Teachers are interreligious leaders of today and tomorrow. Many young peoples’ first impressions of global religious communities and encounters with people who are religiously different occur in the classroom. ICJS provides thoughtful programming and professional development opportunities for Baltimore-area teachers in public, private religious, and independent non-religious schools.
ICJS offers a one-year cohort for Baltimore-area teachers to gain knowledge and confidence in religious literacy, to develop and share lesson plans for their own classroom, and to think deeply about pedagogy with a network of experienced educators and scholars.
ICJS teacher programming has always been teacher-led. Donna Lee Frisch (1940-2020), a founding ICJS trustee and a former teacher at Bryn Mawr School, knew that students need to learn about religion to be informed local and global citizens, yet teaching about religion was tough. With generous support from the Frisch family, since 2015 ICJS has offered essential professional development opportunities for teachers and educators.
“All real living is meeting.” -Martin Buber, I and Thou (pictured above) Before attending the ICJS event with Paul Mendes-Flohr and Ben Sax conversing about philosopher Martin Buber, I had been wrestling with seemingly opposing commitments. I struggled to talk about my growing dedication to my Catholic faith and my simultaneous commitment to interreligious learning…
Teaching history inherently means discussing religion—but I didn’t always believe that. I started my teaching career with the mindset that religion was a topic I needed to tiptoe around in order to be both respectful to the diversity of students in my classroom and to stay compliant with rules prohibiting the promotion or denigration of…
Over the course of the past year, there have been many conversations and discussions that I’ve had the pleasure of sitting in on during the ICJS Teachers Fellowship. I say “sitting in” because I was not much of a participant during many of these gatherings, only an attentive observer. This is unlike my typical nature.…
As a first-generation immigrant and Spanish teacher in Baltimore, the process of putting together my presentation for the other teacher fellows was quite challenging. The multiple reasons for the difficulty of this task ranged from incorporating the topic of religion in a language class (Spanish) to presenting a religious topic in a non-religious school. However,…
Explore this collection of resources prepared by Fellows for their schools and classrooms and available for your use. ICJS Teacher Fellows work in a variety of contexts, including public, independent, and religious schools and other educational institutions (e.g., museums). Subject areas include English, social studies, and religious studies.
Four secondary teachers from public, private, and religious schools share their views on the classroom as an interreligious space, the state of religion in the classroom; and how young people are thinking about religion. Moderated by Christine Gallagher, ICJS Program Director–Teachers