EDUCATION
Rising with Resilience A retreat for teachers designed to provide professional and spiritual development to full-time Islamic school leaders across the nation BY SHAZA KHAN
T
he challenges of 2020 gave all of us the opportunity to prove that necessity is the mother of invention. The pandemic created multilayered problems that caused Islamic organizations and schools to rethink their “normal” and reinvent how they would go about delivering their core programs and services— or enhance them to meet the new needs of their constituents. The work that the Islamic Schools League of America (ISLA; www.theisla.org) does is no different. With the new set of challenges presented by Covid-19, ISLA had to rethink how they deliver on an annual tradition, the ISLA Leadership Retreat, designed to provide professional and spiritual development to full-time Islamic school leaders across the nation. This year’s 9th annual ISLA Leadership Retreat was planned to take place right before the presidential elections in the last weeks of October 2020 at the Diyanet Center of America (https://diyanetamerica.org), only a 30-minute drive from Washington,
D.C. ISLA’s executive director had visited the location, planned out the lodging and conference logistics and was working with the program committee to integrate elements of nature-based excursions, team-building activities and a “field trip” to the Capitol and the Nation’s Mosque in the heart of the city. The theme of the retreat would be related
IF THERE WAS ANY ONE WORD THAT COULD CAPTURE THE SPIRIT OF OUR ISLAMIC SCHOOL EDUCATORS AMIDST ALL OF THE CHAOS AND CRISIS CREATED BY COVID-19, IT WAS “RESILIENCE.”
to fostering diversity, equity and inclusion in Islamic schools. Yet, in March 2020 when WHO officially declared Covid-19 a pandemic, ISLA indefinitely postponed the event. They refocused their energies on providing immediate support to Islamic school leaders and teachers to help them transition to remote and hybrid learning, fundraising during a pandemic, accessing federal emergency funding and exploring their own role and responsibility around racism in the United States and within our Islamic institutions. There was little time to reconsider the ISLA Leadership Retreat, which has been a tradition for nine years. However, as things started to quiet down (relatively speaking) by November, the organization reconvened its program committee and explored how it could create an event that could help Islamic school educators reflect on, appreciate and celebrate the challenges they faced and overcame in this historic year. If there was any one word that could capture the spirit of our Islamic school educators amidst all of the chaos and crisis created by Covid-19, it was “Resilience.” In spite of everything else happening in the world, Islamic school teachers and leaders showed up every day to provide young people with consistency, community and social and emotional support to help them navigate through these difficult times. For several months at the start of the new academic year, administrators participated in weekly meetings hosted by ISLA to connect and learn from one another, and teachers attended weekly “Teach with Tech” workshops. Their persistent efforts to meet the needs of their students were remarkable, even as many struggled with personal health concerns and anxieties experienced by the broader public. While typically the ISLA Leadership Retreat takes place in a natural setting, away from the hustle and bustle of everyday life, and occurs over an entire weekend with physical activities and team building opportunities, there was no such option for the ISLA Leadership Retreat 2020; it had to be virtual. Given the “Zoom fatigue” that everyone was experiencing, ISLA decided to host a 2-hour event in place of its traditional retreat that would be upbeat and fun. Over 75 participants attended the virtual retreat. The program theme was “Rising with Resilience.” Towards this end, educators were requested to send in a brief video to reflect on what helped them remain resilient in 2020.
MARCH/APRIL 2021 ISLAMIC HORIZONS 47
