January 9, 2018
Dear Parents of Eighth Graders:
I am excited to work with your children this semester in our eighth grade core course, World Religions, here at Congregation Beth Israel. I joined this community in 2016, when my daughter started at the preschool, and this is my third semester teaching at CBI on Tuesday evenings. Previously, I lived on the East Coast, where for fifteen years I taught middle school humanities.
My starting assumption is that our eighth graders know very little about world religions, and also a whole lot about them. That is, while they may not have studied this topic formally, they have spent the past fourteen years absorbing a variety of messages, interactions, stereotypes, and contradictions, not only about other religions but also about their own Judaism. I also recognize that some of our students may be from interfaith and/or multicultural families, as are my own children. Consequently, while I invite you to take a look at the attached curriculum sequence, I also intend to make adjustments week by week in order to meet the students where they are and to address their questions and interests as they arise.
This course has long been based on a resource text called Apples and Oranges, written by a Reform rabbi who seeks to explain Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism by comparing and contrasting them with Judaism. We have copies of the book in the classroom and may refer to it on occasion. As stated in the official course description, our journey will be as much about understanding our own religion as it will be about understanding other faith traditions.
Conventional wisdom warns us that if we want to stay safe, we shouldn’t talk about religion or politics. This course’s conversations will necessarily be all about religion and perhaps touch on politics here and there, but it is important to me that the classroom be safe — a place where we aren’t ostracized for asking a “stupid” question or for expressing an unpopular idea or theory. My own role is not to convince the students to see things the way I do (or the textbook does) but rather to facilitate conversations that help them learn, that pose challenging questions, and that make them more curious about humanity’s varied approaches to comprehending the incomprehensible. If I do my job well, your children will want to come back to class each week. If that is not happening, please don’t hesitate to reach out to me and discuss how we might get things back on track.
I will update our course website each week with a recap of what we did in class. I encourage you to continue these conversations with your children during the week and send me any feedback that might be helpful.
Thank you for the opportunity to work with your children this year!
Sincerely,
Mike Fishback