Six Behavioral Learning Outcomes Applications:
Religion, Identity, and the School Calendar
| Principle | Application |
|---|---|
| Students understand that there is diversity among people, including religious diversity |
Posting a calendar with different religious holidays. Share stories highlighting holidays celebrated by students in the class as well as holidays or traditions that might not be represented. Teach “internal diversity” and “embedded in culture” as vocabulary that can aid in the understanding of religious differences and ways that religion and religious identity show up in culture. |
| Students share self-knowledge about their personal beliefs |
Offer opportunities for students to share aspects of their religious identity in private, or confidential, ways with their teachers. Create opportunities for students to share about their religious and cultural beliefs and practices. Older students can create “What I wish my teachers knew” document to share information with teachers on their religious practices and the way that those impact their participation in school activities. |
| Students demonstrate skills of active listening, respectful questioning, and showing concern for the feelings of others |
Co create with students a framework for asking questions when peers share their own traditions to teach how to ask respectful questions. Create a question box so students can submit questions they have about religious traditions/holidays/current events. Set community standards for what active listening does and doesn’t look like. |
| Students examine and discuss differences among people with open-minded respect and regard for the dignity of others |
Provide examples of intrafaith diversity to show the spectrum of ideas that exist to normalize that differences even within a community are common. |
| Students take the perspective of others as they learn to recognize and challenge harmful stereotypes |
Teach bystander vs upstander and bystander intervention. |
| Students demonstrate empathy and compassion for others with different religious and non-religious beliefs |
Use books as a way to practice this skill so that you are not asking students to role play potentially harmful interactions related to holiday observance with their peers. For example, read a story in which a student is teased about their religious holiday practice and pause to ask students to rewrite that interaction so that the character who was rude chooses to be empathetic instead. Students create posters, slides, or other public products to share and promote their ideas about empathy and compassion. |