Finding diverse teaching materials has become a challenge for ETA Ammarah Rehman. Most online materials include European centric people in their examples. This past month Ammarah’s students were learning vocabulary to describe their daily activities. Some of the words include brushing my teeth, take a shower and walk to school. To practice using the vocabulary, Ammarah created a worksheet for the students to match the vocabulary with pictures of people performing the activity. While making the worksheets, Ammarah also included vocabulary words that would be appropriate for Indonesian students like memorizing the Holy Quran, praying and riding a motorcycle.
It was difficult to find examples of people of color to represent the vocabulary words. Nonetheless, Ammarah was able to create a worksheet for her students and also had the students draw their own examples for the vocabulary words. At first, Ammarah expected the students to quickly draw a few stick figures since Ammarah does not enjoy drawing herself. However, the students surprised Ammarah with masterpieces! The students spent close to an hour taking their time while drawing out four pictures. The students listened to English songs while drawing and cheered when Ammarah gave them colored pencils. Some of the drawings even included the same people of color from the practice vocabulary matching worksheet. This activity showed Ammarah that students at MAN 2 really enjoy drawing and will reproduce images of people of color if given examples.
Ammarah Rehman is currently teaching at MAN 2 Bukittinggi, West Sumatra.
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