, in the latter part of the year, Ghaida began looking into the possibility
of teaching Hebrew in the West Bank. In the West Bank, Hebrew is not a common
language. In fact the only Palestinians who speak it are day laborers who enter Israel each
day for work. During our end of the year interview, Ghaida commented that “what’s
heartbreaking for me is that lots of Arabs outside of here [Israel] think of us as traitors
because we stayed here.” I replied “I wonder if that’s one of your motivations for
wanting to go down [to the West Bank] and do what you’re doing next—almost to prove
that you’re not a traitor, that you’re...” Ghaida interrupted with “You’re very

perceptive. . . [And] I had a problem last year when I started working at the school and I

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had a very painful discussion with [the mother of an Arab student]. Although she sent
her kid [to the school], she was afiaid that I would be very “Jewish” and...make them lose
their Arabic, Palestinian” identity (Interview, July 1999).

Ghaida validates her own identity in part through sharing stories. Whereas one
role that narratives serve is to make history human as it did during the February planning
session, another thing personal narratives do is validate our lives, our experiences, our
identities (McVee, 1999). During the discussion related to the Day of
Catastrophe/Independence Day, when the Arabs were in one room, Jews in another,
Ghaida shared a story with the Arab children about her father’s experience in 1948, when
Israel was declared a Jewish state. Her father was ten years old at the time. He came
from a large family who lived in a village called Rainee. “When people from Rainee heard
that the army was coming, they were fearful for their kids. So my grandfather decided
that every two kids would go to Lebanon each night alone. And he decided that my father
and his brother—like seven years old...would go the second night. And they went alone,
by walking. And they all met again south of Lebanon. . .They were [there] for a couple of
months and [my father] sold candies. . .After two months, my grandfather decided it
wasn’t good for them. They came back to Rainee—they heard that things were calmer”
(Interview, July 1999). Ghaida hadn’t planned to share this story with the students but
did so as the students shared stories they had heard of their families’ experiences in and
around 1948. One student told the story of her grandfather who lost fingers on one of his
hands during the war. It was in the context of this culturally homogeneous setting that
Ghaida shared her story. “I felt proud,” she told me. “It’s a very powerful story to tell.
And afterwards, I asked the children to draw about stuff that they had heard and our
conversation and most of the kids drew about the two kids on the mountain, alone. And
then I showed the drawings to my father and ...it was very touching for him” (Interview,
July 1999). Within the context of the classroom on this particular day, both Ghaida’s and
the Arab students’ lives are validated through their personal narratives. This further

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occurs when at the end of the day, the students come back together in one classroom and
share with one another what they talked about in separate groups. The day struck me as
an example of the individual and shared intellectual and emotional work necessary for the
development of cultural fluency.

Another profound impact of Ghaida's work at the school this year is a lessening of
self-doubt. Ghaida remarked in our end of year interview “...before this year, with Jews,
I was very inhibited. Very formal. And [though] I tried not to [feel this way], they
still—Jews still, before this year, were in a different league because they are in control and
although. . .I was very sure of myself and who I am, they can make you feel like that. If
you meet someone who is working in a restaurant and he is Jewish and he knows that
you’re an Arab, he’ll look at you as [an] Arab. I [think] to myself...'Because I’m an Arab,

you look down on me.’ This year, I am free of it—totally, really.”

Jocelyn: How did that happen?

Ghaida: Because I am teaching now their kids. I’m in control now.

Ghaida’s comment here reminds me of the computer pair exercise described in chapter
three when Arab and Jewish students together worked to compose a story on the
computer in Arabic. There too, the Arab students were “in control”, quite possibly for
the first time.

A powerful example of this control for Ghaida occurred early in the year, during
one of the first parents’ meetings. Each teacher was to present something about their
work with the students. Ghaida explained “I had an idea that I’ll [present] the teaching of
Arabic in Arabic. And I told Yaffe and Noha and Yaffe told me that they [the Jewish
parents] won’t understand a thing. I told her that they should experience what their kids
are experiencing now. I told the parents ‘I’ll be talking now in Arabic—would you excuse

me and try to understand what I’m talking about.’ And so for fifteen or twenty

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minutes. . .they couldn’t understand. But it was a statement for me. . .that everything
shouldn’t be in Hebrew all the time and that they really should experience what their -
children are experiencing. And maybe it was frightening for them. But you know, ..it
wasn't right for me to talk about teaching Arabic in Hebrew and it wasn’t right for the
first time the parents [met that] everything was in Hebrew. We’re supposed to be
bilingual.”

Ghaida concluded her thought “It was the first time I am a minority but in control.
For me this year was very free of feeling that the Jews are in control and now, even if I
am in the mall or something, it’s like—I’m equal” (Interview, July 1999). Teaching and
learning coincide for Ghaida in the classroom during the year. Not only does she work to
support her students’ developing cultural fluency but she also develops her own, growing
more confident in herself as a teacher and as an Arab. It is quite possible that the
development of cultural fluency is ultimately what allows for the equal status—perceived
and eventually real—that I suggested earlier is elusive (and thus not a reasonable
prerequisite for meaningful contact as others have suggested it must be).

Some of the self realization that Ghaida experiences is more painful than fi‘eeing.
Rather than leaving her feeling powerful, these moments have the potential of leaving her
feeling quite powerless. Ghaida recounted for me an experience she had at the university
when she was sitting in a room full of people watching a soccer match, Israel against
another country. As Israel scored, those around her whooped with joy as did she.
Meanwhile, on the television set, the cameras scanned the crowd of spectators, many of
whom waved their blue and white Israeli flags in celebration. It was at that moment that
Ghaida thought to herself that this flag--which is essentially a representation of the
Jewish prayer shawludid not represent her, an Arab Moslem. She wondered to herself
when there would be a flag that she would happily wave. This story came back to
Ghaida in full force during a classroom discussion she and Noha had with the Arab

children about Independence Day/Day of Catastrophe. During the classroom discussion,

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the conversation turned to the symbol of the flag and it being a Jewish flag, a Jewish
symbol. One student--Abdalla, who is the child whose family once owned the land on
which the school now sits--said "...in such a painful voice 'Are you telling me that all the
children in the world have their own flag and we're the only ones that don't?'" (Interview,

Noha, July 1999). Noha recounted this story with me in our end of the year discussion.

I didn't have the words [to respond]. Suddenly it's like someone who puts you
[against] the wall and says "okay, I'm going to kill you now" and he does it, you
know? You don't expect it....Suddenly he opened this, I don't know, ...door and I
couldn't deal with it at the moment. I felt I just wanted to hide--I [didn't] know
what I [was] going to tell him and I [had] to tell him something because I [was]
sure he [was] going to remember this moment....And Ghaida couldn't speak. She
was in total shock. And I thought for awhile and I said "well honey, this is how it
is. Yes. We're the only children that don't have [a flag]. And I grew up as a child
of this and I didn't have a flag. So it's okay. It's something we grew up with and
you learn to live with it." And then Samar said "maybe we can do our own flag--
maybe we can choose colors and do our own flag”. So he gave us a way to
[process it]...he helped us a lot.

Samar’s comment at the end of the exchange ultimately canies the group forward and
hints at the possibility of a different future, something for which the school strives.

The self-reflection that the teachers must do, in large part because they are in each
others' company--and in the company of the children--leads them to feel they are on an
emotional roller coaster. They "...learn to be vulnerable enough to allow [their] world to
turn upside down in order to allow the realities of others to edge themselves into [their]
consciousness" (Delpit, 1988, p. 47). Their consciousness is raised through their multiple
discussions and though this leads to further learning about self and/or other--further
development of cultural fluency--that learning can be both uplifting and paralyzing.

Hg! 1299s ngghg; ngrning Inf'lugnge ngching Practise?

146

Costs: Making Compromises and Maintaining Silences

When talking about the year and the school in general, Yaffe explained "We have
to compromise here...to come to a project like that, without compromising, you will not
succeed" (Interview, July 1999). Throughout the year, the teachers had to compromise
both with one another and with their own ideals. In addition, their decisions and choices
were influenced by a wide audience. Ghaida explains this dilemma: “I think what’s
unique here is. . .that while we’re trying to find solutions to many difficulties that we had,
[we need] to find our balance and it’s a very hard thing to do because you have to satisfy
yourself, you have to satisfy these kids and you have to satisfy the parents” (Discussion,
March 1999). This is true for teachers in all schools. However, these three teachers also
have to satisfy one another. “It’s a problem when you’re in a team of three—a very big
problem in a team because it’s not your whole territory [to] do whatever you want.
There are three pe0ple who have to believe in the same thing [or] try to. And this is the
problem ‘cause each one sees it from a different point of view” (Interview, Noha, July
1999). Furthermore, if your point of view is shifting during the year, as it does in Yaffe’s
case especially, it’s hard to be set and determined about a particular direction. As your
perspective changes, your footing in the classroom must shift as well. A cost of being
open to listening to different perspectives is that it complicates teaching, an already
complicated endeavor. Though Yaffe has taught for eight years prior to teaching at this
school, she finds herself caught short sometimes teaching in the company of
others—students and teachers—whose perspectives and histories are different from her
own. She becomes self-conscious, or rather conscious, of what has always been for her a
successful though tacit, usually unconscious practice. Her learning about other and self
ultimately influences her teaching practice.

Yaffe had just concluded her discussion with the students about the holiday of
Passover. When she debriefed the experience of teaching about the holiday--a festival

commemorating the Jews’ escape from Egypt where they had served as slaves to the

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Egyptian Pharaoh-Yaffe commented that this year, in contrast to years before when she
would teach about the holiday for weeks, she could only spend a single week on the
festival. At the Jewish schools in which she taught, she’d teach the story “little by little,
very deep, all the details” (Discussion, March 1999). At the bilingual/bicultural school,
however, she concluded that she couldn't do that and instead sacrificed the depth in which
she had taught the subject at the all-Jewish schools. Spring is a busy time at the
bilingual/bicultural school. In this season a number of holidays and commemorative days,
Jewish and Moslem, are celebrated. Time is one factor that drives practice as it does in
schools around the world. But that is not the only factor. There are other reasons why
Yaffe chose to compromise on the time and depth that she gave to the discussion of
Passover.

When asked about her experience teaching Passover to the mixed group of
students, Yaffe explained “...it was very difficult for me to tell them the story, very
difficult because as I’m thinking more deep[ly] about the story and what I want to tell
them, I find myself in a problem. Because if I tell them that Bnai Yisrael [the sons of
Israel, literally, or the Jews] were slaves, they’ll say ‘okay--but what about the Arabs
who come from Gaza and work for you. They are not your slaves?”’ None of the
students did in fact ask Yaffe that question. Perhaps she shouldn't have worried about
that. But the fact that she did, I believe, is profound. She raised this point herself, as if
she was engaging in a conversation with herself about these issues, experiencing
internalization (V ygotsky, 1978). She did not need to be prompted--it was already edging
into her consciousness, in part due to the conversations she has had in the company of
her Arab colleagues.

In her follow-up interview when I asked Yaffe about this episode, she explained:
“It is a very difficult story....To say that the Jews were slaves, they built [the Egyptians]
buildings...Who builds our buildings now? Who works for us? It’s a small thing but
when you give it a deep thought, it’s not easy at all.” When I asked Yaffe if she had ever

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thought about these issues when she had taught the subject of Passover in the past, she
commented “No I didn’t have this problem at all in the other [Jewish schools]”
(Interview, July 1999). Teaching about Passover in a context with both Jews and Arabs
led Yaffe to reflect differently on a story she had known and celebrated since her youth.
Being in the company of others prompted Yaffe to critically reflect on a life text that she
had always read through a single frame. She can no longer be unconscious or dysconscious
(King, 1991). This is one cost of the witnessed teaching she experiences. A developing
consciousness of other complicates her life in a number of ways. One can’t help but
wonder, for example, what Yaffe’s experience of Passover will be like in the future. Or
how she will handle Land Day. Yaffe commented to me in our end of the year
conversation "when I start to think to myself [about Land Day], I can't find a way
through. From one point, I know it's wrong. From the other point, what am I doing here
[in Shorashim]?" Her new understanding of Land Day places Yaffe in a dilemma. She
realizes in part that the redistribution of land--or more particularly the way it was done--
was wrong. However, she now lives in this area. "This is my country," she explained. "I
haven't any other place to go." Yaffe experiences a “conflicted ‘self’ . . . [W]hile she works
at solving society’s problems,. . .she also works at coping with her own internal conflicts”
(Larnpert, 1985, p. 190). Yaffe does not simply adopt another stance, a move that might
be taken as simple political correctness, rather she begins to view things from multiple
perspectives, a much more challenging endeavor.

A second 'cost' of teaching in this context under these conditions is that Yaffe
cannot redo the teaching she has done previously. This would be an instrumental cost of
this work. Though she has stacks of resources from which to choose, she cannot simply
reenact what she has done before. She must compromise her usual practice and instead,
for instance, spend a shorter amount of time on a topic, given in part what she
potentially fears may be an outcome of further discussion of the topic. She truly does

not always know where these conversations will lead in this bicultural context and,

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understandably given the larger societal context in particular, is a bit fearful of opening a
can of worms, so to speak. Like many teachers, Yaffe in this initial year of this school is
afraid of the elements of unknown that may creep into the classroom. Teachers structure
their classroom lives to avoid moments of uncertainty (Cohen, 1988). However, again
particularly in this unexplored context, uncertainty is perhaps unavoidable. Yaffe also
shifts her teaching of course because she has grown conscious of the multiple
perspectives of stories, the multiple perspectives of those whose company she keeps in
the classroom. She is mindful of her students and her colleagues.

When Yaffe speaks about the compromises she made during the year, she thinks
of these in terms of changes--both changes she made in terms of her practice and in terms
of her understanding of events and, in particular, of the lives of the Arabs. Her
compromises most often happened as a result of a developed understanding. She said in
our end of the year conversation "I had to compromise a lot. At the beginning of the year,
I was shocked. I'm so naive...I became more sensitive and try to look [at] subjects fi'om
other aspects that I never thought I would have to look at" (Interview, July 1999). An
example of a compromise Yaffe made occurred during her preparation for Israel
Independence Day, for the Jews a time of celebration, for the Arabs a day of mourning.
In preparation, Yaffe was creating a bulletin board for the Hebrew classroom. She spent a
significant amount of time thinking about which pictures to put up and which size flag to
hang on the board, wanting nothing to be "al hapaneemuin your face", or more
particularly in the face of the Arab students and teachers. Yaffe commented as she hung
the pictures that she wanted to show scenes of the views around Israel--neutral pictures--
as opposed to ones that show "Hebron", the example that Yaffe gave as a more contested
area. Noha strolled into the room as Yaffe was trying out different pictures on the board
and Yaffe said to her that we were talking about what she might hang--what's "allowed"
and what's "forbidden". She explained that she'd run this by Ghaida as she had done in
the past (i.e. before teaching about the holidays of Hanukkah and Purim, Yaffe first ran

150

the stories by Ghaida to check if all was okay or to see if what she was going to say might
at all be offensive or controversial). Yaffe spent minutes trying to angle the flag just the
right way, so that it was not overwhelming, overbearing. Many Arabs, including Ghaida,
do not see that flag as representing them as Arabs in Israel. It is, after all, a clear
representation of a Jewish symbol—the prayer shawl. In addition, Yaffe chose to hang a
smaller sign with the words "Yom Haatzmaoot"--Independence Day--on the board rather
than the larger signs she had also prepared. The smaller sign was "good enough," Yaffe
decided. When I asked Yaffe if she did things differently last year at this time, Yaffe said
that she did not. And yet I couldn’t help but notice the walking-on-eggshell tone that
permeated the classrooms and the discourse between the teachers at different moments,
this time of the year in particular. Yaffe and Ghaida both concurred, eventually, that they
couldn’t be exactly as they might be in another context. They couldn’t always be

"natur " is the word Ghaida chose.

The teachers didn’t always easily enter into conversation with one another if they
suspected the conversation would lead to some conflict. I remember a viewing session I
conducted with Ghaida, when, perhaps ironically, I asked her to view a segment about a
challenging conversation the students were engaged in during class one day. We began the
session and then had to pause because we were interrupted by a parent. Before we began
again, we got into a discussion related to the issue of collegiality. I wrote in my fieldnotes
that I sensed as if Ghaida was “trying things on for size with me so she can have the
conversation for real.” Later that week, she had the “real” conversation, talking at length
with Yaffe about issues related to their work together. A similar occurrence happened
with Noha later that year. There was much tiptoeing around then as the teachers worked
to avoid getting into issues related to their roles and responsibilities.

The compromises that Ghaida makes during the year are of a different sort than
those Yaffe makes. For instance, she writes her planning notes in Hebrew, her second

language, so that Yaffe will be able to read them, an irony that Ghaida and I spoke about

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during her interview. In addition, she explained to me during our final interview that one
of the ways she compromises is by not always bringing up issues that might offend either
Noha or, in particular, Yaffe, addressing issues “in a very diplomatic way” (Interview,
July 1999). She commented that "when I am connected to someone, I am very weak". In
a sense, she compromises through maintaining silences in regards to certain issues. She
said "I couldn't say whatever I wanted because I'm not alone in this classroom".

Ghaida also commented on making compromises, as other teachers would do,
based on her students and their parents. She suggested she would explain things
differently to the students--go into more depth politically in particular--if the students
were high school age. With first graders, she—like Yaffe and Noha—was more careful
about what topics she approached and how she approached those topics. In addition,
Ghaida found that she compromised her wardrobe when teaching at the school. She
recalled for me during our final interview how the mother of one of the Arab students
came to Ghaida and said that her daughter had told her that Ghaida was "wearing very
tight T-shirts--like very provocative. Well I stopped doing that...What's acceptable in
Nazareth [where Ghaida grew up and where her family lives] is very different from what's
acceptable" in villages in the north. Ghaida laughed "I have two parts in my closet--
allowed and not allowed" (Interview, July 1999).

When I asked Noha about the compromises she might have made during the year,
she referred to the fact that there were three teachers working together, thus certainly you
must compromise in some way. She said she did not recall any occasions of self-
silencing. This may be related to Noha’s quiet nature. She was the least vocal of the
three teachers. Her position in the school felt different to me as an observer of the
teachers’ work. Yaffe and Ghaida appeared the educational leaders in the school. Noha’s
position during this first year struck me as that of a helper, despite that she was a full
. teacher at the school. This may have stemmed from the fact that she was hired after
Ghaida and Yaffe and initially hired as a classroom aide. Also, whereas Ghaida and Yaffe

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would more often problematize events and issues, Noha, a dreamer at heart, was less
willing to do that. Though I spent a significant amount of time with Noha, driving back
and forth to school with her fairly often, I spoke least often to her about school. Ghaida
and Yaffe would readily engage me in conversation about this whereas Noha was more
reluctant. As a guest in these teachers’ classrooms, as a new addition to their lives, I
often followed them in conversation rather than led. I was reluctant to push for answers,
to push them to discuss topics they didn’t seem to want to talk about“. Whereas Ghaida
would thank me for the questions I asked, suggesting they pushed her thinking further
about issues, Noha appeared most thankful when I did not rush to talk about school.

iv ' ainf Con er ati n and ' s Wh P Thi

M

In her end of the year interview, Ghaida described the school year as being a series
of "dilemmas all the way" while Yaffe commented "it's not so easy for me to keep on
going." Like other classroom teachers, these teachers were forced to make decisions every
day about the curriculum, about their students, and about themselves. The teachers
needed to decide what to teach, how to teach it and when to teach it. In many ways, the
experience of the teachers was very ‘normal’. In some ways, however, it was far from
‘normal’. Due to the context and the fact that they taught in the company--and under the
scrutiny--of others, the choices and decisions they made were fairly extraordinary. They
planned together and then enacted those plans together. The joint planning--when they
met face to face for hours at a time outside of school rather than during snatches of time
during the school day--that happened most often around special, and potentially
challenging, calendar days such as Land Day led to things like compromise, fi'ustration

and silence. Though by-products of most joint work, perhaps, this is particularly true in

 

66 Further discussion of the self-silencing and compromising I did in this setting can be found in Appendix
A.

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the case of the work that these teachers did together. Forced to pay attention to the
‘other side’, they had to compromise their visions of the ‘ideal’ plan in favor of
something more democratic or perhaps less inflammatory. Furthermore, in Yaffe's case in
particular, she had to confront strongly held grand narratives (McVee, 1999) through
which she organized her life and perceptions of the world.

I would argue that the ability to change one's practice in order to best teach all
students requires the ability to first look inward at one's beliefs about both self and other.
A growing body of research suggests that teachers' exploration of their own cultural
experiences may be a first step toward breaking through expectations and stereotypes of
others, all of which can inhibit a teacher's ability to educate diverse students (hooks,
1990; King, 1991; Spack, 1997). Changing people's beliefs, as psychologists have long
known, is perhaps one of the hardest things to accomplish. Surface changes are easy and
most efforts towards school reform, including teacher reform, lie in this particular area--
what Larry Cuban calls first order change (cited in F ullan, 1991). The more challenging
change influences the internal structure, of school or individual, at its core. These "second
order" changes, which might ultimately require a change in one's belief system, are the
hardest to achieve.

As the Socratic injunction goes, "one cannot teach others until one 'knows oneself
more fully" (as cited in Graham, p. 118). Our self-understanding filters our attempts to
understand another's existence (Behar, 1996). Discourse is one way to achieve this, as is
a sharing of personal narratives. But it seems critical that teachers do this work in each
other’s company, more specifically in the company of those unlike themselves as the
teachers in this school were forced to and chose to do. In that way, they can't so easily
run from the hot lava since another may point it out to them.

One would hope that the work would get easier and, in a sense, it does. It gets
easier in that the teachers learn to work with one another, become familiar with one

another's ways of doing things. But with that familiarity comes an opening of voice, an

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opening of windows that are often easier to deal with when shut. The teachers, however,
enter this work with the stance of learners, reflected in the questions they asked one
another and those they asked me. Ghaida, for instance, consistently turned the tables on
me during the year. When I asked for her opinion or reflection on an event, she'd offer me
what she thought, then ask my opinion.

If this joint work--this witnessed teaching--is so problematic, why do the teachers
pursue this work? What do they have to gain ultimately? The extrinsic rewards for these
teachers are far from ideal--as many teachers, they work plenty hours above that which is
required of them. The intrinsic rewards, however, are potentially greater than those of a
teacher teaching alone. In each others' company, these teachers have the opportunity to
gain cultural fluency. As the year unfolds, the teachers develop a further understanding of
who they are as individuals. They gain greater insight about their own identity and
further develop that identity. In addition, they learn more about one another through
their discussions and multiple, overlapping experiences with each other inside and outside
of the classroom”. Another way to ask the above question is "what do they have to lose
by not pursuing this work?" The complicated nature of the work led both Yaffe and
Ghaida to fear for the identities of the children. They in part feared that the school may
become the proverbial melting pot, a place where it will become hard to distinguish
between the Jews and the Arabs. This is not their desire. They want each group to
maintain its cultural strengths, something they fear may be too often destroyed in other

co-existence opportunities where, for example, Arab students must speak Hebrew so that

 

‘7 In March, the teachers were sent by the organization which founded the school to the United States to
speak with those in the field of bilingual education and to meet potential donors. They literally lived
together for ten days, even having the chance to meet my parents in the process. I found it interesting that
whereas I had gone to Israel in search of more transformative approaches to multiculturalism, the teachers in
Israel were going to the States to learn more about bilingualism. Interestingly, they returned being a bit
more concerned about the situation of their own students. Having visited a bilingual school in Michigan
where Arab children study Arabic and English, they noticed the predominance of English over Arabic.
Ghaida and Yaffe both commented that that was not what they wanted for their school, for their students.
Somehow they wanted to find an even better way to ensure a more equal language balance. They had left
Israel with this concern, returning more convinced in the need to address it.

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the Jewish students will understand them. It is perhaps their knowledge of alternatives
that, on one hand, drives them to continue this work and, on the other hand, drives them
to seek other work. Ghaida did not return to the school in its second year, opting instead
to work in a project that trains Arab middle and high school teachers to help their own
Arab students gain a stronger Arab identity. The project lasts for two years and in the
second year, these students engage in joint meetings with students fi'om a Jewish middle
or high school. Ghaida never fully resolved the fear she had while teaching at the
bilingual/bicultural school--her fear that the Arab students were losing pieces of their
identity. She explained to me “For Jewish kids, I really think they’ll be different [because
of their experience at the school] in a positive way. They’ll have their own question
marks. [They won’t] take for granted that [they’re] the best. [The] school is
revolutionary for the Jews. For Arabs, it will eliminate their feelings of being inferior to
Jews but the price that they pay of being a minority and feeling it on a daily basis [is large
as is] the price of losing your identity” (Interview, April 2000). Though Ghaida has left
the school, she still harbors hope for an Israeli future that is different than the present,
different than the past.

The teachers enter into their joint teaching because they are committed to the
larger work in which they are immersed, though their commitments naturally have
different histories, different emphases. Their commitments are far more conscious ones
than those of their first grade students and the teachers are vocal about them in a way
their students are not and perhaps cannot be at this point. I remind the reader that the
ones responsible for the students attending the school were their parents, whose own
commitments were to both a good education for their children and, in some cases
secondarily, to a new version of Israel society. The teachers chose to teach at this school
in large part because they are committed to a different vision of the future in Israel. All
three teachers are driven by a hopeful vision, a necessary component of transformative

and critical pedagogy (F reire, 1992; Giroux, 1997). Without hope, there's nothing.

156

Ghaida in particular has visions of her own daughter growing up sure of herself, of her
identity and not fearful of Jews as Ghaida once was. Yaffe offers "what we do want is to
learn that even though we are different and have our own nationality or identity, we can
live together peacefully but we don't have to copy the other or be like the other or to
change my ideas if I want to fit in" (Interview, July 1999). Noha explains in an English
newsletter sent to potential donors that "My dream is for a better future and for a
different path in the land of Israel...All hope that these children will be the first of a new
and different generation that are capable of accepting others and not fearing them." Noha

writes further, "I always believed that my dreams could come true."

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CHAPTERS

MAKING THE EXTRAORDINARY ORDINARY

The tables are piled atop one another, empty chairs are scattered around
the floor. The bookshelves face the walls, walls that are now bare. There are no more
drawings, no more photographs, no more letters or numbers decorating this classroom.
The curtains are tied back, the computers unplugged, the rugs rolled up tight. This is the
end of the school year. And yet on one table, barely visible by the side of the room, sit
decorated halved plastic bottles filled with dirt from which emerge the stalks of
sunflowers, still pushing their way upward. This too is a beginning.

Paulo Freire reminds us that "the world is not finished. It is always in the process
of becoming" (1998, p. 72). And so the experiment of the bilingual/bicultural school
continues. Reflecting on its first year-~on the experiences of the teachers and students as
they learned in each others' company--provides a window through which to perceive a
possible future not only for this particular school but for school contexts worldwide

where attempts are being made to foster an understanding with and of others.

B (1 Si ° 0 unities f r tuden L in

A school may be the ideal site at which to begin our border crossing since students
from all walks of life, with all sorts of histories and cultural narratives, often enter our
school buildings together. And teachers may be our most qualified “’threshold persons’”
(Dalonz, Keens, Keens & Parks, 1996). Despite that students pile in from the parking lot
together to arrive before a 7:40 or 8:05 or 8:15 bell, that instant at the door may be the
only time certain students see of each other during the day. We do quite a good job
within our schools of perpetuating the borders that exist outside of our schools--the poor

are often milling about far from the rich, the minorities spend time in places where few

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majority members choose to go. Tracking practices as currently construed are one way
these divides are maintained (Oakes, 1985). If it is true that “[t]he classroom [and/or
school] is seen as a microcosm of society where children can come to learn about roles and
relationships and learn about interactions which will stand them in good stead in their
future lives as adults” (Cowie, et a1. 1994, p. 46), can we, in schools, create new societies,
write new futures?

I believe that that is what was beginning to happen at the bilingual/bicultural
school. There the teachers worked to structure an environment in which students
historically segregated from one another could get used to hanging around beside each
other at the very least or with each other, at the very best. Opportunities for learning
abound in this new school. It is a place quite ripe for student and teacher learning, a place
where cultural fluency can be nurtured. This developing understanding of self and other
happened as individuals engaged in each others’ company, moving into, then beyond mere
contact.

The teachers first and foremost designed initial opportunities for their students to
be in contact with one another, seating students next to each other, Arab, Jew, Arab, Jew.
Then they began to design activities for the students to engage in each other’s company,
activities in which students were expected to share participation in a joint task. The sort
of commitment students had to the task and to one another in part shaped how far
beyond contact the experience of company could move. Central to these experiences, also
influencing the movement from contact to company, were the engaging “Its” (Hawkins,
1974) created by the teachers. This curriculum around which students engaged often met
them in their lives. For example, as holidays and days of commemoration came up,
curriculum was directly related to these. Thus often engagement between students had a
cultural center.

The teachers established a culture of cross-cultural collaboration within their

classrooms so that when students worked on independent projects, they were able to

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pursue opportunities to continue to work in each others’ company, having grown used to
sharing resources, texts, voice, and responsibility, among other things. Students often
entered one another’s zones of proximal development, learning with the support of a
more knowledgeable peer (V ygotsky, 1978). They were in part allowed to do this
because the teachers had dressed the room in multiple resources ranging from alphabet
charts in both languages, to books of all kinds, to bulletin boards illustrating specific ideas,
customs, and cultural symbols. Also, the teachers allowed the students enough freedom
and space to utilize these resources and one another. Noha commented about
student/student interactions in mid-March, saying “...now we see that they are getting
along. . .without the need to rely on us.”

Within the context of the school itself, the teachers acted at times as political
entities. I would argue that they can’t help it--education is political (Shor, 1996; hooks,
1994). Education in Israel in particular is political. The teachers, sometimes hesitantly,
entered into conversation with the students about challenging topics of Land Day,
Independence Day/Day of Catastrophe, Israel's relationship to other countries and the
Palestinian Authority. The teachers brought some of these topics to the floor whereas
students brought others. And these teachers followed their "educan " (Friere, 1998).

In addition to providing students with images of the past and the present, the
teachers engaged in conversations and activities geared towards the future. They asked
students to realize the classroom as a special space that, in the scheme of the larger
society, may currently be a 'third space' (Gutierrez, Rhymes & Larson, 1995), an
alternative rather than the center. Interestingly, though, the teachers often denied that

they were "teaching peace." In an end of the year conversation, Noha told me:

You know I hate...when they always relate this stuff [the work at the school] to
peace. ...I hate when I read about it--it’s like we’re building peace. We are not.
We’re not building peace. We’re not doing peace. The children in the classroom
are not enemies. They’re in the classroom--they’re learning. The only special
thing about them is that they’re going to grow up with two languages and they’re

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going to be human beings. Maybe that will bring peace but I am not preparing
them for peace. We’re not teaching them ‘say shalom, say salaam, and do peace’.

Rather they are teaching children--teaching them how to read, write, and speak in two
languages, add, subtract and be in each others’ company as Arabs and Jews. "The teacher
who thinks critically cannot afford to imagine that the course or seminar that she/he is
conducting is going to transform the whole country. On the other hand, she/he can
demonstrate that it is possible to change things..." (F reire, 1998, p. 110). And the
teachers attempted to do just that, keeping their dreams intact as they demonstrated
through their collaborative work as Jewish and Arab teachers a different existence for
Arabs and Jews other than a hostile one.

Students had the opportunity to develop cultural fluency as they crossed from
one experience of company to another. No two experiences afforded students (or each
student) exactly the same thing. The composite experience, the company zone created
through the addition of these experiences, is what ultimately enabled the students to begin
to learn about self and other within and around the classroom context. Through their
social practices, these children began to develop their identities and, in particular, their
cultural identities (Holland, et. al., 1998). As Bakhtin (1984), Vygotsky, (1978), Mead,
(1934; 1982) and others argue, the self is transformed through engagement with others.

Our schools should be places where students are allowed opportunities to cross
borders, where teachers practice pedagogy and create curriculum that supports student
development of cultural fluency. It’s only when students have multiple and on-going
experiences of being in the company of those they perceive as being very different from
themselves, engaged in meaningful, interactive work with one another, that borders within

school—and then outside of it—might be dismantled.

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S 01 B dries: rtnii forT ch arn'

Like the students, the teachers continued to develop their cultural fluency through
being in each others’ company. As these teachers negotiated their classroom work, as
they entered into planning conversations, discussions with parents and others, and
teaching episodes, as they discovered and worked through the dilemmas of this
collaborative work, particularly in a new and potentially precarious school, they learned
more about themselves as Jew and Arab, ultimately learning about culture in meaningful
and transformative ways alongside their students. As three teachers working in the
context of one classroom, they were forced to reflect on the meaning of their actions from
a number of perspectives. And they addressed these multiple perspectives as Yaffe did
when it came to the topic of Land Day as detailed in chapter four. One of the ways they
did this was through asking one another questions, questions that may have at one time
been perceived as taboo or racist or too fiightening to ask, given a possible response that
confi'onted one's grand narrative or master narrative, for instance (McVee, 1999).

These women "learn in the act of teaching" (F reire, 1998, p. 31) through their
ongoing dialogue and reflection. They began to develop--or further develop in some
cases--a critical consciousness in each others' company, situating themselves "in [their]
own historicity" (Aronowitz in Freire, 1998, p. 14). Yaffe, for example, in learning
further of the experiences of Arabs in Israel realized the dilemmas associated both with
her own living situation and her teaching of particular notions to her students. She
struggled to make sense of things, engaging in cognitive risk-taking (Schon, 1987, p. 139).
She entered into encounters that challenged her cultural assumptions, something that most
teachers are fearful of and choose not to do (Palmer, 1998, p. 37). Ghaida reflected in
particular on the topic of identity development, questioning both her own cultural
identity development and worrying about that of her students. Hesford (1999) reminds
us that such “[c]ritical reflexivity is the necessary first step on the road to critical action”

(p. xxxvii).

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Fences

Schools are often not border crossing territories because they are not set up to be
that. The challenges associated with this sort of work are many. The forms these
challenges take—the fences—come often in the guise of individuals. At times, the
teachers, the administrators, the parents and the children at this particular school—though
all on some level committed to the survival of the school—act as fences, blocking the
passage across the border. This may be due in part to the range of goals and expectations
held by individuals associated with the school. What should the outcome be? Individuals
drew that line in different places but many agreed, for instance, that blending the two
cultures—specifically through dating across cultures and ultimately intermarrying—was
not a desirable outcome. Perhaps it’s this ultimate fear of homogenization that brought
some participants to act as fences.

This intimate yet fiagile classroom world must be nurtured continually if it is to
survive. It must be nurtured first by the teachers. In order for the students to maintain a
learning stance about self and other, the teachers must be vigilant. Toward the end of the
year, during the last six weeks or so, I noticed, for example, that students stopped writing
their names on their papers in two languages, a practice that they had learned and
followed all year. The teachers did not force the issue. It was perceived as a small battle
in the larger scheme of things. Still, as noted in the way that cultural fluency develops
through small steps, one needs to be mindful of all of the pieces.

The bilingual/bicultural school must also be nurtured by the larger school near
which it is situated for the time being. However, the dominance of the Hebrew language
at the larger school makes that task challenging. For instance, notes from the nurse came
to the bilingual school written in Hebrew as did any correspondence between the larger
school community and the parents of the bilingual students. Noha and Ghaida vigilantly

translated these, however time was sometimes short and this was not always a priority.

163

Because Arab parents read and speak Hebrew, they would certainly understand the text.
However, they, along with their children, might read an underlying message—that their
language, their culture, even in this conscious space was sometimes secondary. In no way
did the teachers or the individuals at the Jewish school intend to send that message. But
resources, human and otherwise, were in short supply. That included the Jewish school
psychologist who though quite competent, had had little experience working with Arab
families. To her credit, she pursued a project in a university program during the first year
of the school that was devoted to cross-cultural psychology and how to work with a
diverse clientele.

The school must also be nurtured by the parents, beyond their words of
commitment to the program and beyond their willingness to send their children to the
school. During the first year, parents were invited to participate in a series of meetings to
discuss the challenging days of commemoration. A number of parents found themselves
attending one meeting a week, often talking about ideology, personal histories, politics,
curriculum and their children with one another as Arabs and Jews. This was one way the
existence of the school effected a broader population. Parents were learning just as their
children were. The interactions, however, remained mostly at the level of contact. I
remember a meeting in the spring when it became quite obvious to me that many of the
parents didn’t even know each other’s names, referring to each other instead as so and
so’s mother or father. Though their children were engaging in the company of their
historical foes, their parents had just barely begun to do the same.

The children themselves must ultimately be the nurturers of this school and,
beyond that, of a new societal structure. When I visited the school in April of its second
year, I noticed further examples of students having gained cultural fluency and also

examples of their holding onto contact for dear life rather than participate in company.

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The choice will in large part continue to be up to them, as well as up to their teachers and
parents“.

Perhaps the largest fence of them all is that which exists outside of the school, the
one that students, parents and teachers see—some to a greater degree than others—— every
day of their lives. Jews and Arabs are not treated equally in the state of Israel. Period. I
referred earlier in this text to the notion of learning communities. That is in part what
being in one another’s company is all about. However, the notion of learning community
does not take into account the issue of power differential, something that would be critical
to take into account in a multicultural setting in which members of a majority sit next to
and engage with members of a minority. On one hand, the teachers wished to smooth
over differences between Jews and Arabs, working to create equal opportunities for
students within the classroom. On the other hand, they can’t remove the school fi'om the
context of the world. Students in this first grade class engaged often in each others’
company through experiences that required a lesser degree of risk than those that asked
them to explore the power differential between Jews and Arabs outside of the classroom
context. However the latter is critical if cultural fluency is to be truly developed. Border
work must acknowledge—and then work to resolve—~the unequal relations between
individuals who stand on either side of the border. I argued at the beginning of this text
that equal status between participants was an impossible condition to count on. Ideally,
as individuals develop cultural fluency through being in each others’ company, equal

status will not only be pursued but achieved.

5 l . N E I . |
I left the United States quite critical of the way we approach multiculturalism and

diversity education with our students in K-12 classrooms and in our American teacher

 

6' Whether or not it is fair or appropriate to place this burden on these particular children is something
worth contemplating further. After all, they did not necessarily choose to attend the school, though some
of the parents I spoke with said that they had discussed the option with their children.

165

education programs. It is no wonder that if the latter is problematic, so too will be the
former. Essentially, we have ‘contact’ with multiculturalism, but we never or rarely
engage in its company. Multiculturalism—and its often touted goal of tolerance—have
become common terms in our educational literature, in our classrooms, so common that
they have come to mean next to nothing. Without an agreed upon understanding of what
multiculturalism means or what its endpoint should be, we can carry on as if it’s business
as usual in our classrooms. We don’t upset the general norm of our schools, the norm
that works to maintain the status quo, allowing those in the culture of power (Delpit,

198 8) to continue to exercise that power.

I suggest that we need to return to the drawing board, for a moment, and determine
what it is we who speak about multiculturalism indeed wish for as an endpoint.
Tolerance is not enough. “To tolerate differences means that they are endured, not
necessarily embraced” (Nieto, 1994, p. 65). Perhaps the notion of cultural fluency is a
new end point, one that is furthered in school but that must be carried on through one’s
lifetime. Briefly, though thickly, cultural fluency is the ability to step back and forth
between cultures, to embrace your own while understanding its relationship to the
cultures of others—the differences and similarities. It is about being able to examine your
own cultural identity which, ironically, cannot happen without being in the company of
another (Bakhtin, 1994; Moraes, 1996). It is about being multilingual, in verbal discourse
and/or non-verbal communication styles. It is about an ease of movement—a code
switching that happens without much strain and without giving up who you are. It is
about being able to communicate both with and for the other and it is about being able to
express another’s perspective alongside your own, a cultural consciousness of sorts
(Daloz, et al., 1996). It is about exploring and becoming aware of cultural
difi’erences—fi'om language, to customs, to dress and so on—and of how those differences
impact one’s status and one’s opportunities in society. Only as that rich, nuanced

understanding develops can we then achieve the goal of social transformation.

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MeanLIrLanEnd

Once we have established an endpoint, we need to then determine the means to
that end. I have argued through this text that cultural fluency comes through
opportunities where individuals engage in each other’s company. Currently, in many
classrooms in which teachers offer students multicultural curricular materials, students are
passive recipients of that material. We need to, in the words of DeViller and Faltis
(1994), reconcile cultural diversity and quality schooling. The two indeed must go hand
in hand. Too often, diversity enters the school in the form of food fairs and one-day
events. The notion of culture and cultural differences and similarities does not permeate
the school, the curriculum, as it did at the bilingual/bicultural school. Perhaps it did in
Israel because culture—and issues related to it—matter on a daily basis there, beyond the
walls of the school. The Arab/Jewish “issue” is on everyone’s mind, everyone’s lips. I
argue, though, that a cultural center is not far from our own reality here in the United
States. “[O]ur schools exist in a society in which social and economic stratification are
facts of life”, though perhaps facts of life we choose not to talk about or deal with except
on a very superficial level (N ieto, 1994, p. 69). We ignore the complexities and instead
bring in Kwanzaa decorations alongside the pictures of Santa Claus and his reindeer. At
the bilingual/bicultural school, those complexities must be embraced alongside the
celebrations. Indeed the two come together as in the Day of Catastrophe, also known as
Independence Day.

I do not claim that there is a single answer for how we are to support our
students’ development of cultural fluency. After all, “a recipe for teaching and learning
erases identities and contexts” (Moraes, 1996, p. 132). There is no single means to that
end. What I offer instead is a new way to think about our work as educators working to
help students cross over longstanding and stubborn borders that stand between

individuals. I suggest we need first to move beyond the teaching and learning experiences

167

where teachers act as bankers, making deposits in their students (F reire, 1970). We need
to engage students in collaborative experiences where they are first in contact with one
another and then, ultimately in each others’ company. One experience of being in the
company of another will not suffice. In overlapping, long-term, consequential experiences
of company, students have multiple opportunities to develop cultural fluency. As
teachers, we need to be mindful of how we construct these experiences so that students
will have the opportunity to be in each others’ company. As we learned from the
experience of the first graders at the computer for instance, we cannot simply assume that
when we place our students in pairs or groups that company will naturally happen. Our
tendency as teachers is to look for (and then find) what we hope is happening. We might
assume that if students are both writing on a single piece of posterboard that they are
indeed “in” the activity “together” when they might be working alongside each other but
working quite separately. If our goal is to support our students’ development of cultural
fluency, we need to be mindful of how students are working side by side (i.e. through
exploring things like what is being said and by whom as well as what is not being
said—both verbally and on paper. These are things teachers could explore with students
so that students become aware of power differentials within the classroom that may
indeed mimic those outside of the classroom. Until together with our students we are
aware of these dynamics, we can do nothing to transform them). Furthermore, we need to
also be aware of what our students are doing behind our backs. A number of years ago, I
was doing an intensive unit on prejudice and discrimination with one of my ninth grade
English classes. I remember stepping into the hallway one day and hearing one of my
students telling a racist joke to another. It was a deflating moment for me as a teacher but
one that brought me to think about the importance of a schoolvvide effort when it comes
to issues of cultural awareness and multiculturalism. Overlapping experiences of
company might be best to happen not only within one classroom but within and across

multiple classrooms. To make these experiences most educationally meaningful for

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students would require collaboration between teachers, thus perhaps breaking the

isolation so often experienced by teachers in schools.

re ' Teac e to ork at the Bord r

If borderwork is to happen within schools, teachers must be well prepared for this
task. Despite the fact that the student population in K-12 schools in the United States
grows more and more diverse everyday, the teaching population continues to be
dominated by white, monolingual, female members of the middle class (National Center
for Educational Statistics, 1996). These are the students entering teacher education
programs and going forth to teach students culturally and linguistically different from
themselves. I believe we need to pursue more vigilantly efforts to recruit a more diverse
teaching cohort. At the same time, it is imperative that we play the hand we’ve been
dealt for the time being, and work to prepare the current cohort to work with a diverse
student population in ways that lead to social transformation.

We have spent over a decade exploring ways to better prepare our teachers for
diversity. Despite this, pre-service teachers continue to be inadequately prepared to
work with students of diverse backgrounds (Florio-Ruane, in press; Florio-Ruane, et. al.,
1997; Grant & Secada, 1990; McDiarmid & Price, 1990; Paine, 1990). Teacher education
programs prove far from transformative in altering students’ attitudes toward diversity,
particularly because the curriculum of these programs does not offer opportunities either
for critical self-awareness or critical engagement with others, two things I have argued here
are necessary if one is to develop cultural fluency. With a modest knowledge base from
which to “look at culture. . .there is little hope that [teachers] can provide [cultural
awareness] for their students” (Hoffman, 1996, p. 565).

Often teachers enter the workforce ill-prepared to deal with the diversity they
meet. Furthermore, no longer do these now in-service teachers get consistent messages

concerning issues of diversity, though those messages may have proven minimally

169

effective at best. Individuals inadequately prepared for work in classrooms with diverse
students often grab hold of a stance of colorblindness, “a mode of thinking about race
organized around an effort ‘not’ to see, or at any rate, not to acknowledge, race
differences” (F rankenberg, 1993, p. 143). The most disheartening result of this practice is
that it assumes the non-existence of distinct cultures. As Ladson-Billings (1994) cautions
“by claiming not to notice [race], the teacher is saying that she is dismissing one of the
most salient features of a child’s identity” (p. 33).

A potential way to avoid dismissing the culture of one’s students is through first
becoming conscious of one’s own culture, an experience often overlooked by the current
teaching cohort, members of the so-called dominant culture. Whiteness is unexplored
cultural territory. Without exploring our own cultural identity, however, we run the risk
of continuing to ignore the cultures that exist for others. Thus one of our goals as teacher
educators should be to provide opportunities for our students to explore their own
cultural identities while engaging with others who are doing the same. What enabled
Yafi'e, Ghaida and Noha to engage in this process was their collaborative and committed
work. Through their witnessed teaching, they had multiple opportunities to ask each
other questions, prompt one another’s thinking, even make one another a bit
uncomfortable. We need to provide authentic opportunities for students to engage in each
others’ company, for students to engage in conversation, collaboration and commitment
with one another, ideally across cultural divides so that they can begin to or further
develop cultural fluency.

Can cultural fluency happen if individuals only interact with those seemingly very
much like themselves? Perhaps, but it may be a more challenging prospect in some ways.
No matter what, I believe we still need to create opportunities for our students to have
authentic experiences of company keeping with others. One potential approach for

‘virtual’ cross-cultural interaction may be through the reading and discussion of ethnic

170

literature (see Glazier, et. al., 2000) and autobiographical reflection, but I would strongly

caution against a singular approach of any sort.

The Limits of Language

Because part of what I suggest is the importance of discussion and interactions
with others in order to develop cultural fluency, I believe we need to be aware as we work
with pre-service and in-service teachers of the limits of language. Compared with the
work of the students in the bilingual/bicultural school, students who were struggling to
learn about one another while learning one another’s language, we may view the work in
teacher education in the United States as easier since the barrier to understanding is
generally not tied directly to language. We don’t presume language is a potential barrier if
the students in our classroom all speak the same language. And yet we should be wary of
assuming that language is a transparent medium. As Rogers (1995) explains, "We never
understand one another wholly, because each of us lives and talks within the borders of a
particular perspective" (p. 295). When we teach those who seem very much like
ourselves and who may in fact be us, who speak like us and with whom we share
meanings, we may tend to overlook the limits of language. We may lay aside translation,
presuming the story we hear or that we tell is transparent. However, "[I]n our speech,
there is always the hidden thought, the subtext" (V ygotsky, 1986, p. 251). On the one
hand, there are things we may not consciously hide but that become lost in translation
from inner speech to external speech--thoughts and stories that are encoded intact within
our bodies but are unable to be expressed in the "logic and order of spoken language"
(Rogers, 1995, p. 126). It is perhaps for this reason that we should pay attention to non-
verbal discourse and physical actions as we might if we did not speak or understand the
language of the speakers. I have argued through this text that aspects of cultural fluency
can be detected through action and movement. These may be our closest indicators to

detect the elusive “understanding” towards which multiculturalists often strive.

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Silence

There are, of course, stories that we may consciously bury. Silence is often a
by-product of discussions of culture, race and the like, particularly among members of a
dominant cultural group (Morrison, 1996; Frankenberg, 1993; McIntyre, 1997). In the
United States in particular, “racism is a cultural secret in the sense that it remains
largely. . .unspoken and unacknowledged in public discourse, in the media, and in schools
and university classrooms” (Berlak, 1999, p. 108). Certainly Yaffe, as a member of a
majority in Israel, was not immune to this silence, making clear to me in a discussion after
a planning session that she had indeed changed the topic of conversation when things got
uncomfortable (Discussion, February 1999). In a study conducted with American, white,
female, in-service teachers who met over two years to talk about ethnic autobiographical
literature, it became clear to me that one topic avoided in these conversations
initially—though addressed by the authors of the texts they read—was that of race
(Glazier, 1998; Glazier, et. al., 2000). As teacher educators, we need to support our
students' moves into difficult discourses, realizing that our efforts will undoubtedly take
time and must take multiple forms. Only when we prepare our students of teaching to

enter into these unsettling discourses will they do it with their own students.

' th E r 'n 'n inIr n h nited tat
Too often teachers practice safe multiculturalism with their students, old and
young. We avoid its underlying complexities, “. . .privileging abstraction and
generalization, thus filtering out particular differences between people as well as the
complexity and multiple positioning of each of us” (Berlak, 1999, p. 111). Furthermore,
we place the more critical discornse of multiculturalism (a la McLaren, 1995 and Giroux,
1997) on the outskirts of our classroom, thus leaving multiculturalism “. . .in a manageable

space that does not substantially affect the process of restructuring authority and

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power...” (Hesford, 1999, p. xxvi). Those of us working to bring the critical back to
multiculturalism continue to refer to the opportunities when critical work happens in
classrooms as “new” or “uncommon” or as “alternative” or as “third spaces” (Gutierrez,
et. al., 1995). I believe we need to move our cultural work away from the extraordinary
and into the ordinary, something that the teachers at the bilingual/bicultural school
attempted to do during the year.

What these three teachers did was create an environment in which it seemed as
normal as anything to speak two languages, to learn and practice the customs of two
cultures, to play and work together as Arab and Jew. In essence, it was normal to be
working to develop cultural fluency. The teachers in a sense unspokenly acknowledged
the differences between the students in part through their pedagogical actions--through
the way they grouped the students, for example. And the students were well aware of
the teachers' moves, commenting on them, asking about them now and again. The
pedagogical moves at once located and dislocated difference. Though an Arab/Jewish
dichotomy existed inside the school as it existed outside of the school, it was a dichotomy
that was less harsh, the border between the two ‘sides’ more permeable in a sense. What
the teachers tried to do in this school was to create a different sort of ordinary, one that
they believed made sense in a chaotic world that all too often does not make sense. It was
an extraordinary ordinary experience.

Of course that does not mean that the school didn’t have its own set of problems
and dilemmas that need to be ftu'ther sorted out. I have addressed a number of these
issues along the way. One question that needs to be further explored is whether this
experience truly differs from traditional opportunities that bring minority and majority
members of a population together. There are indications, language being one, that the
Arabs in this program must speak and read the language of their oppressor. There is less
urgency even in this school for the Jews to communicate in Arabic. Thus in some

respects, this classroom remains simply a learning community in which the minority must

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become more like the majority. The teachers, the founders of the school, and the parents
put much stock in the role time will play in the learning process and shifting this
outcome. Time alone, however, is not enough. Those involved need to continue to push
at the border. For instance, rather than simply visit the villages and communities fiom
which the children come, allowing students the opportunity to see the differences, the
teachers need to talk with the students about these differences and, furthermore, address
means for altering the inequalities apparent in some of those differences. As the teachers
grow more comfortable wrangling with differences in their own conversations, it is likely
that they will grow more able to move further on these issues with their students‘”.
Ultimately, transformative border work must acknowledge——and then work to

resolve—the unequal relations between individuals who stand on either side of the border.

A Final Few Words

I let Tami Dumai, the school principal, have the last word in this piece. I think
her words echo that of the teachers, the parents, the founders and even the children who
participated in the first year of the bilingual/bicultural school. She commented to me in
our final conversation of the year “You keep asking questions. You answer some of them
and then you open up new ones. And I think that’s how it should be in education.
Always. Once you have all the answers, go home. So we had lots of challenges and what
we do is really try to answer and to think a bit over the mountain. Now it’s time to look
what will happen in a year [or] two or three” (Interview, July 1999). The future begins
today.

 

‘9 One example is what happens during the second year of the school during Land Day. Rather than point
item a distance to the commemorative statue in Sakhnin as they had done during the first year, Yaffe and
Noha built their Land Day lesson for the second year in large part around the children’s extended visit to
the statue.

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APPENDICES

175

APPENDIX A

In Their Company: The Researcher’s Story”

"My identity is not an either/or proposition. Rather it is both/and In the same way my
scholarship and my personal/cultural life are not either/or propositions. I do scholarly
work that both challenges and enhances my personal/cultural life. I live a
personal/cultural life that challenges and enhances my scholarly wor " (Ladson-Billings
cited in Neumann and Peterson, 1996, p. 8).

This study would not be compete without a description of my own experience as
a researcher and as an individual engaged in her own cross-cultural learning experience.
Like many others who have done field work before me (e.g. Behar, 1997; Murphy, 1990;
Smith-Bowen, 1964), this study is as much about me as it is about others who
participated in it. This is particularly true given that one main theme of this study is
cross-cultural experiences that enable one to learn both about others and about oneself. I
came to know others through knowing myself and came to know myself through knowing
others (Behar, 1996, p. 33). As an ethnographer, “[I am], in effect, both the subject and
the object of [my] research” (McLaren, 1992, p. 80). My story is both about the
influence of the context on me and my influence on that context. It is about the multiple
roles I assumed while in Israel, in particular in the company of teachers and children,
which ultimately and unavoidably shaped the happenings within the context. It is about
my developing cultural fluency through my experiences--sometimes through clenched

teeth.

 

7° The decision as to where to place this section of the dissertation was a long time coming. The
dissertation highlights the stories of the teachers and the students. Still, though, I am in the center of the
text in that I chose what to pay attention to at the site, the questions to ask, the text to include here in this
version of the story. To remove myself from that center—even if only symbolically—in order to shed as
much light as possible on the stories of the teachers and the students, I have included my own story as an
appendix rather than as part of the body of the work.

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Leadiuun

W—WM—W—W

I grew up a Conservative Jew in a city whose population boasted a high
percentage of Jews. I attended Hebrew school from the time I was six years old and,
despite being one of the youngest students in class, consistently strove to be the best,
often known as the girl who would shoot her hand in the air and wave it around in order
to be called on to answer questions. At home, we celebrated the major Jewish holidays,
fasting on Yom Kippor, feasting on Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year and holding a
traditional seder service each year at Passover. I had my Bat Mitzvah at the traditional
age of thirteen and read from the Jewish Torah scroll, something many young women,
never mind young men my age in the Conservative movement, didn’t often do. During
the Sabbath, I would lead services for the young children and on occasional holidays after
my Bat Mitzvah, I would volunteer to read from the Torah if the temple needed people
to do so.

I was a ‘good Jew’, so to speak, believing somewhere in my heart in what Judaism
was all about, or more particularly, believing in its traditions. I can’t really say what my
belief in a deity was like. I assume I believed in one God--the monotheistic belief held by
J ews--but how strong was that belief, I do not recall. I did, however, feel strongly about
the land of Israel and its symbol as a Jewish state. I have a distinct memory of standing
in the sanctuary of my synagogue, a place with high ceilings and maroon colored rugs and
seats, regal against the dark wood of the rows and rows of pews that lined the room. Our
cantor, standing in front of the birnah or stage at the head of the sanctuary, led us in song
after song in celebration of Israel Independence Day. All of us children were dressed in
the blue and white of the Israeli flag. Pinned to our shirts were buttons that read “Racism

No, Zionism Yes”. It was a moment in Israeli history when Zionism was being equated

177

by some with racism--to proclaim a belief in a Jewish state meant discounting the non-
Jews who lived in that state. The button held no meaning for me then--I don't think I
even knew what its slogan meant.

At the end of the gathering, we all rose and sang the Hatikvah, the Israeli Jewish
national anthem. The melody--so poignant, so wistful, so full of feeling--carried me
away. I am sure that just as I had done times before this, I sang with my eyes shut tight,
breathing in the melody, letting the sounds fill my heart. Israel, I knew in my soul, was
my homeland as a Jew. Someday I would visit. Maybe someday, I would make Aliyah--
move to Israel.

My first visit to Israel came years later in 1988. I was a sophomore in college and
the opportunity arose for me to spend two weeks there with a group of high school and
college students. I distinctly recall how I felt during the drive from Tel Aviv’s Ben
Gurion’s airport into Jerusalem. The road was long and winding. Along one side as we
headed up the hill to Jerusalem were hollowed shells of army trucks, left on the side of
this road as commemoration of the War of Independence fought in 1948. I gazed out the
window, fighting off the sleep that gripped the other bus passengers. In my journal in
1988, I wrote the following:

As we drove, I could not avert my eyes from the window....My body was
exhausted but my mind raced. This was my people's country. This road on
which we traveled was built with the blood of those who fought for the land....I

felt a deep sense of belonging in this, my first hour of being in Israel.
I was moved by many things in Israel then and left believing I would indeed return, likely
for good, to live my life in this place that inexplicably felt quite like a home to me in my
short two week stay.

I believe that through college, my view of the world shifted from one that was
fairly narrow and naive to one that was broader, wider and more troubling. I became a
regular participant in rallies and protests that sought to end what I was perceiving to be

world injustices. This was particularly true in my senior year when I went to rallies in

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Washington DC, Boston, MA and on my own college campus. I was involved at the time
in an organization that sought to bring an end to the torture in Guatemala and I read with
terror and thirst the testimony of Rigoberta Menchu (1984) in which she described her
account as a peasant in the country". How could individuals commit such horrific acts
against others I asked myself as my understanding of these issues grew deeper.

And then there was the Intifada in Israel. The Palestinian uprising began in late
1989. Photographs of Israeli soldiers, guns pointed at Palestinians armed with stones
plastered the front pages of newspapers, the lead stories of the local and national news.
How could I reconcile a love for Israel and a hatred for what Israeli soldiers were doing to
others? I sought answers through a thesis that I wrote that academic year: Coming to
Terms: One American Jewish Woman’s Response to the Palestinian/Israeli Situation. I
interviewed Jewish community leaders in particular in an effort to see how we as
American Jews could stand silent and watch what other Jews were doing to people in
Israel. Could Jews in America be critical of Jews in Israel? What right did I have to
criticize what I had long been prompted to believe was “my country, my homeland”?
And yet here were Jews, victims of centuries of persecution, acting as the persecutors
themselves.

During the course of my research, I came across an organization called
Tsa'ad/Hutwa, an "experimental Arab-Jewish theater workshop that uses the language of
the theater to enrich communication between Arabs and Jews, in the search for a way to
live together" (Glazier, 1990). Though the actors portrayed instances of struggle, of
frustration, and of fear, the production left me with the feeling of hope. It was possible--
Jews and Arabs could live peaceably together, side by side.

Ten years later, I returned to Israel to pursue the study I write about here. I

sought a context in which to explore potentially provocative approaches to

 

"Though there are currently accounts that this was a false testimony, that Menchu fabricated her story, I
cannot deny the power of the story and its influence on my understanding related to injustices in
Guatemala and beyond.

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multiculturalism. In graduate school--and even before that through my own high school
teaching-I had attempted to find multicultural approaches that did more than offer
students a surface approach, a surface understanding of others. I wanted to place myself
in a context where the odds are against a project of this sort existing and thriving. Having
been moved ten years earlier by the production of Tsa'ad/Hutwa, by the passion of those
involved, I believed that in Israel, I would find experiences that worked against the grain
(Cochran-Smith, 1991). If teachers and activists could do work with Arabs and Jews--
two groups wearing the scars of their years of friction--that made some sort of difference,
then couldn’t we learn something from that process?

I went to Israel with the stance of an observer. After all, what did I possibly have
to offer to the difficult work these people were doing? I was an outsider who, though
Jewish, now felt few strong connections with Israel. The loyalty of years gone by had
been replaced by a certain skepticism and by a new sympathy for the Arab story, gained
perhaps through increasing contact I had had with Arabs during the previous year.
Having decided to pursue this study in Israel, I had made an initial visit to the country in
December of 1997 to seek out what sorts of co-existence opportunities existed at that
point. In addition, having reread the thesis I had written ten years earlier, I realized tha --
as would be expected given the focus of the study--it offered a very one-sided viewpoint
and perspective. In the thesis, I outlined the history of the Jewish state--from the Jewish
perspective. I offered very little information about the history from an Arab standpoint.
When in Israel those few days in December 1997, I sought to learn a different
perspective, a different history, so to speak, in order to broaden my own perspective.

Another reason I came to Israel with the stance of an observer was my lack of
fluency in Hebrew and Arabic. I came with little second language knowledge other than
the Hebrew I had learned as a student in Hebrew school. In Hebrew school, however, the
language only partially fascinated me. Its grammar rules often seemed beyond my willing

grasp. More interesting to me were the Jewish customs and rituals. With these words,

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surrounded by native speakers of Hebrew, I sat waiting for the plane that would take me

to Tel Aviv on September 12, 1998:-

language--Hebrew that sounds distant to my ears--a realization that I can only
focus on one conversation, one word--and yet the conversations, the words are
many. And yet there’s a silence too [here in this airport at 10:30 PM. I wonder
about the stories these people have to share, their lives, their comings and goings...

Later, on the airplane as the sounds of Hebrew continued to surround me, I wrote:

I’m impatient for language-J crave fluency right now. I look over the shoulder of
the woman in front of me to stare longingly at her newspaper. The headlines are
even beyond me for the moment.

I didn’t know when I set out to do this study that fluency would become a central theme
in my work. Perhaps I should have guessed, given these initial thoughts, the first things I

chose to scrawl in my personal journal.

WWW

When Yaffe introduced me to the students in the class, she mentioned that I might
be helping them--the teachers and the students--in the class. The students had already
discerned from their initial failed attempts at conversation with me in Arabic and Hebrew
that my language skills weren’t up to speed. One student asked Yaffe “How can she help
us if she doesn’t know Hebrew or Arabic?” It was a question I had asked myself on a
number of occasions since entering this arena. How was I going to conduct my research in
a context in which I barely understood one of the languages, never mind the second? My
commitment to the work, however, overshadowed this logistical hump. Furthermore, I
had always intended that the teachers—fluent speakers of English—would be my main
informants. I also knew, based on previous study of interactions between individuals that
I and others had done, that there is more to conversation and discourse than words (i.e.
Goffrnan, 1981; Hall, 1959; Tannen, 1989). I was intent on watching and noting cues

other than verbal cues. What I hadn’t realized when I set out to do this work was that

181

my lack of fluency in Hebrew and Arabic would serve me well. My experiences as a
language learner, as one who was working to cross cultural borders, mimicked in many
ways the learning of the students and the teachers. Had I entered this context fully fluent
in Arabic and Hebrew, or as an Israeli Jew or Arab, this surely would be a different study.
As it turned out, however, I could monitor my own behaviors, my own experiences in
relation to those of the students. My own experiences of developing cultural fluency

became a case to hold next to their learning experiences.

W
Sara could often be found wiping tears from her eyes. She is a dramatic individual

who feels things quite deeply. She garnered attention when she felt she hadn’t had any
for some time by raising her voice up a notch and tucking in her upper lip, enabling the
lower one to begin its quivering. Her eyes towards the floor, it was only seconds before
the first teardrops fell. On this particular day, Sara was one of five children who were
working with Noha to practice their second language, in this case, Arabic. Noha pointed
to a picture of an object, then the Arabic word and students had to speak about the
picture using whatever additional Arabic words they knew. When stuck for a word, the
children opted for Hebrew which Noha then translated into Arabic and the students
repeated. Sara was quiet on this day. She began by participating, albeit reluctantly and
haltingly, using more Hebrew than Arabic, and then slowly began to push herself back
from the table, away from the group. Noha invited her to participate, asking her a direct
question. Arms crossed, chin to her chest, Sara didn’t respond. When Noha asked again,
Sara again chose not to answer. Noha continued the activity with the other students at
the table. Moments later, Sara had had enough. She slid down her chair and under the

table where she remained for the rest of the lesson.

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As I watched the experience unfold, I suddenly realized that--though not nearly as
dramatic as Sara--I was looking in a mirror of sorts. I was Sara, she was me. My journal

entry fi'om November 2 reads as follows:

I can't stand going to [Hebrew class]. I am completely tongue-tied and mind-
boggled. I cannot do this language stuff"..My experience as a student... is
incredibly interesting to me. My reactions are both surprising and all at once
fairly normal. I can empathize with the struggling student who wants to hide, for
whom all work seems confusing. If I miss a sentence, a word, I am lost--I feel
lost. I feel too dumb to ask a question, when everyone else seems to understand,
so I sit quietly, trying to use my dictionary as support but finding my efforts at
word finding too slow. I left class early tonight--actually, I had chosen to sit
through the class again--the second time through it's conducted in the evening.
And when we were ready to break into groups for discussion, I broke away--took
off to the quiet of home where I now sit writing in English, listening to English on
my radio, thinking about soon reading some English texts. In the first hour of
class, I was letting my partner down, unable to carry on a conversation with him.
It's bad enough that I myself am struggling through this but to pull someone along
in my struggling seems unfair. Thus, I stepped out of class early so as not to be
further aggravated and so as not to force someone else to feel completely
fi'ustrated. At one point in class, I just wanted to get up and leave--run out and
say the hell with it. I feel like a little kid in elementary school--high school even--
who just can't get the math, or the formula or the language, no matter it the
language of math or French. Perhaps now I can more easily identify both with
struggling students I have had and with the first graders in Misgav who are
struggling to learn in a new language.

There were many times throughout the year that I felt a kinship with the students who
were themselves working, struggling, to communicate in a second language. It was no
wonder to me that in the beginning of the year, the students would break up into
homogeneous groups, the Jewish children speaking Hebrew with one another, the Arab
children speaking Arabic. I could relate to the desire to speak your native language rather
than a language that does not feel like your own. As I watched the children gravitate
towards native speakers through the end of October into November and December in
particular, I wrote that I too did not yet know how to “move comfortably into the

discomfort. Maybe we’ll come to learn this together” I mused (Journal, October 1998).

183

My Hebrew came haltingly. Like the bus driver who said the same to me about
his English, I “broke my teeth” trying to speak Hebrew. As is often the case in second
language learning, my understanding of Hebrew grew much more quickly than my ability
to speak, prompted in part by the necessity to understand conversations, by the desire to
at least feel part of the discourse. I am not an extroverted speaker in English thus the role
of listener felt comfortable to me. Unlike the students at the school whose parents made
the ultimate decision about whether or not they would attend the school, whether or not
they would be students of a second language, I had the choice whether or not to learn this
language. There were many times when I was tempted to give up. After all, the
teachers,-my primary informants, spoke English. I discovered soon, though, that doing
even the regular tasks of life--grocery shopping, traveling, ordering phone service,
understanding what to do during a bomb scare--required some language proficiency on my
part. Unlike a city like Jerusalem or Tel Aviv where English speakers abound, in Haifa
they are few and far between, not readily recognizable until, breaking my teeth, they give
in and proceed in English. I spoke the language most often when I was forced to speak it.
I walked home from Hebrew class with a fellow student, a recent immigrant to the
country from Russia. Though he could speak some English, our common language--for
better or worse--was the Hebrew we were learning together. These half hour walks fiom
class were the times when I think my Hebrew improved the most. When I watched
students work with Noha on their second language one day, rather than assume the role of
translator as she had done in the past, Noha stuck to the one language that they were
studying. The Jewish children were immersed in Arabic, the Arab children immersed in
Hebrew. Though lots of stalls and stops were evident in the session, as well as retreats
back to the first language, the children returned to their seats in the next room practicing
some of the new words they had learned. The experience of being forced--for the
moment--to engage in a language recalled for me my own excursions from Hebrew class

with my Russian classmate.

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Whenever I visited homes of Hebrew or Arabic speakers, I found myself intently
working to follow conversation. This was fairly comical at first, in Arabic in particular,
given that I knew nothing of the language. And yet I wanted to take in the rhyme and
rhythm of the language. In fact it was through immersing myself in the role of listener at
the homes of new Arab acquaintances that I began to differentiate between words, began
to understand where one word ended, a second one began. I paid attention to words I
would hear over and over again and found myself eager to try them out. When the
teachers would take the students on field trips to visit the villages and communities from
which the students came, one of the things that students often did was speak to local
residents, or try at least, in the local language. I have an image of Eli walking up to a
group of older Arab men, some dressed in head scarves, some smoking cigarettes, and
waving, saying “sabach illhair,” good morning in Arabic. The men chuckled then
responded with “sabach illnoor,” the common response. Then the men engaged in a brief
conversation with Eli in Hebrew, his first language. Though the episode may seem
unremarkable by American standards, it is remarkable in Israeli standards, quite rare is it
that a young Jewish child would speak Arabic", neverrnind to a group of Arabs in an
Arab village. I believe Eli enters into this conversation because he aims to try out what he
is learning in a real world context just as I too wished to try out what I was learning with
those who knew the language. It is as if Eli and I wanted to become ‘insiders’, if but for a
passing moment.

Though insider status was what I sought, I realized throughout the year how
difficult that is to achieve from the standpoint of both language and culture. Though I
made quite a few fiiends while in Israel and immersed myself in many conversations, I
admit that it was those conversations with American, fluent speakers of English that felt

most comfortable. Though by the end of my stay in Israel I could carry on conversations

 

7‘ One Jewish parent told me a story of taking his child to the doctor. While in the waiting room, his child
was writing in Arabic. Those in the waiting room voiced their surprise to the parent, expressing both awe
and admiration for this young Jewish child who knew some Arabic.

185

and even conduct interviews in Hebrew, I still felt a distinct barrier between me and many
of the people I met, many of the people I would call new friends. At the end of June, I
reflected on some of these friendships with Israelis--Arabs and Jews--and wondered what
a lack of true fluency had prevented me fiom experiencing and understanding. I wanted
my experiences to be “deeper. I speak quickly, my mind races often and far. And yet I
often had to temper that, slow down” (Journal, June 1999). It is no wonder to me that
only at the end of the school year--as they began to grow more comfortable with a second
language (specifically in the case of the Arab students and the Hebrew language)-did
students begin to invite each other to their homes to play.

My knowledge of Arabic grew less steadily than my grasp of Hebrew. First,
though I enrolled in Hebrew classes, I did not enroll in Arabic courses. Time was one
influential factor. Though I could relatively easily find a Hebrew evening course, an
Arabic evening course was harder to come by, especially given my lack of Hebrew
fluency. Arabic courses taught in my vicinity were Hebrew to Arabic courses thus in
order to learn Arabic, I had to have a strong grasp of Hebrew. One option for me would
have been to attend an intensive five week or more Arabic learning session outside of
Haifa. However, when I learned of this possibility, I had already begun collecting data at
the school and had begun to realize both the pressing need to gain fluency in Hebrew--
given that teacher discussions, discussions with visitors, administrators, etc. were all
conducted in Hebrew rather than Arabic--and the fact that language learning did not come
easily to me. I made the choice to learn Hebrew systematically and Arabic
unsystematically--from the teachers, from the students, from parents and from fiiends.
For example, I often “traded” Arabic words for English words with the students. One
morning, I wished Waal a “Sabach illhair.” He responded with the Hebrew “Baker tov,”
good morning. Then he asked me in Hebrew “Mah zeh “sabach illhair ” biungleet? ”
“What is ‘good morning’ in English?” “Good morning, “ I replied. “Good morning,”

186

Waal repeated. I also established myself as a learner in the classroom, sometimes sitting

in as a participant when Noha worked with the Jewish students on their second language.

i M Lan a Influenc I ssr om Interactions? Bein 'n The om an
of thg Smdents

Early in my stay in the classroom, I realized that I was more aware of what the
Jewish students were saying because of the developing understanding I had of Hebrew.
For this reason, I began to focus on non-verbal interactions and actions and made a
conscious and consistent effort to rely on the teachers as my main informants. I would
often barrage them with questions--which they kindly answered--before and after lessons
and subject them to viewing sessions. Most of our conversations were in English until I
became more proficient in Hebrew and found that conversations about education in
particular made sense to me in both English and Hebrew.

When I set out to do this study, the principal had asked me--knowing that I had
some Hebrew knowledge--not to engage with the students much in Hebrew since they
were already inundated with Hebrew”. And so I tried to engage as little as possible with
the students until I could manage some interactions in both languages. Still, the students
marked me as a speaker of Hebrew and would engage me in conversation thusly. This
happened even at the beginning of my stay. One of the Arab students came up to me and
immediately greeted me in Hebrew, rather than Arabic or English. I asked one of the
teachers why the student had done that. She said the students simply assume, since it
had often been the case since the first day of school, that any outsider who visits is

Jewish and speaks Hebrew.

 

7’ As I mentioned earlier in this text, Hebrew is the dominant language in Israel. It is also the dominant
language in the Misgav school area. For example, notes from the school nurse arrived from the regular
elementary school building in Hebrew as did all other correspondences between the regular school and the
parents or students at the bilingual/bicultural school.

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I bent over backwards to strike a language balance when interacting with the
students. I believed that as a constant presence in the classroom, I was also a potential
role model. I wanted to validate the students in part through using their languages. Since
that first encounter with the Arab students who labeled me a Jew and Hebrew speaker, I
made a concerted effort to engage with the Arab students in Arabic, asking them to help
me learn their language. As I became more a participant in the classroom, helping
students with math for example, I helped students in their first language as much as
possible. I wrote in my fieldnotes on February 23: “I help Khalil at one point--in broken
Arabic--using Arabic numbersnand Hebrew words for fillers. He begins with me in
Arabic and then switches to Hebrew--even the numbers. I persist, though, in using
Arabic numbers.” Though the students at this point can switch between the numbers as
some choose to, I know this student struggles with math and I believe it’s important for
him to work comfortably through the math exercises in his first language rather than try to
struggle on two levels".

In addition to revealing my interest in their language through speech, I also
validated it through writing. My fieldnotes were primarily in English but there were more
than a few occasions when I wrote things down in Hebrew and Arabic. As I began jotting
things down in Hebrew, I was conscious of the fact that I should also include Arabic text
in my book. In January, students began to be interested in what it was I was writing. “In
English?” they asked. “Mostly English but some Hebrew and some Arabic,” I answered.
Two students--one Jewish, one Arab--came to look. I could easily point out English,
Hebrew and Arabic, an important move I believed as another way to validate the students
and their language and cultures. There’s even a page in my fieldnotes where Waal showed

me how to write his name in Arabic, after I had shown him how to write his name in

English.

 

7‘ It is quite possible that while I was working to make Khalil feel more comfortable by trying to use
Arabic, he was making an effort to make me feel more comfortable through using Hebrew.

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As the teachers grew more concerned with the second language development of the
Arab students in contrast to that of the Jewish students, I made a more concerted effort
to prompt the Jewish students to practice their Arabic. One of the Jewish students, Tal,
had the habit of asking me nearly everyday what I was doing. Every once in awhile, I
would ask him to ask me in Arabic. With Ghaida’s help, he was able to do so, though
reluctantly. Sometimes when I would be passing things out to the students, I would say
something in Arabic to one or two of the native Hebrew speakers, who would then
sometimes ask me why I was speaking Arabic to them, not Hebrew. Also, I would be an
audience for the students as they struggled to read a book in their second language.

As the students’ knowledge of each others’ languages grew, so too did my
language abilities. During the last month of school, as some children celebrated their
birthdays, I noticed how easily I could sing along with the children happy birthday in
three languages--Hebrew, Arabic and English. Also that month, I felt fairly comfortable
conducting final interviews with parents in Hebrew. Though by no means fluent in
Hebrew or Arabic, I had learned to move into the discomfort associated with my language
learning, allowing myself to both make mistakes and pursue opportunities in which to try

out the language I had learned and was continuing to learn.

Fr 1

As I established earlier in this study, language is only one aspect of culture,
though an essential aspect. While working to understand language, I was also working to
understand two cultures, one that I initially took for granted that I knew. Arriving in
Israel as a Jew, I was welcomed with open arms, something I anticipated. What I hadn’t
anticipated was how important and door-opening the label of Jew actually is in this
country. My cultural identity came up in conversation more often than not. The second
or third question out of the mouths of potential landlords was always “Are you Jewish?”

or phrased more particularly, “You’re Jewish, right?” I remember stopping to buy an ice

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cream one evening in Haifa when I had first arrived in town and the store owner said to
me, with a sigh of relief after our brief English conversation, “ah--you’re one of us.” For
once in my life, being a Jew was a privilege similar to the white privilege (McIntosh,
1988; 1992) experienced and taken for granted by many of us here in the United States. I
didn’t pay much attention to my Judaism while in Israel. Perhaps I didn’t have to since
everyone else seemed to. Though a democracy, Israel is guided by religious laws. On
Friday at sundown, stores shut their doors until sundown Saturday in honor of the
Jewish Sabbath. I walked for miles and miles lost in Haifa one Saturday early in my stay
because I had forgotten that many buses don't travel their regular routes on Saturdays. I
didn’t feel very “Jewish” in Israel, didn’t feel the need to present myself as such and
often felt affronted when others presented me that way. “Why do you want to know?”
I’d ask in response to the cab drivers who would ask me my religion as a non-sequitor in
the midst of a conversation. People in Israel were al hapaneem--in your face--about the
Arab/Jewish dichotomy. Silence in the name of political correctness had not seeped into
the country as it has in the United States.

I spent much of the first part of my journey in Israel in effect denying my
Judaism. In large part I did this in order to move closer to a culture that I knew little
about. I came to Israel to study interactions between Arabs and Jews and, as a Jew, I felt
that no matter what, I entered into the setting with a bias--or would be perceived as
having entered into the field with that given my birthright. It was in part for this reason
that I set out to right the balance, so to speak. I believed I had lots to learn about the
“other.” I came to realize late in my journey that I had lots to learn about myself as a
Jew.

When I arrived in Israel, I spent the first two weeks living at an Arab youth hostel
of sorts, the Arab Commission, an organization that serves multiple purposes in the Arab
community, including providing dorrnitory-style housing for Arab students who come

from other villages and cities to study in Haifa. Many of the rooms were empty when I

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arrived in September since the fall semester doesn’t begin in Israel until October--after the
Jewish fall holidays have passed. A few students, though, occupied some of the rooms of
the building, attending school programs that had already begun or that ran through the

summer. An entry I wrote in my journal about my experience reads as follows:

September 16, 1998--a little irony here--I’m staying at the Arab student hostel, in
part because it seemed as if this would be a wise place in which to situate myself,
to make a statement (of solidarity? of commitment?) to people with whom I may
ultimately work. Despite that, here I sit on a porch, the only person on this end
of the hostel. Below me, Arabic music turned on high, young students keeping
rhythm, sharing words, drinks, etc. The differences between us are certainly, in
part, age related. These are young college kids, maybe 20, 21. Still the
religious/cultural difference looms larger...Language plays a large factor here....The
irony [of this set up] is fairly palpable given my reason(s) for being here.

My understanding of Arab culture and the experiences of Arabs in Israel came, not
surprisingly, through my interactions with Arabs in settings that were natural as opposed
to contrived. I vividly remember one of my first experiences in Haifa, sitting with the
Arab family of a fiiend I had known in the United States. Discussion was in Arabic,
some sentences and phrases in English. The television was on the background. One of
the children was flipping the television channels and paused at a music video of an Arabic
song. Everyone in the room turned towards the images on the screen--close-ups of
various singers intermingled with images of groups of Arabs engaged in protests or
demonstrations or individuals who were being arrested or beaten. The room was quiet,
other than the few who were singing along softly. The images were striking and I knew
immediately--despite that I didn’t understand the words--that this was a text representing
in part the struggle of the Arabs in Israel, in the West Bank and Gaza specifically. When
the song ended, followed by a long pause by those of us watching, I ventured to ask the
question, ask for confirmation of what the song was about. My friend’s sister explained

that this was a group of Arab singers from countries all over the Middle East who had

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gotten together to create a song called the Arabic dream, a song to motivate Arab children
to keep dreaming about a future of freedom.

I longed to learn more and ventured to find out more through interacting with
Arabs. The fact that I didn’t view myself at this point as an affiliated Jew, as one closely
tied to Israel, the fact that I was a member of the Diaspora, once removed from the Jews
who lived in Israel, likely enabled my learning to come more easily than for someone who
is deep in the conflict, more easily than for Yaffe, perhaps. I sought out stories, a
different version of the truth. I came to learn these fi'om Ghaida and Noha, and from
other Arab fiiends with whom I spent lots of time during my stay in Israel and from the
parents of students who invited me to their homes. It was in their company that I came
to understand everything from the taste of a variety of Arab foods to the look of a
chickpea plant to an understanding of the issues related to land to holiday traditions to
language. I learned through narratives people told me and through being involved in
experiences, often where l was the only Jew present, the only non-Arabic speaker.

I first visited an Arab village with the children at the school on a field trip. We
went together in the middle of November to Sha’ab. I was feeling very new in my role as
researcher and still new as a member of the school community. I wrote in my fieldnotes:
“On the whole, I didn’t feel very comfortable on the field trip, in large part because I still
don't comprehend my role here. I feel very ill at case. But I felt more ill at ease in the
Arab village, in large part, I think, because I do not speak or understand Arabic.” I could
only imagine what it was the Jewish children may have been thinking. I learned later in
the year fi'om Ghaida, for instance, that there were a couple of occasions when she
overheard a couple of the Jewish children remarking about what they perceived to be the
stench of an Arab village they visited as I reflect on in an earlier chapter.

Other visits to Arab villages came through the year. I accompanied Noha on a
number of occasions when she went to visit her relatives, even helping one of her cousins

one night with his English homework. I visited Ghaida a few times in Nazereth, the

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largest Arab city in Israel. I spent evenings eating, talking, drinking thick, sweet Arabic
coffee at the homes of Arab friends in Haifa and villages nearby. I spent a day at an Arab
high school, teaching English alongside an Arab teacher. When my mother came to visit
me in Israel, we spent some time in Jerusalem and hired a guide to lead us through the old
city of Jerusalem, a series of winding streets and historical sites--Moslem, Jewish,
Russian Orthodox, Armenian and Christian. Our guide was an Arab Christian who went
by the name “David”. As he led us through the city, pointing out many of the Christian
artifacts, I pressed him on his own history. Who was “David” and what was he doing
giving tours in Jerusalem? I would learn his given Arabic name, about his village in the
West Bank, about his family’s home that used to be in East Jerusalem but which they
were forced out of years ago, and about his desire to move to the United States and run a
business there. Driven by curiosity and a deep desire to learn about the “other side,” to
uncover stories too often not heard by tourists or by Israeli and non-Israeli Jews, I asked
multiple questions of the people I met and sought out contexts in which to explore

multiple stories of the Arab minorities in Israel.

Mercgmpgnsating?
It's April 18, 1999--the evening before Israel Memorial Day, the day

commemorating the deaths of the Israeli soldiers who died in the War of Independence.
Over time, the day has come to commemorate all soldiers who have died in and out of the
line of duty. The memorial--like all Jewish holidays-begins at sundown. Yaffe has
invited me to spend the evening in Shorashim, the moshav where she, her husband and
two daughters live along with fifty-two other Jewish families. Shorashim is a place that
feels very isolated, sitting at a distance above the main road. And yet there is a sense of
community here as houses--all similar in simple structure--stand side by side, small plots
of land between them. Tonight, there is a memorial ceremony--tekkes --at the moshav.

Right before sundown, parents, children and friends wend their way down to the outdoor

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amphitheater that lies within the moshav. People mill about and greet one another as
they find seats. As the sun touches the tips of the Galilee mountains, a subtle hush falls
over the crowd of one hundred or so. Slowly, the sun sinks towards the horizon and as it
does so, a quiet wail can be heard. The sound grows louder and louder still. It's an eerie
sound, a whirling, a high pitched wail. And for a moment it is a singular cry--sirens across
the country scream the same. A minute passes, perhaps two, and the high pitched wail
grows quieter, though its echo from the mountains can still be heard. We stand till we
hear the last cry of the siren and then resume our seats for the ceremony. That is the
beginning.

And this is the end. After lighting candles in memory of fallen soldiers, after
stories have been told, mournful songs sung, the crowd rises again for the singing of the

Hatikva, the Israeli national anthem.

Kol oad baleve, peneeema. 0d low avda teekvataynoo
Nefizsh yehoodee homeya Hatikva bat shnote alpayeem
Lefatey mizrach kadeema Leeyote am hofshee baarzanu
Eyan zion tzofeea Eretz zion Yerushalayim

As long as, deep in your heart, We haven ’t lost hope

The Jewish soul is yearning The hope of 2, 000 years

You turn to the east T o be a fiee nation in our land,
Watching Zion [Jerusalem] The land of Zion-Jerusalem

I can't help but remember the fervor with which I once sang this song in Hebrew school as
a young girl. The tune is powerful, the words at one time secondary to me. And yet as I
stood with these people this evening, I could not sing. I had learned too much, knew too
much, felt too conflicted to sing the words that told only one side of the story, offered
only the history of Israel as a Jewish state. Instead, I held back tears.

After the ceremony, we returned to Yaffe's. I have known Yaffe for months by
this point, have spent days with her at school, in Haifa, at her home. We have shopped

together, eaten together, said Friday evening prayers together at her home. We have

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grown used to one another’s company, able to speak more easily to one another than a
traditional researcher/participant may be able to speak together. Our friendship both
enriches and complicates my research, my life. At her home, Yaffe asked me for my
opinion on the ceremony. I commented on the chills I felt at the wail of the siren and how
impressed I was with how involved individuals were in the ceremony. And then I told
her how difficult it was for me to hear the Hatikva, never mind sing it. I wrote in my
journal later that evening: "Yaffe said something extremely important to me tonight after
we returned from the tekkes. She said--and apologized before saying it--that sometimes it
seems as though I am more sympathetic to the Arab point of view."

Yaffe spoke cautiously, choosing her English words carefully. I remember the
moment vividly. Yaffe was at the sink, preparing tea for us both, just as she had done on
countless occasions before this. I stood beside her, my eyes following her moves. Her
eyes seemed to meet the falling stream of water rather than my face. After she spoke the
words, she looked towards me. I stood nodding, my hands gripped rather tightly around
the warm mug of tea she had given me. This was not a conversation I had anticipated
having. Her comment, though, prompted me to come to terms with this issue-~something
I had been carrying with me during the year-~and with Yaffe. It was time to come clean,
so to speak, explain to Yaffe how my "own personal and intellectual biography [was]
contributing to the process of analysis” (McLaren, 1992, p. 84).

I owned the statement unquestionably. "I do, I am," I may have said to Yaffe and
then began to explain why. I had tried to enter this context as an American, as an English
speaker, but not as a Jew. I wanted to somehow remain neutral, whatever that meant. I
recalled for Yaffe one of the conversations I had with Tami, the principal, when I first got
there when she encouraged me to speak English, not to speak Hebrew. And I agreed that
that's how it should be. Still, I can't forget that when I walked into the school and the

kids greeted me, they greeted me with the Hebrew "shalom", Jew and Arab alike. It was

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as though it was expected that that's what I spoke, expected that I was a Jew. In my
fieldnotes I recorded the following on October 25:

One of the things that threw me during my visit was an Arab student coming up
to me and instantly speaking a few words in Hebrew, another saying Shalom to
me. It's as if the expectation was that I was Jewish. One of the teachers told me
later that the kids just assume, since it's often the case [here], that any [visitor] is
Jewish, speaks Hebrew. I tried my best to speak only in English, to not really
communicate with the kids based on the principal's concern about the balance of

language.

I further explained to Yaffe--and to myself--that because I am Jewish, because I am by far
more proficient in Hebrew than I am in Arabic, I feel the need to 'overcome' that, to
compensate for that by trying to get to understand, to know, ultimately to sympathize
with, the Arab perspective here. In addition, I am haunted still by the thesis I had written
about the Israeli situation, a thesis written after visiting Israel for the first time, after
tasting its "milk and honey." It is what I would consider a Zionistic piece, filled with
one-sided history.

Yaffe's comment to me on this particular evening forced me to face the music, so
to speak. More importantly, it encouraged me to acknowledge my culture, my Judaism,
myself. Ironically, as I struggled along with Ghaida in particular about the issue of
identity, about how to help the Arab children hold on to theirs within the school context,
I had been denying myself of my own identity. I am Jewish, thus my story is tied in
some way to the stories of Israel, of being both the oppressed and the oppressor, of Jews
and Arabs here. It is in large part because of that that I found myself in this context,

found myself in Shorashim on the eve of Memorial Day struggling to hold back tears.

ni J dai —Bein in M 0 an 75

 

7’ I speak only about my identity as a Jew though I could also speak about my identity as a White
American and as a woman. I believe the latter would make for a particularly interesting-and naturally

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I came to pay attention to my Judaism in a different way during the month of
April, both before and after the conversation I had with Yaffe. On April 13, when the
sirens sounded to commemorate Holocaust memorial day, I stood alongside the children.
I was completely surprised by my emotional response. “The publicness of the day, of
the remembrance [of those killed during the Holocaust], is fairly intense, unexpected”
(Fieldnotes, April 1999). My realization of my Judaism struck at different points in my
journey. The day after my conversation with Yaffe, which was the day when the
students were separated in two groups-Jews in one room, Arabs in a second room—to
talk about Independence Day/Day of Catastrophe, I began the day by sitting in the room
with Ghaida and the Arab children. “But then I feel as if that’s not right—after all, I am
Jewish. I want to be sure the kids feel comfortable talking amongst themselves-without
my presence. The point, after all, is in part to enable them a safe space to talk. As a Jew,
I don’t belong in this room. It’s the first time, though, that I have made a ‘decision’ of
this sort--to stay with ‘my kind’ as opposed to [trying to remain] overwhelmingly
neutral as I have made an effort to be” (F ieldnotes, April 1999). Later that day, when
Ghaida asked me about my experiences of Memorial Day (which falls the evening before
Independence Day) at Shorashim, I explained the difficulty of my experience. I
commented about being surprised at how much I’ve struggled in terms of aspects of my
identity this year. Ghaida responded “You’re not the only one!”. On that day too,
perhaps in light of my conversation with Yaffe, I had a strong realization of my being a
Jew, of my having an identity as a Jew, one that I couldn’t erase and shouldn’t erase. I
hadn’t anticipated that I’d need to reconsider my connection to Judaism while doing this
study. And yet, like when the issue of language emerged initially in my personal journal,
I should have known given the number of people whom I met in Israel who would not let

me forget that I was a Jew. I should have remembered that “[e]thnographers learn about

 

different-story. “Women necessarily travel differently, aware of their bodies, their sex, fearing catcalls and
rape, seeking freedom of movement, many times in the disguise of men’s clothes” (Behar, 1995, p. 16).

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their own culture and values by comparison and contrast with the informant[s’] point of
view” (Robinson, 1985, p. 82).

M nf‘luenc n he Se in ° Th ir ein in C m an

Being in the context of Israel at large and the school in particular, and being in the
company of the teachers, the students, their parents and others I met in Israel, had a
profound impact on my understanding of everything fi'om language to history to personal
identity. Just as I was influenced by my immersion in the setting, so too was the setting
influenced by my interactions within it. I played multiple roles at the bilingual/bicultural
school from researcher to informant to teacher educator to caretaker of bunny rabbits to
math teacher to sounding board to, on rare occasions, disciplinarian to photocopier to set
designer. Some roles I was less capable of playing, less interested in playing, than others.
I moved quickly from being an observer to being a participant, drawn in most often by the
teachers and the students as well as, occasionally, by the parents. I did not anticipate
that I would influence the setting in which I worked. How naive of me. As Hammersley
(1990) reminds us "...we cannot avoid...having an effect on the social phenomena we
study..." (p. 14-15).

Earlier in this chapter I spoke of howl intervened in the classroom in regards to
the students’ developing language skills. I found myself intervening in other ways as
well. Though I was not much help on the playground when it came to asking kids to calm
down or climb down fiom the tree or share the swings, given my lack of real authority in
the classroom (something the children had picked up on), the teachers commented on how
much a part of the classroom I had become and how when I was out of the classroom for
more than a couple of days, the students asked about me--Jewish and Arab children alike.
The teachers would enlist my help as students worked on tasks with which I could help.

Eventually, I began to take the initiative to help kids without being prompted. One

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incident illustrates the sort of involvement I had with some of the students in the

classroom:

Leah was struggling with writing her series story--about kids playing soccer,
getting in a fight about it and having an adult break up the fight. She simply didn’t
want to do it. I walked over to her and spoke with her a bit about how she could
write something very creative--In fact, she had titled her story "Yonatan and the
soccer game" or something like that. "My brother's name is Jonathan," I told her...
"I'm very excited that you're writing about someone named Jonathan. I really look
forward to reading about what happens to him." Slowly, Leah began to write--
even stayed inside for part of break to finish. Then she eagerly shared it with me
as I gushed and gushed over her accomplishment. "You know I wrote it
differently than the others," she told me. "I wrote it like a story with names and
everything." She seemed to be taking some pride in her work.

I found it impossible not to get involved in the classroom. If one does not enter into the
experiences on one’s own, the students themselves draw you in as they often did when
they needed help on an activity, anything from math to tying a shoelace. Parents
sometimes drew me in as well. As I grew more competent in Hebrew, they would ask me
about my work or, in particular, what I thought of what was happening in the classroom.
They would also voice concerns they had about their children’s progress, concerns that I
would acknowledge and suggest they raise with the teachers. In these cases, as in others,

I became an informant for the teachers as they too served as informants for me.

Role of Informant

I would often have conversations with the teachers about what it was I was
observing or incidents that I found important for one reason or another. One such story
was that of the playground incident in which Eli worked his way into playing hide and
seek with a group of Arab children who had initially said no Jews could play (see chapter
three). I desperately wanted to share the story with someone as much to have a second
witnessing as to get the teachers’ opinion on it. A second incident occurred in late

February that I found troubling and brought to the teachers as something they might want

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to know about. On one particular day, I walked over to where three Jewish children were
gathered by the wall where the children’s photographs had hung all year. One of the
students was pointing out to the other two who her friends were. She pointed to the
pictures of her Jewish classmates and said “she’s my friend, he’s my friend, she’s my
fiiend...” Her finger scanned over the pictures of the Arab children, presumably not her
fiiends according to whatever definition of friendship she was using. I didn’t have time to
ask given that seconds later, the teachers called the students together for an activity. It is
important to mention that I didn’t see the whole unfolding of this event, rather had the
opportunity to watch the student work her way through two thirds of the photographs.

I shared what I had observed with Ghaida first who did not seem surprised by the
incident. She had been the one to remark to me on a number of occasions the pattern of
Jews playing with Jews, Arabs playing with Arabs, a pattern that frustrated her and that
she tried to alter in part through the activities she developed for students to work in
cross-cultural groups (see chapter three for further description of these activities).
Ghaida asked me to share the story with Yaffe whose response was different. Though
not surprised by the incident, she believed this was an individual case--this particular
student had trouble making fiiends, Yaffe responded.

The following morning, Yaffe brought up the incident again without my
prompting. She had obviously thought about this further. She stood with Ghaida and me
and mentioned that she had spoken with the child’s parent the evening before and had
asked in the course of conversation about this child’s experience in the classroom with the
other children. The child’s mother concurred that indeed her daughter was struggling with
making fiiends. Yaffe reiterated that the photograph incident was an issue of one child’s
experience in the classroom. Ghaida suggested otherwise, offering that she had indeed
been noticing a split between the children, particularly during recess. Yaffe disagreed.
Ghaida insisted. During the remainder of the year, one of the focuses of the curriculum

was the topic of “friendship.” Though this was something the teachers had always

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planned to pursue, my informing them of the incident I witnessed may have prompted a

new urgency to pursue this topic with the children.

Role of Teacher Educator

One of the things I realized only after I left the setting, though I wrote about these
instances often in my fieldnotes, is how much I assumed the role of teacher educator.
Ghaida confided to me late in the year that it was a role she would have preferred that I

assume more often.

Ghaida... ‘scolded’ me, lightly, for not asking the question ‘why?’--for not
pushing both her and Yaffe further in their potential conflict [related to the
photograph incident]. She then said she’s felt I really should have been doing
more of that all year--that my experience is beyond that of any of them and I must
have things to say [that I didn’t say during the year]. She’s right, I tell her. I have
silenced myself this year here...I have been reluctant to speak my mind, to raise
more issues because I feared offending them, I explained, I didn’t want to risk their
NOT talking to me....She went on to say that I should have been/needed to be
more of a rashenam this year--someone who flaunts the ‘letters’ after their name,
their accomplishments, etc. “We Israelis,” she said, “and I put us all together for
this” put our accomplishments out there--proclaim how smart we are. “That’s
what you needed to do,” she says. And yet I didn’t want to be rude, I explain.
“Sometimes I think you were too polite,” she said. She’s quite right. I have bent
over backwards in all of my interactions NOT to offend. It’s ironic really. I came
to Israel in part because I believe this is a place where I believe people really
speak up and I end up silenced--monitoring my silence (F ieldnotes, April 1999)

Despite some self-silencing, it is quite evident that I still managed to do a lot of teacher
educating during the year. It’s a role I had been practicing, perfecting in graduate school
for three years and one I wanted to continue to pursue after graduate school. In fact, the
teachers had expected that my presence, my questions, would ultimately help them.
They explained to me at the beginning of the year “...how important my role, my work
would be for them and how helpful I could potentially be for them. They specifically
initiated the idea of videotapes and watching them to see about their practice. They

(Ghaida) said it would potentially also be helpful for them to translate their ideas into

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English with me. Yaffe mentioned that she thought that not only could I be helpful to
them in thinking about next year, as Ghaida had suggested, but even in terms of next
week” (Fieldnotes, November 1998). My role then as informal teacher educator at the
site was divided in two--on the one hand, my comments related to the here and now, to
what the teachers were doing in the moment with the students. On the other hand, our
conversations and interviews often prompted the teachers to look ahead and do future
planning. Both were evident in fieldnotes, interview data and viewing session transcripts.
All examples indicate how in my company, the teachers were ‘forced’ to further reflect on

their teaching.

111W

In the middle of November, Ghaida and I had one of a number of conversations
about the dilemma of second language learning and in particular the Jewish students’
struggle with learning Arabic in contrast to the developing Hebrew fluency of the Arab
children. I drew comparisons to my own experiences as a second language learner and the
importance of context, of making the language purposeful. I also suggested the possibility
of enlisting the kids themselves as helpers, having the Arab children be the ‘experts’,
perhaps needing to explain something to a Jewish partner in Arabic as they worked
together on a task in Arabic. Two weeks later, Ghaida initiated the activity in which the
students worked in small groups to create a picture fi'om Arabic texts that they were
looking at (the activity is described in chapter three). After the activity, Ghaida told me
that she had taken my advice of allowing kids to interact with one another, offering each
other assistance as needed, allowing in this case for the Arab children to be the ‘experts’.
The same pattern ensued during the computer activity.

With Ghaida, I most often found myself in the role of teacher educator. We
would often ‘talk shop’, conversations that Ghaida herself would initiate. At one point in

January, for example, Ghaida mentioned being fi'ustrated because she was unclear whether

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or not the kids truly were understanding a second language or getting it from body
language cues. I suggested she try not using body language for a moment and test out her
question. She did so on the spot and came back declaring “Dov understands. I just said
[in Arabic, Dov’s second language] that when he was done, he would have the next sheet
for homework--he told me in Hebrew--’I’m not finished yet but I’ll take the homework.”’
(F ieldnotes, January 1999). Ghaida would also consistently turn the tables on me. When
I would ask her to reflect on a lesson or experience, she would do so but would also ask
my opinion or thoughts. It felt like an even trade.

In some cases, I stepped into the role of teacher educator because I believed it was
the responsible thing to do. As a researcher and teacher educator, I cannot simply
abandon my ideologies, my stances. As Ladson-Billings reminds us in the quote that
opened this chapter, one cannot abandon one’s identity, one’s beliefs when one enters a
research site. My own experiences inform what I think, what I do and ultimately the way
I interact with the teachers. “Not passive onlookers, [researchers] intervene in learning
contexts and respond. . .to emergent pedagogical occasions at the intellectual level and at
level of action” (Grundy, 105 cited in Hesford, 1999, p. xxxvii). One example of this
occurred in late February as the teachers planned for Purim, a Jewish holiday
commemorating an instance of a group of Jews being saved from the hands of a king who
wanted to kill them. One of the customs during this holiday is for students to dress up in
costume. My own experiences as a teacher in the United States during Halloween led me
to offer some caution to the teachers.

During my first year of teaching, I was profoundly influenced by an incident that
occurred on Halloween. I was teaching at a small high school in a rural area of New
England. The student body was primarily white. There were a few Afiican Americans
who attended the school. Last period on Halloween, the students and faculty filtered into
the gymnasium to watch and judge the Halloween costume parade. The room was filled

with boisterous students dressed in all types of attire. As the music began, so too did the

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procession of costumed students. In walked students dressed as clowns, beer cans, as
babies, as scarecrows, as cowboys, as ballerinas, as Klansmen. A group of students
dressed in white robes and hoods circled one of the few African American students in the
school--a fiiend of the boys in hoods--who walked calmly with a noose around her neck.
She was dressed simply--in black jeans, black shirt and jean jacket, a contrast to her
hooded companions. The students dressed in white were chanting something inaudible
amidst the cheers surging from all comers of the room. I stood deafened by the sight.
Others smiled almost placidly as the students walked by. I looked around in horror at all
of the still normal faces, the totally comprehending observers. The incident was casually
waved off with a note fiom the principal that teachers were to read to their classes
regarding appropriate costume attire. Instead of dealing lightly and peripherally with the
issue, I spent the following day in each of my classes talking about racism and the Ku
Klux Klan. I revealed my anger, my fear, my tear stained face, to each of my students.
Word had passed through the halls of the school that "Ms. Glazier was pissed." I
worried about the reality of the students who were involved in this incident, most
particularly the African American student who had stood with a noose around her neck. I
wondered if, as a distinct minority in this community, she wore a mask of sorts to try to
hide her identity. I wondered if she wondered what others truly thought about her, what
others in this commrmity thought about African Americans.

I never anticipated that this story would come with me to Israel and yet it did.
The teachers sat around talking about approaches to the upcoming Purim holiday. The
topic of costumes came up. I asked if the kids would be dressing up. Of course, was the
answer. “And will the kids from all over the school be dressed up?” I asked, tiptoeing to
the point that I knew I wanted to/needed to raise. Again the answer was yes. I explained
the reason I asked by telling the Halloween story of the students who had dressed as
members of the Ku Klux Klan. "Wow," said Ghaida and Yaffe simultaneously.

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Jocelyn: Would kids [meaning those not in the bilingual/bicultural school] dress up
as Arabs do you think? And would that be problematic? What I wonder,
especially given the context of where these kids are in school, is what if kids in
other ---other Misgav kids come dressed, I mean if they..

Ghaida: ..as Arabs.

J: Right --if they come dressed as Arabs and and the students in your class see --I
mean..Of course I'm complicating this for you and I don't mean to but.

G: no no no...it's okay
Yaffe: but this is..noo

Y: this is an issue that we have to talk about before
Purim when we are making the preparation for Purim,

Noha: so they won't come on--

Y: we have to prepare them, especially
the Arab children because for the Jewish children it will be ---

N: so they won't come on--

Y: we have to prepare them, especially
the Arab children because for the Jewish children it will be ---[normal].

Y: and it's a very good issue because I would never think about it. Because also
for me, it's ah....[normal]

J: Right.

As it turned out, Purim came and went without incident but, as at other times, I think I

played a role in prompting the teachers’ thinking about issues in the present. As Yaffe

mentions, she had not thought about this issue at all until I addressed it but she realized

it’s importance given this context in which she was teaching in contrast to the all-Jewish

context in which she had previously taught.

Another example of how I intervened in the setting in part for ideological reasons,

"taking a stand through [my] actions and through [my] words" (Zeichner, 1993, p. 15),

occurred at another point in the year. Ghaida was talking to me about an idea she had to

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challenge the continuing pattern of Jews playing with Jers, Arabs playing with Arabs.
She wanted to get the “boys” involved in a class soccer team so that they would play
against other classes. That way, Ghaida figured, they would have a common goal,
something to work towards together. Supportive of the notion of a common goal, I
swallowed the concern I had regarding Ghaida’s notion of this being an activity only for
the boys in the class. Having been an active and athletic first grader myself, I knew in my
heart that I would have been quite hurt if I wasn’t allowed to play soccer in first grade on
a class team comprised only of boys. Still, I remained quiet on that issue.

The concern weighed on my mind, however. Two days later, I attended a parents’
meeting in part because I was interested in the topic but more particularly, I wanted to
catch Ghaida and mention my concern about the soccer team she was envisioning. I could
hold my breath, my tongue, no longer. As it turned out, Ghaida had also been thinking
about this issue, weighing the pros and cons of a gender division such as this in an effort
to gain some cross-cultural solidarity. In the end, the formal soccer team didn’t pan out.

Other activities, such as the end of the year class play, took that place instead.

Lo ' he (I

It was not unusual for the questions I asked the teachers and for the experiences in
which I asked them to take part (i.e. viewing sessions) to prompt their thinking about
what to do in the classroom not simply the next day but also the following year. My
questions also forced them to in part reflect on their experiences--similar to the ways they
reflected in each others’ company as described in chapter four--and pay attention to
certain things in the classroom. The teachers became my informants not only when I
asked them to do so, but on their own as well. Yaffe would nudge me now and again in
the classroom, saying “did you see that?” if students were interacting with one another

across cultural lines, for instance.

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In my final interview with Ghaida, she had her notebook out to share a classroom
incident she had recently written about. I had been out of school on that particular day
and she wanted to let me know what had transpired in my absence, again related to issues
of cross-cultural interactions between students.

When Noha and I viewed a videotape of a classroom activity, she used the
occasion to reflect on what she might like to see happen in the classroom in the future.
As we watched the video--of a classroom conversation on the topic of fiiendship--she
commented “I think what we need, have to do is... give [the students] chances, the
opportunities to choose, to find whatever suits them...we should give them options”
(July 1999). After watching the same segment, Ghaida reflected aloud “...maybe we
could, in one activity, make them try to work in...in couples--two kids, one Arab, one
Jew--two girls, two boys--maybe then the border will be, you know. Maybe they’ll
understand, maybe they can be friends” (July 1999).

Perhaps one of my most important roles at the school was to be an avid supporter
of the teachers, reminding them again and again of their idealistic reasons for pursuing this
challenging work, reminding them of the triumphs despite the failures that inevitably
accompany this work. I remained in the classroom not because it was the perfect
experience, if there is indeed such a thing. After all, it is the first year of this endeavor. I
remained instead because I believed in what the teachers were working towards. Like the
teachers themselves, I needed to maintain hope in this context--both in the classroom
context and in the larger society. I need to believe in the transformative potential of

education, in its power to change the course of history.

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APPENDIX B
A Story of Method

E l . I! 5.!

I set out for Israel in September, 1998 expecting to look across four contexts that
brought Jews and Arabs together in extracurricular settings outside of or within the
segregated schools they attended. I did not know what sites those would be initially.
Thus, though my conceptual framework was well constructed, my research methodology
was not strictly defined when I left the United States. I figured instead that it would
develop in the context of the field, a field with which I was somewhat familiar but more
from the stance of a tourist than a researcher. Though I had done a site visit the year
earlier, in a short ten days I could only begin to catch my breath and find my way from
one city to the next never mind map my research methodology. I was comforted by the
words of Strauss (1969) who reminds a reader that “[t]he fieldworker does not enter the
field with. . .a predetermined research design” (p. 25).

I had not anticipated that I would have the opportunity to situate myself at one
school site, a place where Jews and Arabs met not simply for a few hours at a time but
instead for days and weeks on end, in large part because the school where I eventually did
situate my study was only just beginning. Therefore, I spent the first few weeks of my
stay in Israel exploring a number of different sites, extracurricular programs where Jews
and Arabs met for a few hours at a time. As I traveled at length on buses, going from one
city to the next, I realized the logistical complications involved in trying to get to know
multiple sites, the bilingual/bicultural school among them. Intrigued finally by the
prospect of studying a new school and, in particular one that was quite different from the
other schools around—and realizing the benefit of situating myself in one site rather than
four—I asked for permission to stay at the bilingual/bicultural school, to spend my time
looking closely at the experience of those within this new integrated school. And

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they—Lee, Amin, Tami, Salaach Alsaich (the superintendent), Ghaida, Noha and
Yaffe—granted me permission to do that.

I began spending time consistently at the school in late October, after approval
was granted by the school board whose membership included the school’s founders, the
principal and others involved in the development and organization of the school. I had
intended to look closely at the experience of the teachers in the school, at their trials and
tribulations, their perceptions of their experience, their understanding of their practice. It
was soon after that I chose to pay attention also to the students and their experiences at

the school as it related in particular to the teachers’ pedagogy and curriculum.

Dat 011 c '

I traveled to the school on average three days a week, arriving at 7:45 or
thereabouts and leaving with the teachers at the end of the day between 2:00 and 3:00,
figuring that three days a week would allow me to get to know the site well without
feeling like a burden on the teachers or the students. As it turned out, the three days
often stretched to four and then five, particularly at the end of the school year. On many
days, I commuted with Noha who would pick me up at a halfway point between Haifa,
where I was living, and Misgav. On other days, I arrived at school via public
transportation or shared taxi, an experience I would not have exchanged for anything,
despite sweaty and slow commutes on many days. It was in part through joining the
commuting culture that I came to understand more clearly life in Israel.

I spent my days at the school in one of two ways, often dividing my time, but
consistently in the role of participant observer (Spradley, 1980). I either sat writing
away in my fieldnote journal or engaged in activities with the students and/or the teachers.
It was not unusual for me to spend time at the xerox machine copying texts for the
teachers to use with their students or at a student’s desk, helping a student with a project,

or behind the video camera, videotaping classroom activities. Nor was it unusual for me

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to be sitting quietly in a seat better suited for a first grader than for a thirty year old,
taking notes and drawing pictures of what I noticed in the classroom. Because I was
pursuing an ethnographic study, a thick description (Geertz, 1983) of a setting and the
people within it to learn how they organized their behavior and towards what ends
(Spradley & McCurdy, 1972), these fieldnotes were a primary resource for me as were
numerous interviews and conversations with participants, and I took great care in both
taking them and then typing them up on the laptop computer I had brought from home as
soon as I had spare time, or spare head space, anytime from one to four days after
classroom visits. I often found myself exhausted at the end of the day, particularly during
the beginning of the school year as I tried to grasp hold of a number of roles (i.e.
researcher, teacher educator, classroom helper, second language learner, etc.), struggling
miserably it seemed with all. In particular, I was a researcher in name and yet felt no
kinship to the likes of Clifford Geertz or Ruth Behar, for example, whose work I strove

to emulate. I sent the following e-mail message to a fiiend mid-November:

...it [the doing of research] feels a bit rough on the edges in particular as I try to
find a place for myself as a researcher in the school. It’s really hard to know how
to ‘be’—how much of a participant, how much of an observer, when to ask
questions, when to ask for translation, when to step in, when to step

out. . .There’s a lot that feels uncomfortable to me right now... (e-mail
correspondence, November 1998)

I sent this second e-mail message not long after to the members of my dissertation

committee back in Michigan:

I wish I could tell you that amazing things have happened in these past
months—that there have been big events, with bells, whistles, the whole works.
In some ways, I think that’s what I expected when I set out to do this
research—that it would be quite clear to me what was ‘important’ and worth
paying attention to, that I would know, somehow, every step of the way what the
next step should be. . .Alas, as those who have done lots of this kind of thing
before, you are probably giggling to yourselves right now. Ahhh. . .the naivite of a
neophyte researcher (e-mail correspondence, February 1999).

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In addition to trying to grasp hold of the role of researcher, I was struggling to juggle the
role of a second language speaker, again failing fairly miserably as was indicated in
Appendix A. Still further, I was working to gain a cultural fluency that moved across
language. I was desperately trying to find my way—literally and figuratively—in a new
country.

This distance from home——distance from the familiar—though often
uncomfortable, ultimately enhanced my ability to find peripheral vision (Bateson, 1996).
I found myself noticing—and recording—details, anything fiom the bumper stickers on
cars we’d pass while on the shared taxi to the title of the company making the pencil one
of the children in class used: fitendship. I was wide-eyed, seeking anything that might
relate to boundary crossing. And this made me tired, exhausted. And when I closed the
door to my too sparse, too echoing apartment, I grasped hold of the familiar—anything
from BBC radio broadcasts to the English newspaper I would buy every Friday to the
pretzels I would stock on my kitchen shelf.

While in Israel, I became a packrat of sorts, like ethnographers are wont to do,
collecting multiple data sources (Goetz & LeCompte, 1984). Having arrived in Israel with
no more than two large bags—one with clothes, one filled with books—and a back pack, I
had plenty of space in my apartment to fill with stuff. Sol collected teacher handouts,
copies of notices sent home from the school, newspapers to mark what was happening in
Israel at different times during the year, photographs, copies of students’ work, copies of
teachers’ plans, copies of articles written about the school, minutes from meetings with
various school committee groups, birthday party invitations, and so on. I believed these
would be some of the biographical objects (Hoskins, 1998) that might help me tell the
history of the school, of the teachers and of the community. In addition, I conducted
structured and unstructured interviews (or what I’d prefer to call reflective opportunities)

with the teachers so therefore I also collected audiotapes of these conversations. These

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reflective opportunities ranged from debriefs of class sessions to meetings with classroom
visitors to more structured interviews conducted at the end of the year.

As I collected and observed, 1 was engaging in a form of the constant comparative
method (Glaser & Strauss, 1967), moving back and forth between my assumptions—as
conditioned by my experiences as a woman, as a graduate student, as a teacher, a teacher
educator, as an American, as a Jew, among other things—and the reality of the context in
which I found myself. I recorded my assumptions both in the margin of my fieldnotes
and, at times, in my personal reflection journal in which I recorded the gnawing feelings of
loneliness and fear that I presume often accompany one’s individual travails into a field.

My developing assrunptions and my developing researcher authority were
enhanced by conversations I was having with those who had done this work before me. I
believe that part of my methodology includes the reading that I did that supported my
understanding of the context in which I had placed myself and of the role of researcher.
My companions stretched from Clifford Geertz (1983) to Ruth Behar (1996) to Elizabeth
Bowen (1964) to Edward Said (1995) to Barbara Kingslover (1995). Later in this
process, as I grew weary of the field, believing that I could not longer see everything
anew, I sought stories of transition, stories of homeward joumies.

I was immersed in my data collection and informal analysis through May.

Perhaps not surprising, the context for this work expanded beyond the classroom. I
learned quite quickly how small—literally and figuratively—the land of Israel actually is.
I explored additional settings in which to discover something about co-existence work to
then use as a backdrop against the experience of the students and teachers at the school. I
did this more to inform my understanding of context than to bolster my potential
arguments. I had conversations in Tel Aviv, in Jerusalem, in Nahariya, in Haifa, in
Nazareth, in Karmic], in the West Bank, and at the village Oasis of Peace with individuals
involved to some extent in co-existence work. I attended workshops and conferences and

film showings, understanding those that were in English and just being present when they

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were in Arabic in particular. I went to peace rallies and memorial ceremonies, for
Yitzchak Rabin in particular.

The topic of Arab/Jewish relations is often on people’s minds and they are
generally willing and ready to share their opinions on the topic. It was rare for me to be
out with fiiends without the topic of co-existence entering into even the periphery of the
conversation. Rather than seek formal approval to collect data from just about every
person I encountered, I chose the role of impassioned listener, suspecting that the words
and experiences of others would indeed color my understanding of the happenings at the
bilingual/bicultural school. The conversations seemed endless. Indeed they still are.

Towards the end of the year, I organized more formal conversations with those at
the bilingual/bicultural school. I conducted closing interviews and viewing sessions
(Erickson & Schultz, 1981) with the teachers, asking them to look closely at evidences of
teaching, ones that I had found fairly provocative. In addition, I interviewed the founders
of the school and the principal. I also asked to interview the parents of six of the children
at the school, approaching parents who had consistently attended and participated in
school committee meetings or group parent meetings which I attended as often as I could
throughout the year, in part to learn more about the school, in part to learn more about
the parents and in part to let parents know that I was both committed to and serious
about this work. It was critical for me that the parents felt comfortable with my being at
the school, with my spending time in their children’s classroom. Particularly at the
beginning of the year, swallowing my language insecurities, I would approach parents
when they came to the room, introducing myself to those I didn’t know and greeting
those I did. When I asked the parents for their consent to write about their children’s
experiences in the classroom, most easily granted me their permission to do so. My
interactions with parents—like those with the teachers and students—grew comfortable

over time. At the end of the year, I met with three Jewish parents and three Arab parents

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and conducted interviews with them in a smattering of English and Hebrew. In one case,
one of the students joined our conversation near its end".

Throughout this process, I believe I was a “vulnerable observer” (Behar, 1996), or
more precisely, a “vulnerable participant”. I gained access into the lives of the teachers in
particular as they gained access to mine. As they struggled, so too did I feel a twinge of
pain. As they allowed me to learn about their lives inside and outside of the classroom, I
felt responsible for those lives. And I felt responsible too to the children, unable to
protect them from the world outside of the classroom. I became vulnerable too through
being willing—begrudgingly initially—to explore my own experience. Tears welled in my
eyes, burned my throat, on more than a few occasions, particularly as I began to feel
caught in a space of knowing too much and not knowing how to do anything about
it—how could I possibly change the execution of history, I wondered?

I went back to the States briefly in May to attend the graduation ceremonies of
one of my sisters and my brother. Upon my return, I made the conscious decision to step
back from the field. I would set down my fieldnotes and, though remain at the school,
would assume the position of one who is preparing to leave the field. This would be the
time to collect any last tidbits of data, to follow up any directions yet pursued. I was
able to stick with this plan for the most part, but at times I felt naked without my
notebook and scrawled notes instead on scraps of paper which I then carefully deciphered
at home. My fieldnotes for the months of May and June are much lighter than those

from the rest of the year. Still, they exist.

 

7° As mentioned previously, I made a fairly conscious decision not to formally interview the students in
large part because I wasn’t going to be able to interview the Arab students in Arabic since my language
skills were not up to par. In addition, though, I realized too that the students had been formally and
informally interviewed during the year by many classroom visitors. I wondered if their responses to
questions about their classroom experience were perhaps too well rehearsed.

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R rn' m

I left Israel at the tail end of July, feeling torn about leaving, torn about returning
home. I stacked hard copies and multiple floppy disks into the crevices of each bag—just
in case—said tearful good-byes and stepped onto the airplane. In my head raced some of
the hypotheses I was developing from a thorough review of fieldnotes I had done the two
weeks preceding my leave. While in the field, I had been engaging in continuous
hypothesis development (Geer, 1969), stories of the data that I drew up in the form of
diagrams and informal analytical memos. l was supported in this process by two
professors from Haifa University—Lily Orland and Shifra Schonmann—who helped me
begin to develop grounded theory through the questions they asked about my data.
Suffice it to say that I traveled home full of ideas.

It took a number of weeks back in the States, however, before I was ready to
revisit my data. I was too busy trying to adjust to a culture shock that, though others had
warned me of, I hadn’t anticipated. I avoided all talk of Israel in large part because I
wasn’t sure how to explain my experience to anyone else. Two weeks before I left Israel
in July, I went on a retreat with those in the Jewish/Arab organization Nisan where I had
spent one day a week working during the year. One of the activities we did during the
few days was to draw a picture of the desert where we were spending our retreat. We
could use any of a number of resources. I chose to create a tactile image of the desert, one
that someone could feel to symbolically understand the desert scene. When I described
my choice to the group, I explained that as I looked at the desert, I wondered how one
would describe it to someone who had never seen it before. My friend wondered from
across the room “perhaps you drew it that way because you are thinking about the
difficulty of explaining Israel to your friends back home.” Quite right she was—how
would I ever explain even a small portion of my experience and what I learned in this

context that felt so distant from the United States? Interestingly, it was only when I

215

began trying to talk about my experience eventually, to explain the bits and pieces to
those back at home, that I was prepared to sit down again with the data.

My analysis continued to take the form of grounded theory development. I
looked for key linkages (Schatzrnann & Strauss, 1973) across my fieldnotes in particular,
themes that stood out as I read. I coded the field notes rather archaically, in pencil in case
I changed my mind later. When I discovered themes, I pulled out all the related ideas,
cutting and pasting from one computer file to another. From this text, I was able to
construct a story of an experience—the teachers’, the students’ and my own. I
triangulated (Glaser & Strauss, 1967) across data sources to test these themes which
inevitably then led me to find others. Then I wove pieces of conversation, of field notes,
of memories, of analysis of videotapes and audiotapes into a single thread, a single text.
My goal was to create an ethnography that played at the macro level—through context
descriptions—as well as at a more micro level through the use of sociolinguistic methods
of analysis in particular. I have a camera with which I can take panoramic pictures as well
as close ups. I was hoping the same could be true of this text. Spradley (1970) reminds
us that the particulars allow us to understand the general, the general sheds light on the
particulars (p. 162).

As is the case in film studios, there is much here too that remains on the floor of
the cutting room, a box full of data that remains unmentioned. I chose the stories I
included because they highlighted the opportunities when Arabs and Jews spent time
together. These are the stories that found their way most frequently into my notebooks
and the video segments. I was interested in learning what happened in these cross-
cultural instances, knowmg from earlier work and experience how difficult it seems to be
for people to move across borders into one another’s life, to understand one another’s
culture. I paid less attention to opportunities when Jews interacted with Jews, Arabs
with Arabs. In retrospect, I wish that I had paid closer attention to these instances. How

did they differ? How did two Jewish boys interact with one another? What about two

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Arab girls? Or an Arab boy and an Arab girl? I would advocate for a follow up study
that played with the notion of company in multiple dyads, triads and larger groups. In
addition, I realize that the descriptions of company keeping far outweigh those of non-
company keeping. Again, because I believe the latter is much more prevalent in cross-
cultural interactions, it is to the former that I gave my attention. There are many stories
about this classroom—the teachers, the students, the parents—left to be told. This is

only one story.

The Undressing

My description of this whole process makes it sound almost simple, perhaps
even linear. And yet it was far from that. What was most difficult for me, perhaps, in
returning home was an overwhehning feeling of need to prove the worth of the study, to
establish its place in the ‘academy’. I had put aside the conceptual framework which I
had when I entered Israel, similar to the way I had closeted all of my sweaters when I
arrived in Haifa in the sweltering September. I sent Henry Giroux, Christine Sleeter, Peter
McLaren, Paulo F reire, John Dewey and others to the recesses of my mind. They didn’t
seem to fit into this new context, this new world. The term multiculturalism, for instance,
is not often heard in a country that speaks instead of biculturalism. And it was safe to set
them aside in part because I was so far from home. I had entered Israel with a set of
questions, developed across the ocean, only to realize that neither the questions, nor the
theoretical frameworks I had been taught to cling tightly to, suited well my new context.
So, instead, I eventually swam with the tide. I cast all questions to the wind and stepped
back and began to listen, to watch, to taste, to feel the context and the people within it.
This wasn’t always the most comfortable way to do my research so I consistently tried
to force a question onto the context so that I’d know I was actually learning something,

finding some things out. But when I could give that up for the moment, I found that I

217

was able to pay attention to more things—I had found a way to gain peripheral vision
(Bateson, 1994).

When I returned home, though, I believed I was going to be ‘called to task’. I was
going to have to declare the history of this work—its predecessors. So I reached back in
the recesses of my mind, and more specifically back to the long ago shelved dissertation
proposal with which I entered Israel, and pasted it neatly into the front of my
dissertation. There—a theoretical framework discussing multiculturalism and critical
pedagogy and the weaknesses I saw within these constructs (i.e. that multiculturalism
was too watered down in classrooms and that critical pedagogy was too far removed from
classroom practice). With that done, I could forge ahead to talk about company and
cultural fluency, ideas that came through my analysis but which I felt were far behind the
work of my predecessors, too simple terms and ideas to take up the front pages of my
text. But I fooled no one. When they saw drafts of my dissertation, my committee
members commented on the awkwardness of the opening section, of its “cut and paste”
quality.

Eventually, the well known scholars slipped into the background of this
dissertation, though their ideas crop up fairly often, in interesting places, in this text. I
didn’t necessarily plan for that but it’s testimony perhaps to the strength and impact
these scholars’ words and ideas have had on my own thinking. For example, it is as
though Freire invites himself into this text through my discussion of the idea of hope, a
topic I raise writing about the teachers in particular. And the notion of commitment,
connected tightly to my notion of company, is reminiscent of Giroux. By moving away
from the strict form that dissertations often take, by allowing my ideas—borne through
analysis—to become the conceptual framework in a sense, I think I was able to make even
better and more personal meaning of the research of the scholars whose work I have

valued.

218

What we don’t do well in academia is undress. We don’t reveal the complicated
nature of our field work, the messiness of our data collecting, our analysis, our initial
writing, and what may be our fear as beginning scholars. And yet these are often the daily

realities of meaningful work. At least they have been realities of my work.

219

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