My school - C.S. Lewis Bilingual High School - recently hosted the EDUdrama organization and their team provided a powerful pedagogical workshop on drama as a method of learning in the social studies classroom. Our faculty all became members of different Jewish families before and during the Holocaust in Europe and were challenged to understand and reflect on the lives of these individuals and the time period through a variety of interactive activities.
During the workshop, we bonded with the people behind our roles by theatrically performing their lives in the pre-Holocaust era (e.g. a family at work or levity at home) and then again as oppression, surveillance, and censorship subsumed their lives as the Holocaust approached. We represented the different feelings and emotions that new draconian government laws against Jewish people evoked in us. We solved the perplexing problem of navigating a route home on a map of Bratislava in accordance with restrictions imposed on us (e.g. avoiding major roads, churches, parks, and other public spaces). And we attained a small sense of the entrapment and despair encountered by Jews during the Holocaust. If channeled well, as a form of experiential learning, the drama in education method has the potential to enhance content learning and promote reflective engagement - and the values of acceptance that go with it - by immersing students into the content being studied. It does this, in large part, by developing empathy between the student performers and the real life people and situations they are representing and setting up opportunities for problem solving and introspection before, during, and after the theatrical activities.
Although I had previously engaged with this teaching method in my Global Studies courses while working directly on the topics of prejudices and stereotypes (e.g. gender fish bowl activity), I had less experience with it as a vehicle to explore historical or contemporary case studies. Noting though that the topic - the Israel-Palestine Conflict - my class is currently covering in Regional Geography is particularly conducive for this type of learning, I decided to integrate it into a lesson plan.
Background Context - Situating the Drama The class session (around 60 minutes of class time is required) is premised on the story of Ahmed Khatib, a 12-year old Palestinian boy who was shot and killed by Israeli soldiers in the West Bank while protesting and playing with a toy gun that had been mistaken for an assault rifle. Within that context, a multitude of decisions had to be made. Would Ahmed's father and mother, Ismael and Abla Khatib, agree to donate the boy's organs for transplant? Would the parents object to the organs going to Jewish Israelis or Christian children? And what about the heart - could the doctors also use that organ for transplant? On the recipient side, decisions also needed to be made. Menuha Rivka Levinson was a three-year old girl who needed a kidney transplant. Would her Orthodox Jewish father, Yaakov Levinson, approve of the organ transplant if the kidney came from an Arab boy?
The lesson was designed to provide a forum for drawing out these stories and the decision-making processes involved in them and the broader context of intercultural dialogue during conflict. The activity includes a theatrical performance and the subsequent examination of the true events that occurred through discussion and additional video content. Importantly, students are steered towards making decisions regarding the above dilemmas on their own before engaging with the true choices of the families and the effects that these decisions engendered on Israeli and Palestinian society.
Drama Roles - Setting the Scene - 35 minutes
To facilitate the process, the events were divided into two different scenes with a total of two student actors for each situation. Four student volunteers were selected and provided around five minutes to study their roles. Once the pairs were ready, they came to the front of the class to perform their respective scenes. The remaining students were assigned the task of observing the situations and taking notes on their reactions.
1. Situation one involves a discussion at the hospital between Ismael and a doctor. After students finished acting out the scene, discussion was directed towards reviewing the events and decisions that transpired, articulating the feelings/reactions of the actors and the audience, and contemplating whether the situation was realistic and why/why not. My class was also asked about the decision that they think the parents settled on. And students finally considered whether they would want their organs donated and if they would impose restrictions on who could receive them. Around 15-20 minutes was devoted to this part.
The roles are:
Ismael: You are the Arab father of a young boy (Ahmed) who is near death because he was shot by a soldier from Israel’s military while playing with a toy gun outside (the soldier mistakenly thought it was a real gun). You are devastated but want your son’s legacy to live on. The doctor at the hospital tries to persuade you to donate the child’s organs so that other children can be saved. He tells you that these organs could be provided to save the lives of all children – Arab, Jewish Israeli, and other ethnic and religious groups. You contemplate this decision with the doctor. And you eventually agree to donate most of the boy’s organs but express uncertainty to the doctor about whether you want to donate his heart and whether there should be restrictions on who can receive the organs (e.g. Jewish children). He continues to try to persuade you and you make two major decisions.
Doctor: You are a doctor at a hospital that has just admitted a young Arab boy patient (Ahmed) who is near certain death. He was shot by a soldier from Israel’s military while playing with a toy gun outside (the soldier mistakenly thought it was a real gun). The father, Ismael, is devastated though you attempt to persuade him to agree to donate the child’s organs so that other children may be saved. You inform him that the organs could be provided to children from within the Arab community but also the Jewish Israeli community as there are many seriously ill children . You eventually convince him to donate most of the boy’s organs but the father expresses uncertainty about whether he wants to donate his heart and whether there should be restrictions on who can receive the organs (e.g. Jewish children). You continue to try to persuade him to donate organs to any child in need and to give the boy’s heart too.
2. Situation two encompasses a discussion between Yaakov Levinson and his father. After the situation was performed, the student audience noted their observations of what happened. Like before, we then discussed the feelings/reactions of the actors and the audience and contemplated whether the situation was realistic and why/why not. My class was also asked about the decision that they think the parents settled on. And students finally considered whether they would impose any restriction on who they'd receive an organ from: Criminals? Someone they previously feuded with? Around 15 minutes was devoted to this part.
The roles are:
Levinson: you are the Orthodox Jewish father of a girl suffering from kidney disease. She must receive a kidney transplant soon in order to survive. You consider whether you would prefer the organ to come from a Jewish person or whether it would be okay if it comes from a Muslim Arab. You contemplate the decision with your father.
Grandfather: you are the Orthodox Jewish grandfather of a girl suffering from kidney disease. She must receive a kidney transplant soon in order to survive. Your son (the girl’s father), Levinson, is considering whether he would prefer the organ to come from a Jewish person or whether it would be okay if it comes from a Muslim Arab. You contemplate the decision with your son.
Resolution - 20 minutes
After the reflections are complete, students can learn more about the case the activity was based on and the decisions that were made by the concerned individuals.
1. Play the video The Gifts of Life | Wide Angle from PBS. Students consider: What decisions were made? How did they compare to your own decisions? 2. Students should be informed that Levinson later apologized to Ismael Khatib for his comments and expressed his gratitude for the organ donation. They can compare and contrast the lives of the two fathers through the video In Search of Peace | Wide Angle.
3. For class discussion: can an event like that of Ahmed Khatib bring about peace in a protracted conflict? What are other historical or contemporary examples of tragedies that ultimately brought about positive change?
4. Present the following statement from Ahmed's mother and elicit student responses. How was the organ donation an act of resistance? "To give away his organs was a different kind of resistance...Violence against violence is worthless. Maybe this will reach the ears of the whole world so they can distinguish between just and unjust. Maybe the Israelis will think of us differently. Maybe just one Israeli will decide not to shoot." 5. Explain that the move to donate Ahmed's organs received praise from both Israeli and Palestinian officials. Students can extend their engagement with the topic through an article ("Ahmed's gift of life") in The Guardian.
Reflection
My experience with drama in the classroom was a constructive one and I take the view that it can function as one part of a broader social studies learning toolkit. During the activity, students established a connection to the lives of the different individuals in a manner not possible if they had simply read a newspaper article or viewed video materials. They were also personally concerned about the outcomes and felt some ownership over events. And through this process, students not only enhanced their understanding of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and its consequences, but they also worked out questions about ethics, challenged their assumptions about Israelis and Palestinians, and gained appreciation for differing viewpoints that surround conflict zones. Piquing students' interest in the Israel-Palestine conflict more generally, the activity also set the scene for further engagement with the history of the conflict and contemporary issues (e.g. Settlements, Hamas) shaping the conflict.
What was particularly interesting is that my different classes reached quite different outcomes. In this regard, students said it was a challenge to approximate how exactly the factors (e.g. religion or violence) of the conflict would shape the decisions. In some cases, the students representing Ismael decided to donate organs to both Arabs and Jews and in others to only Arabs. And some students even assumed the Orthodox Jewish father would reject the life-saving organ for his daughter, which created distressing and uncomfortable emotions for both the actors and the audience.
Some students thought that the barriers of hatred, conflict, religion, and ethnicity would be impossible to look past, especially for Ismael since his son had just died. Others though thought that the fact that children were involved would steer the families towards making reasonable decisions. In light of that, students said that some of their assumptions were wrong and they were a little surprised and satisfied that the different families donated/accepted the transplants.
Students overall appreciated the opportunity to move away from the conflict as an abstract process and see how individual lives are affected by and shaping it. And some students hadn't really thought of "good deeds" as being an act of resistance before. Some students though mentioned that they struggled with precisely representing some of the people – particularly the Orthodox Jewish father and grandfather as they weren’t sure what it meant to be an Orthodox Jew. And some weren’t sure how important a kidney transplant is to someone with kidney disease. In this vein, it would be beneficial to ensure that students taking on these roles are familiarized with these concepts/practices during preparation.