I was sitting in a fourth grade classroom today helping one of my students when I overheard a student behind me say to another student, "I don't care, you're going to hell." Well, obviously that caught my attention so I eavesdropped on their conversation. The boy was telling his classmate (a girl who is originally from India) that "there is only one God and He lives up there." He went on for a few more minutes and finally I turned around and said "Name of student, that's what you believe. There are lots of religions and they all have their own beliefs." The girl threw a grateful look my way and said to the boy, "Yeah, you wouldn't understand. We have lots of gods." Then the boy started being goofy and threw out silly names for gods. They both laughed then started working on their math again. I was glad that the conversation was over, but I wondered if I should have stayed out of it.
What would you have done?
5 comments:
I would have said something, too. I thinking you handled it very well. Nichole, you have an award waiting for you on my blog!
Annabelle :)
Good decision! Glad you intervened.
I'd say you handled it pretty perfectly. Kids need to know that it is fine to talk about religion, but not criticize others beliefs...
When I taught mythology I had a student tell me I was going to Hell because I believed in false gods. He went so far as to draw a picture and use the words "burn in a lake of fire." I might mention that both of his parents were Baptist preachers and he was placed at my school for trying to burn down their house...Good times.
That scenario brought back memories as my cousin married a man from India many years ago and she was showing me their honeymoon pics. As I am looking at all these statues some were strange and I was asking things like..What the heck is that, that looks weird. I did that for about 4 and noticed there were ALOT of pages with these statues and my cousin stated with "the look" "those are Gods" she was mortified, I was like WHAT?! Your kidding me. Needless to say we put the pics away and I never said another word...
You handled it perfectly.
Nichole, I wanted to stop by and thank you for visiting my nest a couple of weeks ago and for the nice comment you left for me then. I hope you will visit often. I apologize for taking so long to reply...I'm still learning! As far as your post goes, while I believe there is only one God, I think you handled this situation as well as you possibly could. It's so difficult to help children understand how to handle their differences.
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