Religious Symbols in the Classroom

While taking my first graduate courses in education, we studied some educational law and briefly discussed religious garments and jewelry.

A teacher is in a special position. Standing up there in front of children, teachers are role models and examples. For some kids, they’re the only role model. For that reason, teachers are generally forbidden from wearing political paraphernalia – it’s not right for a teacher to “tell” a kid who to support. Likewise, a student shouldn’t be made to feel uncomfortable or discriminated against because his/her political beliefs differ from the teacher’s.

What about a cross necklace, though? Does wearing a crucifix or cross inappropriately influence a student to become Christian? Does it make non-Christian students worry that they will be treated differently because of conflicting spiritual views?

My knee-jerk response would be “no, of course not.” Of course, when I decipher that reaction, I realize that my reasoning is based on majority rule. It shouldn’t be a big deal for someone to know that their teacher is Christian, I was figuring, because most people in our society are.

Let’s presume it’s okay for a Christian teacher to wear a cross necklace, or for a Jewish teacher to wear a Star of David. There are many LDS teachers in my community who wear CTR jewelry, a readily-identifiable symbol of their religion. Is that appropriate? Would it be okay for a Wiccan teacher to wear a pentagram necklace?

For me, my answer hasn’t changed. To my mind, school is a place where young people are exposed to a lot of different ideas from a lot of different people. That’s why school is so important – we’re not going to live within bubbles in the “real world,” and school is a fairly low-consequence arena in which to experience and experiment. I never felt pressured or inspired to change who I was because of who my teachers were, and I hope that is true of my students today. On a related note, I think that teachers have the same rights as anyone else – we should be able to express ourselves, so long as that isn’t disruptive to the environment or learning process, and so long as our expression doesn’t damage anyone else’s right to the same.

Which brings me to Oregon.

Eighteen members of the Oregon Legislature are sponsoring Senate Bill 786, called (interestingly) the Oregon Workplace Religious Freedom Act. Section 4 of the bill reads as follows:

No teacher in any public school shall wear any religious dress while engaged in the performance of duties as a teacher. A school district, education service district or public charter school does not commit an unlawful employment practice under ORS chapter 659A by reason of prohibiting a teacher from wearing religious dress while engaged in the performance of duties as a teacher.

Okay, so I can see someone doing something that would necessitate this sort of thing. Obviously, even if I’m an ordained minister, I shouldn’t go teach at a public high school in clergy robes. And thinking back to my pedagogy classes, I can just see someone showing up to teach in Jedi garb or in full druidic regalia. These would be, I’d say, pretty inappropriate dress for the classroom.

How do you define dress, though? Is jewelry “dress”?

And here’s the bigger problem: what happens if your religious requires specific dress? Here in Bees-ville, there are plenty of teachers who are religiously unable to wear sleeveless garments. That’s not going to create much buzz; obviously, everyone wears sleeved tops.

No; I’m talking about female Muslim teachers, who wear a headscarf as a mark of their religion.

I don’t know how many Muslim Americans wear the headscarf, but those who do are effectively being told that they are not permitted to be teachers in Oregon.

It’s a complex issue, but I think it can be boiled down to just one question: does the headscarf keep the teacher from teaching or the students from learning?

And hey… what does Oregon say about students wearing religious dress? I’m sure the ACLU would have something to say about a student being prohibited from wearing the headscarf – don’t teachers have rights, too?

It will be interesting to see how this plays out.

h/t J. Samia Mair

Passionate, Not Blind

I read this on Practical Theory: A View from the Classroom and wanted to share. I have found myself re-reading it, seeing what it means in different ways each time. I’m still not 100% sure what it really means, but it has my brain juices churning.

As we all rush to change the world, and as we hear more and more about a sense of urgency to change our schools, let us remember that what we don’t know… about our kids, about learning, about what lies ahead of us… vastly outweighs that which know. And let us always be humbled by the enormity of the task in front of us. It is that humility that allows us to hear the smallest voices around us, be it the voice of the quiet student too afraid to voice her confusion or our own voice — the voice of doubt in the back of our mind that forces us to question even our most core beliefs over and over again.

Let us be passionate, but never blind.

~ Chris Lehmann (found here)

Its vs. It’s – Two Helpful Graphics

And if you think you fall within the red category, you might want to sit down for a chat with Bob the Angry Flower:

Some Conception

If a doctor, lawyer, or dentist had 40 people in his office at one time, all of whom had different needs, and some of whom didn’t want to be there and were causing trouble, and the doctor, lawyer, or dentist, without assistance, had to treat them all with professional excellence for nine months, then he might have some conception of the classroom teacher’s job. ~Donald D. Quinn

Happy Shakespeare’s Birthday!

Teacher Burnout and Dropout

I read an interesting article about teacher burnout/dropout rates the other day and thought I’d share. It’s not earth-shattering stuff, by any means, but it illustrates a problem in the current education system.

One of the statistics mentioned in the article is a familiar refrain in the “how to be a teacher” classes I took: almost half of all teachers will leave the profession within five years. (I remember also being told that of those who quit, something like 3/5 do it after their first year. That seems indicative to me of a problem in teacher training and support/mentoring for teachers, not necessarily teaching itself.)

A contributing factor to this attrition rate, particularly in the current economic state, is the fact that many first-year teachers don’t have renewing contracts. When funding shortages force the districts to not offer new contracts to those teachers, the teachers end up back on the job hunt. We hear a lot about people seeking alternative certification to become teachers when unemployment rises, but this is the unpleasant flip side of that coin – qualified teachers who lose their positions and have to start over in another industry.

This article cites NCLB – or more specifically, its “stricter-than-ever accountability laws” and paperwork – as a significant cause of teacher burnout. Instead of being fueled by their passion for teaching children, educators are motivated by statistics and personal competition. It’s not enough to love children and your subject matter; now your kids have to out-perform the next teacher’s kids if you want job security. That’s an extreme case, but it weighs on teachers’ minds.

Of course, money is always an issue. We always hear/say that teachers don’t go into it for the money, but it is also true that financial compensation can go a long way toward neutralizing the negative effects of burnout.

I particularly liked what one of the article’s sources had to say on the subject:

“The bottom line is that, as teachers, we have the opportunity to change lives, and literally, in some cases, save lives,” he said. “A teacher’s attitude toward the kids can, and has, saved lives. The voice of those kids who behave badly can’t become the dominant voice in the teacher’s mind.”

The solution to teacher burnout won’t come through a “business as usual” approach, McMahon said. And he stresses the importance of keeping great teachers, no matter what it takes.

“We need innovative, new incentives for teachers to remain in education,” he said. “Government can’t do this alone – the private sector also needs to play a role.”

And finally, a quick primer to help us all recognize the symptoms of teacher burnout in time to do something to help:

Not Funny

Just stumbled across a webcomic called Girls with Slingshots. I like it so far. Nevertheless, the following strip (from early on in publication) is not at all funny.

U.S. News Reveals… Teachers Blog!

To be fair, I doubt most edubloggers are actually “blogging from the classroom.” I’ve never yet been in a classroom that wasn’t collapsing under its own firewalls.

Blogging from the Classroom, teachers Seek Influence, Risk Trouble

If anyone is even reading this… and by anyone, this time, I guess I mean other teachers… is that why you blog? To influence the world? My teacher-blogging isn’t about that at all, at least not at this point. (And frankly, it doesn’t sound like most of the subjects of this article have that in mind, either.) I blog to keep a record, and to vent some steam/bounce some ideas. Maybe one day I’ll have a clear enough picture of what I’m doing that I could actually try to affect other people, but for now I’m far too busy just trying to keep afloat!

Anyway, it’s a good article, even if the headline is a bit off.

Must Wear! Must Teach Hamlet!

Available for $19 through Shakespeare’s Den.

One-Twelfth of a Teaspoon

Ryan, a first grade teacher who blogs at I Thought a Think, shared a “motivational tidbit” he encountered in a commercial:

[B]ees make one-twelfth of a teaspoon of honey in their lifetime. That’s a lot of work for not much results, but the cumulative effect of all those bees making honey is a neat thing.

How much of a difference does a single lesson make? A single unit? A single teacher? The answer is a crucial portion of the whole.