Salah and Lama
A Day in the Life
Lama We've been traveling a lot, so we haven't been on schedule, but usually I have a schedule for me and my daughter and for my husband. We wake up early, before the sunrise. We pray and then Salah starts getting ready to go to work. I would go back to bed for an hour until it's time to wake Aminah up. Usually I would wake her up at 8:30 AM. Then I make breakfast and we eat together. I try to do three hours of studying together so I can teach Aminah a bit of Arabic and a bit of English. Between each half hour, I give her a break. We start the first half hour studying and then the next half an hour, t is play time between Mommy and Aminah or Aminah with electronics or something. Then the next half an hour, it is studying and then playtime again. Then she takes a nap for two or three hours. When she's napping, I try to relax or catch up on things. I'm cleaning up the assigned rooms in the house that day. Watch a Korean drama. Talk to family. Sometimes reading. Then Aminah wakes up, eat lunch. Then we do an hour of arts and crafts in the kitchen. While she's doing that I am cooking, preparing dinner and taking care of the kitchen. By the time we're done with cooking and her arts and crafts, her dad comes home. We have dinner together. Then after dinner, I'm taking care of the dishes. Salah will take Aminah, go to her playroom, spend Daddy and I time together. We give her a bath, read her a story, and put her to bed by 8:30 or 9 PM. Then we try to spend time together watching something together or reading something together. If it's not on the schedule, then just random. We'd be there watching shows or taking care of the laundry. It would be either too much work or too much laziness. Salah Monday, Wednesday and Fridays I'll be attending class. After that, I'll be in my office or in the lab working on my project. Every once in a while, I have to travel to do my project. We try to go as a family. We try to do things as much as possible as a family. The Muslim Community in Lafayette
Lafayette is a perfect size town. Everything is nearby. You don't have to deal with a lot of traffic in comparison to New Jersey because that's where we were before. Anything you want to do, you can. From the Muslim community perspective, there's a lot of potential. Our community is very small, and is in its infancy. The community is in the beginning phases. There are no strong interfaith activities. There is nothing in a sense. It's up to us to create it. There are a lot of things that need to be done so that makes it fun in a sense of being able to do that. Any role you want to do, any way you want to make a difference, it's possible. There is no true outreach with other communities. The Muslim community here has a lot of international students, so we have a lot of students who come and go and they don't settle here. You don't have a lot of Muslim families who have been living here for the past 20 or 30 years. Our youth, we're trying to make them understand that they're Muslim Americans and they can be both. They can be completely American and immerse within the culture, but at the same time not forget their religion. We don't have many strong programs for our youth, which leads to them having identity crisis like, "Do I have to act in a certain way? Do I have to act in a specific way? Do I have to choose whether I am American or a Muslim, one of the two? Why can't I combine both?" In terms of our community, it has a lot of potential to grow by creating programs for the youth, for the elders, also doing programs like interfaith dialogs and trying to engage with other communities, get to know them. Since we have a lot of people who are internationals, what happens is that they still have that mindset from back home, that we're going to just be here alone in their own bubble and not interact or deal with any other different kind of people. Our children and us, we are first interact with these people, with different people, with people from different cultures and backgrounds. I went to a public school so I was forced to interact and learn and know. You cannot keep our children in a bubble and protect them from not knowing about different cultures or different people or different backgrounds. It's inevitable. It will happen. In our community, they're not very flexible, and they don't work around this kind of thing so it has a lot of potential to grow like other communities. There are many Muslim communities that have grown actually. They have a lot of good programs to help their youth, help their elders, help adults interact with other communities, learn, bring them into the mosque, learn about Muslims and go to their churches and synagogues. We’ve been very involved in a lot of different ways. I was president of the MSA. I started a youth group here. I worked in the Sunday school. I was head of that for two years. Now I'm starting a new organization for graduate students. Our first event is in two weeks at the Discovery Learning Research Center. It’s a talk show/speed networking. What we're doing is that we're going to interview Muslims who are faculty or in industry in a talk show setting. They will get to talk about their careers and the challenges they face both in general or from being a Muslim. Then after that, we want to do a speed networking session among the audience, where they get to know each other. 
Growing Up: Salah
My growing up was very different. I was born in Jordan, but I was born to an American mother. My mother is originally from Kansas. I grew up all over the place. I lived for a few years in Jordan, then a few years in the US, then back to Jordan, then Pakistan, then New Jersey, then a bit in Kansas, then back to New Jersey. In a sense, I've never had that struggle because we moved so much. We really depended on ourselves, I would say. We just became very insulated into who we are. I never had that crisis of American versus Muslim I would say. I've never really fit in anywhere. When I lived in Jordan, they called me American. When I lived in Pakistan, they called me Palestinian. When I lived in America, they called me Jordanian. I've never really fit in with any crowd. In a sense, I've just formed my own crowd. That's why I'd say growing up, I didn't have that same kind of challenges. Also, since my uncle is from Kansas and he's Christian, I was already within that multi-religious, multi-cultural dynamic. It feels like a second nature to me. With my uncle, there used to be a lot of religious conversations initially when we were younger. We've sort of, kind of accepted that we're not going to convince the other, so now it's more politics. We found out we love each other. We have a lot of fun. We tend to tease each other a lot. My uncle comes from a very conservative, Christian mindset. It's a fun contrast just arguing about global warming, Trump or Cruz or whoever it is. It’s interesting. My mom told me is that after marrying my father, her husband, she decided to investigate both religions in depth so she read the Bible and the Qur’an side by side. After two years, she just felt that the Qur’an was the truth and she decided to convert. Basically she converted on her own terms. It was hard for her. Her brother stopped talking to her for a while. For about ten years, they stopped talking to each other. Her mother was funny about it. She said, "I knew you were going to convert." Her father was most understanding, and that's why she was always very close to my granddad. Before my granddad passed away, he told her that he was very proud of the decisions that she's made in her life. It meant a lot to her. That's her story of conversion. When he passed away, I think that was the biggest struggle that she's faced. In Jordan, anybody who goes to school most likely goes to private school because the public schools are not well funded. In Pakistan, I also went to private school because they had English language. Actually where I learned most of my English was in Pakistan. Even though since I was born, my mother had English books and always spoke to us English, most of the time in Jordan I picked up Arabic faster than English. Then that switched when I moved to Pakistan. Now I'm more fluent in English than I am in Arabic. In the US, in New Jersey, I went to private school for a year, but then my father just put me through community college. I started community college when I was fifteen. 
Meeting and Marrying
Lama We were at a stage where we thought we were ready to get married. A mutual friend of our families introduced us to each other. It's amazing how things work out. Within the year, we got married and moved to Indiana here to live and study at the university. We were not going to have a split family, one here, one there. I was studying at Montclair Community College in New Jersey when we met and Salah was at Purdue. It would have been too difficult. Our engagement was a long-distance relationship, but whenever we would have holidays or off, we would try to fly and visit each other. It was mostly him flying to visit us, but I did visit him once. So I studied at Purdue. I finished in 2013, and here we are. Salah I graduated when I was about nineteen from college. I was ready to get married after that so I told my mom to look for me. I wasn't really interested in doing my own looking. My mom spent basically four years trying to find that perfect person for me. Each time we talked with somebody, it just would not work out. Just before I got to know Lama, my mom found another person for me. I went and booked the flight to meet that person and a week before I was supposed to meet that person, she cancelled on me. She said she's no longer interested in getting married. So I said, "I booked the flight anyway. Might as well just fly and see my parents." That was during the fall break. It was just four days. I said, "I'll spend my time and just visit my parents." I fly in and the moment I get off the airplane, my mom calls me and said, "Come quick. Take the taxi and come quickly because I just got a call from somebody who knows somebody who has a daughter that's ready to get married." That same night, my mom went to visit the family. Then the next night, I went and visited the family. Then the third night, my mother and my sister Sara and her husband and their kids visited. The fourth day I flew back, but that was just enough to make the connection. You really don't know how things are going to happen. When things click, they click really quickly. We had a lot of the same values. It was funny. She was talking about organic chemistry and how she was struggling with that. I fell in love with her then. Everything just clicked. Lama Because I came from a very cultural background and while Salah came from the opposite spectrum, not cultural at all, we had a lot of clashes. We had to build a basis in our relationship in terms of our values. What do we go back to when we have a difference of opinion? Is it our ethics? Is it our values based on our judgement? What is it that we go back to to find a common ground between us? He doesn't understand a lot of the cultural things. For me, the culture was like religion. It's equal value. If you follow the religion, you follow the culture even if you don't understand why. This is how it is. I had to get out of the ingrained culture. The things that we believe religion approved of in terms of culture, then it's okay to go with. Things that religion did not approve of, then we cross if they're cultural. One example is when we have guests come over. In Arab culture, when a guest comes over to visit you, you give them everything that's the best that you have. You cook the best food. You treat them the best way like they're in a five-star hotel. You really take care of them properly. You do that for the first three or four days. Then they become part of the family, and you do the normal things that you would do for your family. I guess from Salah’s perspective, it was too extravagant and too lavish. If we cannot afford it, then why would we put ourselves in such a situation? Culturally, even if you cannot afford it, you have to. It is what it is. That's something that we're still trying to work on. We try to give our best, but at the same time as long as it's not in an extreme way where it's on the expense of our household and that would put us in too much debt. That's an example of something positive with our culture. An example of something that isn’t so positive is within our Arab culture, everyone is in everybody’s business. Everyone has to know all the details about someone's life. That's something not necessary. Sometimes you want to have your own privacy. Because Salah’s not cultural like me, I realize sometimes things that we talk about in the privacy of our home or that we want to do as a family alone, me, him and our daughter, then that's for us only. I don't have to share it with my aunt and my cousin. That's something that I like about being not too cultural is that it gives us a bit of privacy that we didn't have growing up. Even though my mom had her own home with my dad and my siblings, she never had her own privacy until she came to the States. When we lived in Jordan, I remember every weekend, starting on Thursday (the weekend was Thursday, Friday and Saturday), we would have the whole family visiting our home. The whole family. You have people opening up the fridge eating whatever they want. They don't clean up after themselves. Everything is a mess. Our room where we had all the toys, all the kids would go play in it and they would take the toys out. Kids would be fighting. Mama had no control. It would be total chaos. No control over the house whatsoever. That's something that never happens here. In Jordan, the family would be snooping around in our business, knowing even the smallest details. The most intimate details, they would know it. It would be really awkward. That's something cultural that I don't like it at all and I'm planning to erase it from my family. You will have your privacy. It's good to share things with your parents, but the things that you want to share, not necessarily every single detail of everything. Whatever Aminah is comfortable with and she wants to share with us, go ahead. Otherwise, I'm not going to force anything. |
I'm Salah. I'm a graduate student here. I'm studying agricultural engineering. Hopefully I'll be finishing my PhD this year. I work in grain storage. I am looking at it from the safety perspective. Every year, you have thirty to forty people that get injured or killed, literally drowning in grain. I have a passion for working with people. I just need to think about how can I find a job where it gives me ability to work in my passion.
My name is Lama. I used to be a student at Purdue University. I studied anthropology. I graduated in 2014, when my daughter, Aminah, was a year old. She was born in 2013. I started doing my master's at Ball State University, studying executive development and public services because I was thinking of going into applied anthropology. But I stopped when I got pregnant. I wanted to relax and give myself more time to spend with my daughter before the next baby comes. I am a housewife right now. I like the concept of working in a lab so I'm thinking maybe I will go into forensic anthropology, but none of the universities around us have strong programs for forensic anthropology. Hopefully we'll move somewhere where there's a strong program and I'll be able to finish my studies and actually work in an environment that's not very demanding. A job where I can work from, for example, 8 AM to 3 PM and come back home after my kids come from school or daycare and I can spend time with them, take care of them, and cook for them. I haven't decided anything or started trying to figure out things honestly, what would be best for us, what would be best for me. We're still trying to figure it out. I keep telling Salah that maybe we should look for jobs around the East Coast because both our families are in New Jersey. But, he loves Lafayette and Indiana. He wants to stay here as long as possible. Even retire here. For me, I'm not sure I can deal with that. I want to leave. I've enjoyed my five years here, but I want to go back, stay with the family. It's nice to have family around. They help around a lot. You can always visit. You enjoy yourself. Here we're so lonely and isolated. It gets boring. We always have to keep ourselves occupied and busy either with Aminah's schedule, taking her to the library or trying to teach her new things or busy with things that Salah has to do or with the community here. With family, it's different. But, we don't have any specific area in mind yet for where he's going to work because we're trying to leave his options open until he finds a job because we're not sure where he's going to find this job. We're at that stage where we have to answer a lot of questions. We're still trying to figure out ourselves. We're having two children and we're still trying to figure ourselves out. We're enjoying ourselves also at the same time. We're trying to make sure that work, life, career, all of these do not consume our minds all the time. It was Salah’s idea actually that we explore the state parks here in Indiana. I was very hesitant at the very beginning just because of the fact that I wasn't sure what to expect. A lot of trees. I used to hike in high school. But, Aminah loves being outside. 
Growing Up: Lama
I was born in America. My parents came on visa to visit my uncle who was studying here. My mom was pregnant with me at the time. They stayed here for six months, or something like that, and she delivered me here. She stayed here for a month, two months after she delivered me. Then she decided with my dad to go back to Jordan. They were thinking about settling here because my uncle was already settled here, but they weren't sure about it. I have an older sister, and they left her behind in Jordan with my grandma. They didn't want to leave her for too long so they had to go back. They went back and I grew up in Jordan speaking only Arabic, no English even though I went to a private school. They teach you English, but British English grammar. They don't teach you how to speak the English language as part of your life. I didn't have any sort of identity crisis until I came to the United States because it's very diverse here. In Jordan, where I lived before, we're all the same culture. We're all Muslim. We're all the same religion. We cook the same food. We speak the same language, everything same, same, same. There is nothing different about us. When I came here, I didn’t know where I fit in. My dad tried to make us go to the mosque to interact with Arabs and Muslims, people who are from the same background as us, but to be truthful with you, we really didn't click with them because they grew up here and seemed more open minded and acted totally different than what we expected of Arabs and Muslims. Not that they weren't acting like Arabs and Muslims. They were, but there was also something different about them. For us, we couldn't click with them. We couldn't talk to them or socialize with them and blend in with them because they were just totally different from us. Even when it comes to the language, they prefer to speak in English even though they're Arabs and Muslims and knew how to speak in Arabic. For us, because we were not comfortable with English, we'd rather speak in Arabic. We had a lot of clashes that we actually stopped going to the mosque and stopped all of our interactions with the Muslim and Arab community. Through my high school experience, I was forced to interact with Americans and people from different backgrounds and became open-minded in our interactions and not judge people and treat each person as they treat us and deal with them in the way that they like. So, when we went to college and started seeing Muslims again and Arabs again, it became easier to interact with them because we could relate to them as Muslims and Arabs, and as Americans too. My family, because we came from overseas, there's a lot of culture, a lot of traditions, a lot of things that are set in stone that you have to follow. Breaking from that was a bit difficult, but not too difficult because we were at a stage where we were teenagers and were still building ourselves and learning about our surroundings and the people around us. I had a lot of struggles even though I came from a big Muslim community like New Jersey. How do I identify myself? As a Muslim only or as an Arab only from the Middle East or as American? I only realized that I am a Muslim American when I went back to Jordan in the Middle East to visit our families there. I had a cultural shock because I saw how different my mentality is from their mentalities, how actually being in American society opens you up. It makes you open minded about a lot of things and perspectives. You just learn not to judge others. You learn to be open to certain ideas as long as they don't harm you. I noticed that others, like my extended family in the Middle East, they're a bit more conservative without understanding why. They expect certain things in the culture to stay in a certain way, just following blindly, which can be a bit constrictive. My family immigrated to America in 2006, when I was in eighth grade. I lived in New Jersey until 2011 when I got married and came here to Indiana. My family is still there. My siblings are there. We all went to public schools since private schools are very expensive here. I come from a big family. We're eight children and with my parents we're ten. Since it's a very big family, it's very hard to send all of them to a private school. I went to a public school. There were no Muslims in the public school, no Arabs at all. We were taking normal classes, but we also were required to take an ESL class for the first year we were there just so we could pick up on the language. We already knew the language because we learned it overseas, but we just needed the push to speak it and then learn how to make the mistakes and just be comfortable in what we say. We took the ESL classes for the first year and then after that they didn't require them I guess. Being in a school where there were no Muslims and no Arabs to speak the Arabic language with, it forced us to interact with the other students and try to get to know them and let them know us. In the very beginning it was really hard. I used to sit in the classroom not talking to anyone, feeling very strange and feeling very different with my headscarf and someone who was coming from overseas. used to be very paranoid about the fact that they would think I am a stupid immigrant who doesn't know anything or doesn't know how to express herself. I was embarrassed about talking. I was afraid of making mistakes. I remember one time in math class, my professor put a problem on the board. Math is a universal language and when it comes to math and the sciences, I feel like the education overseas is much more advanced than here in the United States. The problem was something that I took in 7th or 6th grade, nothing new, but nobody knew how to solve. I was very conflicted about raising my hand and answering the question or not. Then I was like, "You know what? Let me just do it." I raised my hand and I got to do the problem. The funny thing is that I solved it correctly, but when you write in Arabic, you write from right to left. It's not from left to right. That's exactly what I did on the board. Everybody was watching. Then the professor was like, "Good job. You got the right answer, but in English you write from left to right, not from right to left." It was so funny. Ever since, I learned don't feel shy, don't feel embarrassed. My classmates and peers did not make fun of me because I wrote from right to left. They actually were impressed with the fact that I knew the answer and I solved the problem. They actually thought, "Wow. This girl is really smart." It's interesting how the relationships with people start forming after exposing yourself a bit to them and showing a bit of weakness I guess. Ever since, we've formed a lot of relationships with a lot of people. They were all nice. We even reached a point where we would talk about the differences and the similarities between Islam, Christianity, Judaism. I didn't feel embarrassed to tell the differences or talk about the similarities. It was really neat. This is a story that I always remember especially when interacting with people. Just having the courage for one minute to go on the board and solve a problem and seeing my peers and classmates' reactions to me. They liked that I solved it. They didn't judge me. They didn't look at the mistake that I did, but they were positive about it. That's the story that keeps coming back to me, especially when I'm in a new environment or I'm too scared about things, especially looking at everything that's happening in the world right now, what’s happening with the election, and he backlash that we're getting. I used to wake up sometimes having a panic attack about living in an area where there are not a lot of Muslims. I worry, “What if we get attacked? What if I'm walking with my daughter and someone attacks my child? What am I going to do?” It really scares me. Just seeing how what is happening with ISIS and the election and everything is portrayed in the media makes me insecure and more paranoid about the people around me and how they're going to react to me or talk to me or what they think of me. Just because I wear loose clothes and I cover my head, do they think of me as an oppressed woman? Do they think of me like a chair, not a human being? Sometimes when I look back at this story that happened with me in high school and how all these people proved me wrong when I just had a little bit of courage, it just makes me think that what I need to do is just keep convincing myself as long as I'm treating people with kindness and showing them who I am truly we'll be fine. When I look back at that story it gives me courage to be positive, to think kindly of people, to give them the benefit of the doubt. If something is meant to happen, then it's meant to happen. It's of my hands. I can only do the best that I can do and that's about it. There's nothing else I can do about it. 
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Raising Aminah
We’ve discussed a bit about whether to put Aminah in a private school, an Islamic school, where she interacts with Muslims and Arabs all the time, or in a public school, where she interacts with the Americans and learns about society. If we put her in an Islamic school, she's not going to interact with American society on a big scale until she reaches college and things open up even more. Salah is more interested in homeschooling.
Salah
I am not impressed with the school curriculum, public or even private actually. I want to design a curriculum where I can nurture her quest for knowledge so that it's not an even curriculum. She could be doing eighth grade science and fourth grade math or something like that, just let her go on her own time and passions. Also, I want her to start college early.
Lama
His sister is actually homeschooling right now with her 10-year-old kid. What I like about her style of homeschooling is that it's not limited to learning what's in the books. She takes him to museums and he could be learning about a specific thing, a specific culture, a specific civilization and what they create and stuff like that. At the same time, he can tell you, for example, the difference between so many birds and, for me, I cannot tell the difference between an eagle and another bird. It's amazing. He's learning about nature and stuff like that. All of it is included with the science and the math and the writing and English. For lack of a better word, it is easier for her to understand his passions and what he's interested in when he grows up and what would be the best for him to specialize in or study when he goes to university. That would make the process easier because for Salah, his dad helped choose his major (chemical engineering) when he decided to go to college.
Salah
After graduating with a bachelor’s degree in chemical engineering, I worked for several years. The last company I worked for was Johnson & Johnson, and I just wasn't happy, wasn't satisfied. It wasn't what I wanted to do. I started looking to graduate school. I applied to several, and Purdue, I was really impressed with their interdisciplinary program called Ecological Sciences and Engineering, ESE. I was really impressed with that because every other school, they put environmental under civil engineering, which, to me, did not make sense and the way they did it here at Purdue made a lot of sense. I applied and I got accepted. Then through that track, I ended up in agriculture.
Lama
I had a lot of pressure from my family to go into the sciences or teaching. To be truthful, I thought I would be good at the sciences. When I was in Jordan it fascinated me. However, when I came here and I had that language barrier, it was really hard for me to understand it and be fascinated with it as much as I used to be. My interest just dropped and then it became more of a chore studying biology. I was studying biology for two or three years before I changed my major to anthropology. I reached a point where I actually was discussing with my husband, "Should I continue in biology even though I hate it and honestly I am struggling with it just to please my family? Or, should I try to find something that I enjoy, but at the same time, there is no guarantee that I'm going to find a job in unless I do graduate studies and take higher studies?"
At the end of the day, it was not worth it doing something I hated. It's just too depressing and too stressful. It was too much on my mentality. I would study really hard and I would become very hopeful that I'm going to do good on this exam or on this quiz. Then when I take the exam or the quiz and I did not do well. Before I changed my major, I took a random class in anthropology because it was required by the university, and I loved it. I could relate to it more, learning about different civilizations, different cultures, different things, and the four main divisions: medical anthropology, linguistic, cultural and applied. I've actually realized after taking classes in the medical anthropology, which are very close to anatomy that it’s your fascination. With anatomy, I failed. With these other classes, I got an A. It's the teacher, but it's also your love of the topic itself.
I feel like with homeschooling, you can explore more of these things and you would be able to nurture the passions that your kids have. That's why I think with homeschooling, it might be a good idea. But then when I think about all the hard work that I have to put and how I have to be consistent and set on schedule and stuff like that, I start freaking out because we're very used to the system where you put your child in a school. They teach. They come home. You go through the material with them and that's it.
For you to teach them from scratch, what do I know? I'm not a teacher. I'm not specialized in this. What if I teach them something wrong? I would love to do homeschooling in a community where there is a support system with mothers who do homeschooling, not necessarily just Muslim mothers, so all of our kids can interact with each other and learn from each other and we can do trips together. If we don't have that option, then I would like to put her in an Islamic school until she is in middle school. Then after the high school and college, go to a public school. This way she would know the basics, our background, our religion, what's important to us when it comes to our values, how we're supposed to dress and why do we dress in a certain way. Then expose her to the society not at an early stage, but at the same time, not at a very late stage, so she would also learn about different people, different religions and see we have our differences and similarities. She would have her values and she would look at them and see what would oppose them too much and what would go along with them for her to recognize what's right, what's wrong. I feel like maybe starting a private school or an Islamic school for her and then going to public school would be good too so she would be exposed to both backgrounds. I don't know. We'll see.
Salah
I think there's only one thing that's important for the child to learn. That's the love of seeking knowledge. I think you can teach them that and it doesn't matter whether they were taught that Pluto was a planet or not.
Lama
Other than learning the language and knowing the basics and values of Islam, there aren’t a lot of things I want Aminah to learn. Those are the only two things I want to have set in stone for her, for her to know them properly. With religion and Islam, in my mind, it's going to help her navigate what's right and what's wrong in this life. There are some things acceptable, but not everything is acceptable. It's a controversial topic, but for us, it’s ok interact with the opposite gender as long as you're doing something that needs to be done. You're not just interacting with the opposite gender for no purpose, no goal. There has to be an outcome.
When it comes to cultural things, for example, within the Arab culture where I came from, a lot of girls wear the headscarf, which is also part of our religion, but they wear it for the sake of, part of culture. You just cover it on your head, and they don't understand why. What's the wisdom behind it? Why would you do that? Islamically why do you cover yourself? You do things without understanding why you're doing them. I want her to understand why she's doing something. I don't want her just to blindly follow without understanding why I'm doing this.
Salah
I think is what she's trying to say is we're not worried culturally.
We’ve discussed a bit about whether to put Aminah in a private school, an Islamic school, where she interacts with Muslims and Arabs all the time, or in a public school, where she interacts with the Americans and learns about society. If we put her in an Islamic school, she's not going to interact with American society on a big scale until she reaches college and things open up even more. Salah is more interested in homeschooling.
Salah
I am not impressed with the school curriculum, public or even private actually. I want to design a curriculum where I can nurture her quest for knowledge so that it's not an even curriculum. She could be doing eighth grade science and fourth grade math or something like that, just let her go on her own time and passions. Also, I want her to start college early.
Lama
His sister is actually homeschooling right now with her 10-year-old kid. What I like about her style of homeschooling is that it's not limited to learning what's in the books. She takes him to museums and he could be learning about a specific thing, a specific culture, a specific civilization and what they create and stuff like that. At the same time, he can tell you, for example, the difference between so many birds and, for me, I cannot tell the difference between an eagle and another bird. It's amazing. He's learning about nature and stuff like that. All of it is included with the science and the math and the writing and English. For lack of a better word, it is easier for her to understand his passions and what he's interested in when he grows up and what would be the best for him to specialize in or study when he goes to university. That would make the process easier because for Salah, his dad helped choose his major (chemical engineering) when he decided to go to college.
Salah
After graduating with a bachelor’s degree in chemical engineering, I worked for several years. The last company I worked for was Johnson & Johnson, and I just wasn't happy, wasn't satisfied. It wasn't what I wanted to do. I started looking to graduate school. I applied to several, and Purdue, I was really impressed with their interdisciplinary program called Ecological Sciences and Engineering, ESE. I was really impressed with that because every other school, they put environmental under civil engineering, which, to me, did not make sense and the way they did it here at Purdue made a lot of sense. I applied and I got accepted. Then through that track, I ended up in agriculture.
Lama
I had a lot of pressure from my family to go into the sciences or teaching. To be truthful, I thought I would be good at the sciences. When I was in Jordan it fascinated me. However, when I came here and I had that language barrier, it was really hard for me to understand it and be fascinated with it as much as I used to be. My interest just dropped and then it became more of a chore studying biology. I was studying biology for two or three years before I changed my major to anthropology. I reached a point where I actually was discussing with my husband, "Should I continue in biology even though I hate it and honestly I am struggling with it just to please my family? Or, should I try to find something that I enjoy, but at the same time, there is no guarantee that I'm going to find a job in unless I do graduate studies and take higher studies?"
At the end of the day, it was not worth it doing something I hated. It's just too depressing and too stressful. It was too much on my mentality. I would study really hard and I would become very hopeful that I'm going to do good on this exam or on this quiz. Then when I take the exam or the quiz and I did not do well. Before I changed my major, I took a random class in anthropology because it was required by the university, and I loved it. I could relate to it more, learning about different civilizations, different cultures, different things, and the four main divisions: medical anthropology, linguistic, cultural and applied. I've actually realized after taking classes in the medical anthropology, which are very close to anatomy that it’s your fascination. With anatomy, I failed. With these other classes, I got an A. It's the teacher, but it's also your love of the topic itself.
I feel like with homeschooling, you can explore more of these things and you would be able to nurture the passions that your kids have. That's why I think with homeschooling, it might be a good idea. But then when I think about all the hard work that I have to put and how I have to be consistent and set on schedule and stuff like that, I start freaking out because we're very used to the system where you put your child in a school. They teach. They come home. You go through the material with them and that's it.
For you to teach them from scratch, what do I know? I'm not a teacher. I'm not specialized in this. What if I teach them something wrong? I would love to do homeschooling in a community where there is a support system with mothers who do homeschooling, not necessarily just Muslim mothers, so all of our kids can interact with each other and learn from each other and we can do trips together. If we don't have that option, then I would like to put her in an Islamic school until she is in middle school. Then after the high school and college, go to a public school. This way she would know the basics, our background, our religion, what's important to us when it comes to our values, how we're supposed to dress and why do we dress in a certain way. Then expose her to the society not at an early stage, but at the same time, not at a very late stage, so she would also learn about different people, different religions and see we have our differences and similarities. She would have her values and she would look at them and see what would oppose them too much and what would go along with them for her to recognize what's right, what's wrong. I feel like maybe starting a private school or an Islamic school for her and then going to public school would be good too so she would be exposed to both backgrounds. I don't know. We'll see.
Salah
I think there's only one thing that's important for the child to learn. That's the love of seeking knowledge. I think you can teach them that and it doesn't matter whether they were taught that Pluto was a planet or not.
Lama
Other than learning the language and knowing the basics and values of Islam, there aren’t a lot of things I want Aminah to learn. Those are the only two things I want to have set in stone for her, for her to know them properly. With religion and Islam, in my mind, it's going to help her navigate what's right and what's wrong in this life. There are some things acceptable, but not everything is acceptable. It's a controversial topic, but for us, it’s ok interact with the opposite gender as long as you're doing something that needs to be done. You're not just interacting with the opposite gender for no purpose, no goal. There has to be an outcome.
When it comes to cultural things, for example, within the Arab culture where I came from, a lot of girls wear the headscarf, which is also part of our religion, but they wear it for the sake of, part of culture. You just cover it on your head, and they don't understand why. What's the wisdom behind it? Why would you do that? Islamically why do you cover yourself? You do things without understanding why you're doing them. I want her to understand why she's doing something. I don't want her just to blindly follow without understanding why I'm doing this.
Salah
I think is what she's trying to say is we're not worried culturally.
