For Teachers & Educators
ICJS Teachers Fellowship
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.
Founder Story: Donna Lee Frisch
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.
Interreligious Studies and Secondary Education—New Book Featuring Contributions by ICJS Staff and Fellowship Alumni
Edited by Christine Gallagher (ICJS), Lucinda Mosher, and Axel Takacs
Interreligious Studies and Secondary Education: Pedagogies and Practices for Living and Learning in a Religiously Plural World is a groundbreaking collection of essays exploring the role of interreligious studies in public, private, and parochial secondary education.
Contributors—including several alumni of the ICJS Teachers and Nonprofit and Civic Professionals Fellowships—offer insights into religious literacy, the impact of Christian privilege, and the transformative power of interfaith dialogue and experiential learning.
Each chapter ends with a list of discussion questions. Our hope is that administrators, professional learning communities, teacher educators, and more can use these essays as a way to begin conversations in their own schools.
Teacher Voices
Interreligious Dialogue in a Pluralist Age
Being a part of this year’s Teachers Fellowship at ICJS has given my values much-needed depth and articulation. I found myself in earnest agreement with the mission and purpose behind the meetings and events we participated in. Over and over again, whether it’s on the news, in an article online, or in a podcast, we…
A Doubting Questioning Mind Arises from Dialogue not Debate
At the beginning of the year, I assigned an essay entitled “This I Believe” to my speech class. The assignment is modeled on the radio program of the same name. The very first essay produced on the program is entitled “A Doubting Questioning Mind.” In it, the 16-year-old author Elizabeth Deutsch writes, “I have visited…
An “Aha” Moment: Teachers Don’t Need to Know Everything
I am a teacher in Baltimore City at the Academy for College and Career Exploration (ACCE), where one of my responsibilities is to teach a college-level class to high school students. Although I have experience as a special educator, this was my first year teaching this particular course. My main goal was to build a…
Addressing the Tough Topics: Teaching in tumultuous times
This year has been a tumultuous one for most people on the planet. Natural disasters, man-made conflicts, as well as spiritual turmoil have come together to make a very troublesome climate overall. Classrooms in particular are very active with discussions of these very real issues that affect students and teachers both. The role of the…
Educator Resources
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.