John Camardella’s students have learned how to go beyond the textbook and embrace the “complex ways that religions function in the human experience.”

Camardella is a world religions educator at Prospect High School in Illinois.

Interview Transcript:

We want our students to make a difference in society and all of us in education have to examine that if our time in the classroom is preparing them to do that or not.

Before they were leaving my classroom thinking they knew the answers because of some Scantron tests. And now they're leaving aware that they do have the vocabulary in the context of certain religions, but now they're leaving being comfortable with the questions.

The most common shifting that students have in the class is that they are now hyper-aware that a lack of understanding about sort of these complex ways that religions function in different cultures and in different human experiences that it actually can fuel racism and prejudice and bigotry, right? And it does not lead to cooperative endeavors, you know, in local areas and national areas.

That's invaluable for these young men and women who are entering our society as citizens. The program was instrumental in helping me as a person and as an educator make that shift and now it's serving the students in my classroom and I'm forever grateful for that.