The library of the Educational Research and Development Programme (ERDP) / A. M. Qattan Foundation (AMQF) organised cultural events in March 2018. These brought together writers, researchers, teachers, and school students. The ERDP seeks to develop the library function into a main source of knowledge and a space for high quality activities organised on a regular basis.
The importance of reading
On Wednesday, 7 March 2018, the ERDP hosted students and teachers of the Hamidi al-Barghouthi Secondary Girls School in Abud. Muhannad Abdul Hamid, a research and journalist, presented a seminar on the importance of reading.
Abdul Hamid shared with the students his reading experience since he was young. Encourged by his teacher, Abdul Hamid discovered the imaginary world of books and gained a deeper understanding of the reality of society as he analysed the characters and protagonists of novels. Never stop learning is the most significant lesson Abdul Hamid learned in college and liked to transmit to student. According to Abdul Hamid, reading is the measure of the progress of nations. It enables readers to listen to others and be open to new experiences.
The seminar also included a presentation of models from the Arab and Islamic history, demonstrating the importance of knowledge and reading. It also featured a brief overview of current worldwide patronage of reading as well as scientific and literary production.
Azmi Shunnarah, ERDP Library Unit Head, made a presentation, introducing the bibliographic information of books and explaining how books can be found in the library. Shunnarah also made a briefing note on the difference between types of publications, including dictionaries, encyclopaedias, books, journals, and magazines.
Discussion of stories and novels
On Tuesday, 13 March 2018, the ERDP Library organised a session to discuss The Lady’s Coat, a collection of stories, with students of the Al-Mustaqbal School in Ramallah. The presentation was made Mays Dagher, winner of the Young Writer of the Year Award 2015. The Young Writer Competition has been organised by the AMQF since 2000.
Children had read excerpts of the collection and raised questions to Dagher. They conversed with her about the content and format of the stories. Issues which gave rise to questions by students included using combination of colloquial and standard Arabic and incorporating sarcasm to create a stronger meaning. Dagher also talked about how ideas were inspired by her personal and social reality as well as by her readings since early age. She also elaborated on her primary motive to write the collection, namely, to tell stories about the two-faceted human nature: the visible and the invisible.
In another meeting held on Thursday, 29 March 2018, Dagher discussed her novel Forced Vacation with students of the Bir Zeit Primary School. This novel is addressed to young adults. Both the writer and the ERDP Library seek to improve the literary and critical sense among children and young adults and to promote their interest in reading and creative writing.
Writer Aisha Odeh also introduced her novel The Cost of the Sun and story collection A Different Day in a session with students of the Qabalan Boys School in Nablus. In several stories of her collection, Odeh is inspired by diaries of the Palestinian man and movement at checkpoints. The Cost of the Sun is an autobiography that falls under the category of the prions literature. In this novel, the writer documents incidents that took place in prisons of the Israeli occupy authorities. In the final chapter “A New Birth”, the narrator says: “Is this the moment of birth? Am I the baby who rears its head and coming out of life? I wish to scream… a scream of joy of freedom after a life of imprisonment which was as stagnant as the water in a swamp, a scream of pleasure with perseverance in spite of everything.”
Imagination and creativity
Via videoconference, male and female teachers of the Khan Yunis Teacher Forum, a teacher initiative supervised by the AMQF, participated in a seminar with Amin Darawsheh, a research from Ramallah. The seminar was organised on Saturday, 17 March 2018.
The seminar revolved around Lev Vygotsky’s Imagination and Creativity in Childhood. Darawsheh used a reflective reading approach to explore content of the booklet. Participants asserted they were in dire need for these concepts. In their opinion, the school environment in Palestine is inadequate in terms of the range of experiences it offers to children. Creativity needs to be transformed into a day-to-day method and practice.
Imagination and Creativity in Childhood establishes that imagination lays the foundation for all creative activities. Vygotsky raises questions about how creative activity develops, the causes of creative activity, and the psychological mechanism in which imagination is grounded. Vygotsky then discusses how children’s imagination is different from adults’ and investigates the difficulties associated with creativity.
Vygotsky explains why children are strongly attached to painting at an early stage of their lives. Overtime, however, children’s attachment to painting dwindles and is replaced by verbal and literary creativity during adulthood. In addition to the difference between, and development of, the oral and written language, Vygotsky elaborated on why children at school age identify with creative theatre and drama.
This activity is one in a series of seminars on educational publications, including books or articles published in the Ru’a Tarbawiyya Quarterly. These seminars used to be supervised by the Khan Yunis Teacher Forum.
Workshop on creative writing
In a similar vein, the creative writing workshop moderated by Ziyad Khaddash, a teacher and writer, at the Qalandiya Primary Girls School was not the first, and will not be the last, to be jointly organised by the ERDP Library and Khaddash. The ERDP Library will hold similar encounters with several schools over months to come.
Organised on Monday, 26 March 2018, the workshop brought together students of the 7th, 8th and 9th grades. The students wrote their own texts in light of their interaction with Khaddash.