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Teaching During Ramadan
In the last few years of my life I’ve found it increasingly difficult to burn off that late night pizza slice or the friday burger at lunch. So earlier this year I decided that I would give this intermittent fasting thing a try. For roughly 8 weeks I woke up, chugged a bottle of water, took my morning shower and, in the twenty to thirty minutes between getting out of the shower and getting out the front door for work, tried to get another bottle of water in my system. And although I have not given up on this strict intermittent consumption routine, a few things have remained: I don’t automatically wake up and feel the necessity to eat breakfast and I drink a shit load of water. And of course, like most other things that I experience, I shared my small dietary journey with my students.
My daily “fasts” quickly became a light-hearted point of contention between myself and a few of my Muslim students. “Mr. Morris, you know you aren’t really fasting. I mean, you’ve been drinking water all day. That’s not a true fast.”
“No, no.” I responded. “Water is allowed in fasting, it has no calories and doesn’t force any of my organs to process anything. I’m fasting for real for real — no gum, no tea. I’m fasting.”
We would go back and forth all in fun and then they hit me with big guns. “Okay, Mr. Morris, you should fast with us during Ramadan.” Never being one to…
