Many US cities have sizable number of Muslim population but many cities do not have a single weekend Islamic school to educate Muslim youths about Islam. Below is a simple guideline to help you establish and operate a weekend school in your city. The guideline is not exhaustive, but serves to give you an overall idea. Each case is unique and will require unique approach. Please brainstorm on this lines of thought and come up with your own solutions. Starting a weekend Islamic school is not as difficult as you might think.
Why Islamic School
Muslim children growing in the US are facing diverse challenges and conflicting pressures at schools and among friend circles. They are constantly influenced by mainstream youth culture. It is difficult to isolate them from these influences and it is painful to let them sway into the mainstream. Excessive consumerism, peer pressure, media culture, Internet, technology confuses the youngsters’ mind about their ideal objective in life. Parents are the main source to instill moral and values in their children. But parents can do only so much.
It is tough job to help them balance their Islamic identity with their ‘American’ identity. Parents must do something before these youths grow up and lose their religion or Islamic identity.
There has to be a structured set up – ideally a weekend school program to help Muslims students appreciate and understand Islam – its rich heritage, principles, values, teachings.
Foremost Issues Before Starting a School
Three foremost issues before starting a school are: (a) Finding a suitable place to use as a school, (b) finding ‘qualified’ teachers, (c) cost to operate a school. We will analyze these issues below. Remember, you don’t need hundreds of students to start a school. If you think you can pool together about 15-20 students, you can start a school.
If someone finds you a suitable place that can be used as school, will two or three brothers or sisters take the initiative to operate a school?
Finding a Place
If you have a mosque in your city, the best place is to start a weekend school in the mosque. It will be a humble start, but you can at least begin. The mosque may not have good class room settings, but you can improvise. Two corners of the main hall can be used for two classes leaving the front part for those who might want to pray. Basement, corridor etc. can be used as makeshift classroom.
For whatever reason if the mosque committee would not allow a school or you don’t want a mosque based school, you will have to explore outside.
One of the alternative places is to approach churches. Many of the churches have large basements or other rooms that can be used as classroom. They have chairs, tables, desk etc. They are often willing to let Muslims use the church thinking that they are doing their version of dawah. As Muslims, you would do your version of dawah by running a “Muslim” school inside a church. Often you will not require paying any rent or paying minimal rent. Since churches have service on Sunday, you may have to operate on Saturday. Regardless of whether you want to start a school inside a church, give a few calls to few churches to find out their response.
Some of the elementary, middle or high schools sometimes rent out classes. Check out with them too. If there are community centers in your city, check with them if they have rooms to rent for few hours.
As a last alternative, one of you might have a large house with large basement. Various corners of the basement can be used to start a makeshift school for about 15-20 students on an ad-hoc basis.
Class Size
In a school with 15-20 students best idea would be combine various grades into one class. With low student to teacher ratio, it should be possible for the teacher to pay individual attention to students who are in the same class but of different age and grade. But for Islamic Studies class, they need to be segregated into different levels as far as possible.
Finding Qualified Teachers
Finding qualified teachers is another big hurdle. Please remember, many of the established weekend schools do not have formally certified teachers. Most of the teachers are volunteers, non-academic professionals whose main employment is outside of the weekend school. If these schools can pool together some people as “teachers” you can do the same.
Some qualification and knowledge of the prospective teachers are welcome. If you cannot find people with these “qualifications”, you will have to find people who willing to teach, provided that they have ready-made materials to teach from. We recommend you follow the curriculum and text books by Weekend Learning. These are customized for weekend schools. The teachers will find these materials valuable tool for weekend schools. Regardless of level of knowledge of the teachers, all they have to do is prepare the lesson one day before the class and teach the class.
Other than books by Weekend Learning, there are books published by Iqra, Noorart, Kazi Publications, Goodword etc. Many of the books are good for weekend schools. If you can identify what book you need and what curriculum to follow, you can adopt books by any of these publishers. But you will have to make sure your volunteer teachers would be able to adapt these books for the classes they will teach.
Cost to operate a school
For a small school with 15-20 students or even more, it is possible to find people who would teach as volunteers without taking any compensation. Once this hurdle is overcome, your other expense would be rent for the facility and operating expenses.
Based on the rent of the facility, you will have to determine the monthly tuition for each child. For example, if you find a community center that rents you space @ $15 per hour, 3 hours per weekend and 3 classrooms will cost you $540 per month. If the school has 20 students, the tuition should be $35 per month. If you use a church facility or basement of large house, tuition can be set lower, but your intention should be to ramp up a reasonable fund from tuition, about $2,000 to $3,000 so that at a later period you can move out to a rented space.
The school will need a desktop printer-copier. Depending on the facility, the school will require marker pens and erasers or other supplies for teachers. If no marker boards are available, the school must purchase 18” x 24” size dry-erase marker board for less than $30 a piece. These are portable and can be carried in a car or van.
Students will bring their own snack, drinks, pen, paper, supplies etc. The parents will bear the cost of text books.
Other Problems
Some parents may resist the idea of starting a weekend school in your city for whatever reason. They might be afraid of failure or inability to commit. Do not discourage them. If you start a school, sooner or later some of these parents will send their children.
Our Appeal to You
We hope your school will be able to provide stepping stones for the youngsters so that they understand and accept Islam as the chosen ‘way’ of their lives. Your success will be measured years later if these youths grow up and say: thank you, you made a difference in my life!
Please work towards that day. We request the parents – please invest in your child. They are precious! |
