Instructor
Dr. Deena Amiry
Dr. Deena Amiry earned her B.S. from Georgetown University with a certificate in education and a medal for outstanding achievement in student teaching. She earned her Masters’ degree from Middlebury College and her Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania in Romance Languages, where she served as a lecturer of French language and literature. Dr. Amiry worked in several private schools in the United States, including the prestigious Dalton School in New York City. At Dalton, alongside teaching responsibilities, Dr. Amiry served as Dean of the 9th grade and department chair of middle and high school foreign languages.
In Egypt, Dr. Deena Amiry co-founded and headed the International School of Egypt in New Cairo in 2009. In 2012, Dr. Deena moved on and founded the Young Scholars of Egypt (YSE) microschool, an educational program for children ages 3-18 that aims to provide students with an education that prepares them for the 21st century. In 2019, alongside ACT’s founding team, Dr. Deena brought YSE under ACT’s umbrella to create a network of connected microschools.
About the course
The Culture Kitchen: Destination Africa offers an opportunity for families to learn together about the culture and cuisine of four African countries: Tunisia, Ethiopia, South Africa, and Nigeria. Students are invited to learn about the countries and their cuisines through interactive PowerPoints and videos. The videos feature kids, ages 9-15, cooking the featured dishes of the four countries and discussing what they learned about the countries through their research.
Finally, the course offers a math extension, meant to help students understand and put into context the way that units of measurement can be converted in a recipe (cups to grams, for example).
While, certainly, this course offers academic value, with its focus on Social Studies, Literacy, and Math, its ultimate value goes beyond academics. The course seeks to help students become better global citizens by learning about a country in depth; it pushes them to be risk takers by trying a new and different dish; finally, it opens the door to developing an important life skill, cooking.
All dishes in the Culture Kitchen are vegetarian or have vegetarian substitutes.
This course is appropriate for students ages 8+.