Oct. 31 Inclusive Leadership and Religion

As a teacher, I’ve been nervous when students ask questions, or mention “God”, “Jesus”, or such in my classroom. I find myself walking on eggshells during the holidays. For ELD it’s important to teach vocabulary for the holidays that students experience in our country. I occasionally have students who do not celebrate holidays at all. Sometimes parents are adamant about what students can/cannot do. Sometimes this can be done without changing much and other times it requires greater shifts. I remember my son coming home from 3rd grade and announcing that EVERY kid in his class was Christian, because they all celebrated Christmas. This prompted a discussion about holidays, and how they have changed. I know many families who celebrate holidays, and traditions from more than one religion due to marriages within their family.

As an individual, I’ve experienced prejudice due to religion. As a child, I attended a few different churches. At age 9 when I decided to join a church, I was ostracized. I was no longer allowed to attend church activities with my friends, some of my friends were no longer allowed to play with me, and I was denied the awards I had earned in another church’s youth program. I remember thinking that surely God wouldn’t want people to act that way towards a child. I shrugged it off and continued with my decision. That was 1969. Ironically, in 1994, I taught a children’s summer program for one of the churches I had been excluded from as a child. I was asked to teach although I was still a member of the church I had joined at 9 years old.  As an adult, in 2000 there was an group in our school district who was actively trying to limit employees from my religion from getting hired because they thought there were ‘too many of them’ on staff and in higher-level district positions. Some of these people were friends and acquaintances who were not aware of my religious affiliation. Again, in 2012, there were verbal threats from an employer to fire myself and 3 other persons due to religious affiliation. The early members of my church fled for their lives due to an ‘extermination order’ which was issued by our government. They fled to a Mexican territory for safety to establish their religious practices.

As a leader, I believe comparative religious education in schools would be a benefit for tolerance and acceptance, but also for the simple reason of becoming educated in religious literacy and becoming more informed citizens. There is a need for prior training, and reputable curriculum so that this is done with respect, accuracy, and as objectively as possible so that students and families do not feel spiritually threatened by it. At the lower grades I like the ‘morning messages’ which focus on character-building traits such as kindness, cooperation, responsibility, hard-work, etc. As the author of this section mentions that many things fall under the category of ‘spirituality’ irrespective of religion, and that individuals do have a ‘spiritual’ cycle of development which is often neglected in our schools. Some aspects of it can and should be taught if we are going to prepare good citizens and students who are ready for all aspects of success in college and/or workplace after graduating from high school.

I found it interesting that religious school institutions were found to have greater instance of comparative religion education, and did an equal, or better job of producing religiously tolerant students. Although I attended a religious university, there were many student organizations for various religious, gender, minority, foreign, and political students. Ironically, there was also an ‘atheist’ student organization. In recent years there has also been much media produced form the school in efforts to support these groups of students within the context of the university. I mention this because earlier in the year the question was raised about how these issues were addressed in such environments. I believe education and access to education truly is the key to effecting change from the inside out.