Meet San Leandro's Own Egyptologist

School is out, but if you're looking forward to educational ideas for the summer and the coming fall, think Egypt.

It’s more than just spooky fun with mummies and hieroglyphs. Using the kid-friendly aspects of Egypt as a hook, lessons can get students asking how and why human beings developed civilization, says San Leandro's Lisa Schwappach-Shirriff of the American Research Center in Egypt (ARCE).

ARCE's , based at , has just launched a free volunteer program to send trained Egyptologists into Bay Area classrooms. The organization is eager to get the word out before fall, because teachers make their lesson plans during the summer.

In sixth grade, every student in California public schools learns about ancient Egypt. Students have fun with such tasks as learning to write their names in Egyptian, an early written language that developed from picture signs. Teachers use this as an entrée to talk about the origins of civilization.

“The kids go on to ask themselves, ‘Why do you need language? Can you have government without language?’” Schwappach-Shirriff said. “There’s just enough that’s really strange to get them interested, and just enough that’s just like us to make the Egyptians relatable." 

Schwappach-Shirriff, formerly assistant director of the Rosicrucian Egyptian Museum in San Jose, reinstalled that museum’s collections to help visitors better understand daily life, the afterlife and kingship in the time of the pharaohs. She also spoke to thousands of kids in school groups. Now a mom of two small children, she volunteers her time with ARCE.

In fact, ancient Egypt is one of seven ancient civilizations studied in California sixth-grade classrooms and the only one based on the African continent (the others are Mesopotamia, Israel, India, China, Greece and Rome). But teachers say it is by far the most popular.

"What 11- or 12-year-old doesn't like mummies, pyramids, and tombs?" asked Sarah Stickle of , who invited ARCE-NorCal Egyptologist Vicky Jensen into her classroom last month. Stickle, like many teachers, likes ancient Egypt almost as much as her students do. She collected hieroglyphic rubber stamps and read up on archaeological discoveries. But Stickle said there's nothing like having a real archaeologist come into the classroom.

"Having Vicky come speak and show photographs of her digs in Egypt makes it all the more real for the students," Stickle said. "It's a great addition for our students to see that the history of Egypt  — and all histories, really — is still being ."

"The study of history in middle school is almost always accompanied by the question: "Why does it matter now?" Seeing a real-life historian helps to answer that, and the questions the students end up asking and getting answered are deeper and more thoughtful." Stickle said.

“In the larger sense, the curriculum helps them to understand other people. If kids can relate to people who lived 3,000 years ago and halfway across the world, how can they hate their neighbors?” said Schwappach-Shirriff.

Jensen, a doctoral student at UC Berkeley, found the talk a boost to her ego.

"One kid raised his hand at the end and asked, 'Are you a famous archaeologist?' I said, 'Brian, you rock!'" 

Schwappach-Shirriff's Egypt bug bit in 1979, when as a youngster she went with her father to the traveling King Tut show at the de Young Museum in San Francisco. Her father, who was blind, camped overnight at a San Rafael department store to procure the tickets. Because he was disabled, the de Young staff gave the family a special tour.

“I seem to remember that he was given objects to touch and to handle—they must have been replicas, but from then on I was hooked,” Schwappach-Shirriff said. Luckily for her, Cal has one of the few Egyptology programs in North America. Prolific Egyptologist George Reisner was affiliated with Cal, as was KV55 rediscoverer Kent Weeks of Discovery Channel fame. Cal’s Near Eastern Studies department is now led by Egyptologist Carol Redmount, who excavates at El Hibeh and trains a new generation of scholars.

“I didn’t think I could ever get a job in the field, but it was the only thing I was ever really interested in,” Schwappach-Shirriff said. She got the Rosicrucian job after striking up a conversation with a woman at the museum’s bookstore and gift shop. 

Jensen, of Alameda, and Schwappach-Shirriff are among several ARCE members volunteering to go into schools. Others include Al Berens, president of the chapter, who lives in Redwood City and trained in Egyptology at the University of Manchester, and Dr. Cindy Ausec, who has a Ph.D. from UC Berkeley, lives in Concord and teaches at Monterey Peninsula College and Sonoma State.

Field work in Egypt, classroom talks at home

A lot of Egyptological field work was canceled this year because of the revolution in Egypt and its aftermath — for example, it's no longer clear who should sign off on many researchers' permits. But  Berens said ARCE planned its speakers' program long before events conspired to keep researchers home. 

Rather, he said, the outreach is part of ARCE's mission to "foster broader knowledge among the general public, and strengthen American-Egyptian cultural ties."

"Contemporary Egypt is both religious and secular, Muslim and Christian, and modern but historically conservative," Berens said. Its ancient sages "deeply influenced Judaeo-Christian thought, and, through the Greek interactions with ancient Egypt, had an impact on fields such as medicine, architecture, and art. Their ancient material culture influenced furniture and cabinet making, bee keeping, animal breeding, crop irrigation, the university system and the cosmetics industry."

Berens said he knows several people in and out of ARCE who have been to Egypt since the revolution and were warmly welcomed. It's mainly the disruption to the bureaucratic apparatus that makes fieldwork difficult there now, he said.

The volunteers will divide speaking duties among themselves in line with their own work and other commitments. Before they visit a school, they like to talk to the teacher beforehand, to get a sense of how they can complement his or her work.

K-12 teachers who would like to have a free ARCE guest speaker visit a classroom should contact Berens at hebsed@comcast.net.