Sorry I wasn't clear before

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Sorry I wasn't clear before
By Cathy-Dee

I tiptoed around as much as I could on my first post. It seems strange but we talk about "other cultures", "other religions" in a manner that we should for some reason be more tolerant of their beliefs and less tolerant
of our own.
With the Jehovah Witness child - I never meant that I would celebrate a special day in lieu of his birthday. But every birthday he would sit quietly or have to leave the room if a parent did bring in a cake and watch all the other children be given a pencil and birthday card and treat from myself. So somewhere in the year I just ensure that I give him a pencil and a little

treat to let him know he is special too, not for his birthday or to take away from what his parents and religion teach. I'm talking about first grade here, they don't always understand the whys. I also make sure the parents know what I'm doing. I find that keeping the parents in the loop helps to ensure I won't make mistakes and offend them unneccessarily. And I also have to deal with the 98% of other parents who do celebrate their child's birthday. Many expect to be allowed to bring in a cake to celebrate their child's day. And unless the whole school mandated that birthdays would not be celebrated, I would not think it fair for only one class and that group of children to not celebrate.

We don't have a pledge in Canada, but we do sing our Anthem. Some Jehovah Witness families do not believe in either saying pledges or singing anthems. They ask that their child be excused from the room every morning. As teachers who do have a curriculum and a set of standards to follow, we do need to continue to sing our anthems, etc., And personally I do not see a problem with this. It seems strange for a child to not be a part of this, but on the other hand I also believe that the other children should not have to lose out either.

I am a Christian and yet within the school setting I have to be very careful not to allow my beliefs to become part of my teaching. I may not be allowed to celebrate my holidays the way I would like to celebrate them because I may offend someone from another culture. I cannot choose "Christian stories" to read to my class nor play "Christian" music when the students are in my room. And I don't have a problem with this, but then I also expect that I shouldn't have to teach my students about other faiths that I may not agree with. By this I mean teaching specific aspects of their faiths, not just a general discussion about different faiths.

And I do teach tolerance and acceptance to my students. I also have no problem telling them that they do not have to agree with someone else's beliefs but they have to respect and allow that person to believe what they choose to believe. Just like they should expect to be treated with respect for what they believe in.

I do think that when we can and it does not get into the situation of "going overboard" for one or two students, we can make modifications to our lessons so that all children can participate.
Not all cultural groups or religions have as many areas that are more difficult to deal with as Jehovah Witnesses. They do not celebrate birthdays or any holiday for that matter. So some of the holidays that we no longer even attach a "religious" aspect too such as Valentine's, Halloween, Canada Day, 4th of July, and even those like Thanksgiving, Remembrance Day where the religious aspect of these holidays is very much reduced if at all present. The Jehovah Witness child can have nothing to do with. We could take all the special days out of our schools, or we can compromise. I think compromising makes so much more sense.

I talk with the parents - most are willing to compromise on that their child can hear the lessons, listen to the stories, but not do the activities. So at Halloween (which I don't like myself) I allow my kids to write about pumpkins, bats, owls, harvests, etc., If they choose to write about ghosts or other Halloween characters I allow that as well. At Christmas although I did mention the birth of Jesus (many of my students come from Catholic backgrounds), and there were a few pictures of the Nativity, etc., I ended up keeping most of the activities more "secular". By the way Jehovah Witness parents do not accept even the secular part of Christmas. So if we were to completely try to make them a part of our classroom - we wouldn't even mention that December 25th was a holiday. We wouldn't sing Christmas songs, colour pictures of Santa, read stories about Rudolph, etc., So again compromise does help us in allowing these children to be as much a part of our class when we are talking and teaching about holidays. So in our school, the Jehovah witness children made "winter art" instead of Christmas art. They wrote Winter stories, poems, etc., This meant every teacher who had a child from this background had to plan a separate activity for that child. And none of us complained about the extra work.

It's interesting that on some posts last year, there were many teachers who would not stop reading a book series just for a few students in their class. This would be where Christian parents did not like the book series. These teachers were more than comfortable sending those few students out of the room during the reading of the novel. I have found personally that there is actually much more tolerance (at least where I live, and by teachers and schools) for other cultures over Christian beliefs.

And I'm a strong advocate for private schools (I would actually like to see more publicly funded alternate schools happening). Then groups whose religious beliefs and culture are highly intermixed could have a school setting where their culture is much more prominent and they would have more control over what is done within the school. We have that in our area where there is a large group of Mennonite people. The schools where they attend are 98% attended by them so the staff and school division tries to compromise as much as possible while still meeting the curriculum needs. This has not been easy either. They do not allow teaching of dinosaurs, space, birth (we just can't talk about it), they don't like computers or TV. While some changes are occuring naturally over time - there are still many children in those schools who are not allowed to use computers, etc.,

Now if these same children were in the rest of our schools and we had 2 or 3 per school or even 15 or 20 children per school. I wouldn't think it reasonable to not have computers in the school or not show an educational video to the class.

And I also know that if I was to teach in a school where there was a large mix of different groups then obviously I would have to be more willing to compromise and allow for more differences within my classroom. Perhaps I would have to just deal with having a "Winter Celebration" instead of a Christmas celebration. But it does not mean I have to agree with it. And within my staff I would hope that I would be able to allow my personal beliefs to be heard and accepted along with all the others.

I'm sure somewhere in this post I've said something to offend someone and I apologize ahead of time. I do think it's important that while we do need to recognize the cultures of others (and not just the differences in religion either), we also shouldn't have to lose sight of our own beliefs in the process. And through compromise and discussions we can share the differences in our customs and beliefs without creating even more walls between us.