Reference no: EM133274922
Melissa teaches fifth grade in a town in Georgia. The town is the home of a university so there are always new students every year who have moved into the community/school because their parents have started working at the university. Some of these students are not only new to the school but are also new to the United States. Over her years teaching, Melissa has noticed that some of the students and their families are members of religions that are very different than the local families in the town. Sometimes there are minor issues based on misunderstandings between the two groups but these issues have not really caused many problems in the school or in the community.
At the start of the new school year, Melissa discovers that she has quite a bit of religious diversity in her class. There are the normal Baptists, Methodists and Presbyterians that represent most of the local families that have lived in the community their entire life. She discovers that she has a Catholic student, two Jewish students, two Muslim students, and two students who had been homeschooled prior to this year by parents who belonged to a conservative evangelical church. Some of her students attended a Unitarian congregation made up almost entirely of university faculty and their families.
Melissa developed a series of lessons to introduce the students to the different types of religions. The students came up with the idea of building models representing different types of houses of worship: church, cathedral, temple, mosque and meeting house. The students set up a display for open house with the models and books and pictures that represented each of the different religions.
About a week after the open house, the principal called Melissa into her office and said that some of the parents had complained about the display. She told Melissa that there had been two types of complaints. One complaint was that Melissa had been teaching religion in school. The other type of complaint was that children were being exposed to ideas and beliefs that were not Christian.
How do you feel about Melissa's lessons and the display? How do you think she should address the complaints? What could she have done prior to the lessons that might have helped with the topic?