Reintroducing Religion into the Classroom

The Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media has partnered with the Library of Congress to develop resources for pre-service teachers on the history of religion in the United States. While the history of religion is central to U.S. history, many teachers, especially new teachers, are reluctant to broach these topics for fear of causing controversy. Others are uncertain of where the line falls between the separation of church and state in teaching religion in schools. These resources will provide teachers with the primary sources, annotations, and structure to effectively engage students in understanding the impact of religion in and on society in a neutral and openminded way. Components of this resource will include context for the topic, strategies for teaching about religion, and benefits and common pitfalls to teaching historical studies of religion in the classroom. The project will utilize Library of Congress primary sources and provide teachers with techniques for getting students to raise questions about the past. Working with social studies education scholars, the resources will also feature guidelines for teaching difficult to teach or controversial topics. Topics will include religion in the Civil War, Indigenous nations and religion, and religion in the Labor Movement. This resource will be accessible to all on Teachinghistory.org.

The poster for this project will feature a sample module for a topic about religion in the United States. This sample module will demonstrate how the project will look in a digital format that teachers can access, as well as images of primary sources used in the project. Alongside those images will be annotations discussing their context and putting them in conversation with other sources utilized in order to demonstrate their available uses to teachers and their function within the project. Displaying the module and source images as they will be seen on the website will allow viewers to engage with the material in a similar way to how teachers and students will. As such, viewers will be able to access not only the conceptions behind the project, but be able to experience a static version of the interface as well. This will allow for more effective understanding of and feedback on the project from viewers.