Religion and Public Education - Nicole McGalla

In this episode we talk with Nicole McGalla, Director of Communications and Community Engagement at the Parkland School District, in Eastern Pennsylvania. This conversation considers both the inclusion of the topic of religion into public school curricula as well as how religious diversity among both staff and students is addressed in the contemporary context.

Transcript

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Chip Gruen: 0:03

Welcome to ReligionWise. I'm your host Chip Gruen, the Director of the Institute for Religious and Cultural Understanding at Muhlenberg College. Today's a special episode because it marks the beginning of season three. So if you're new to the podcast, I encourage you to go back to the first two seasons and catch up on all you've missed that deals with religion and public discourse from across a variety of different fields. As always, I encourage you to interact with the podcast by leaving a review, subscribing, sending questions, or recommendations for future guests. You can find all of our contact information at religionandculture.com. Likewise, if you're interested in having a representative of the Institute, come and speak at your organization about the topics that we deal with on the podcast, don't hesitate to reach out. In today's episode, we return to the topic of education. You might recall in season two, episode seven entitled "Religion, Education and the Courts," we talk to Dr. Dena Davis about parochial education, in particular among Hasidic Jewish communities in New York City. We discussed the brewing legal fight that seeks to further define both the rights and responsibilities of a religious school. For example, in order to meet state standards, do students need to receive basic instruction in English and math? If you haven't listened to that episode, I would encourage you to go back and take a listen. I think there's some really interesting aspects to the church state question and how it's interpreted in contemporary judicial practice that are worth considering. This episode is, as I mentioned, also about education, but from a very different perspective. Today, our guest is Nicole McGalla, the Director of Communications and Community Engagement at the Parkland School District, which is a public district here in the Lehigh Valley and eastern Pennsylvania. I think that this conversation takes the issue from the opposite direction, not how do religious affiliated institutions and schools interact with the state, but instead how are religious traditions and identities considered and handled within the public educational system. While this conversation features someone from a particular district, and the views expressed here come from the context of that district, I think it is safe to imagine that the issues that we discuss here are considered and dealt with in very similar ways across the country. I think that considering the intersections of public education and religion has always been a fairly complex topic with multiple facets that need to be considered. One is how our religious traditions and histories included into the curriculum of a public school classroom. Obvious, at least to me is the centrality the question of religion within the history and cultural development of our country and our world. Famously, the court case Abington versus Schempp, that was settled decades ago, affirms the necessity of understanding religions as an important aspect of understanding human histories and cultures. The other way that religion intersects the classroom, of course, is the identity of the students themselves. Further, as people are aware of religious diversity in their own communities and these educational settings, it's not just about Christianity and Judaism anymore, but also about Islam, Hinduism, Sikhism, and a myriad of other forms of religious belief and practice. However, I think the topic has gotten even more complicated when we consider the contentious nature of current conversations in school board meetings that have become more prominent in the last few years. Increasingly, a chorus of voices have become more active in these meetings, seeking to control the types of conversations they want their children exposed to. In particular, we have seen a desire to curtail conversations about religious, cultural and ethnic identity in favor of a curriculum that seeks to minimize treatments of diversity in the classroom. As you'll hear, there have been a few controversies of this sort that have erupted on our local context. But you can pick up your local newspaper or read local school board minutes to see that wherever you are listening, there's a good chance that there has been some conversation about how to deal with identity issues in the classroom, including but not limited to religious identities. So without further ado, here's my conversation with Nicole McGalla. Nicole McGalla, thanks for appearing on ReligionWise.

Nicole McGalla: 4:07

Yeah, it's a pleasure to be here.

Chip Gruen: 4:09

So your professional interests in public education are fairly broad. You serve as the Director of Communications and Community Engagement at Parkland School District, which is in the Lehigh Valley, here in eastern Pennsylvania, but you have also been instrumental in the creation of a cultural awareness committee in the district. Can you describe your role and how you are positioned to influence both the internal and external conversation on religious and cultural diversity in public education?

Nicole McGalla: 4:38

Sure, so, I work extensively with the community and that involves all kinds of community organizations. But about 15 years ago, there was a an interfaith Baccalaureate that was ingrained in the community that was started by faith leaders in the community and I guess attendance had been waning. So they came to me, initially and said, can Parkland help us get attendance for this. And it was made up of Muslim, Hindu, Jewish and Christian faith leaders. And while we couldn't offer them a space to hold the baccalaureate here on campus, because that was one of the things they asked for, and I guess the powers that be at the time said no to that, they wanted to see they just started to voice concerns about waning attendance, and then it opened up broader conversations about how they were growing populations and all of these cultures inside of our community, and how can we better understand each other. And so we started this multicultural awareness program for our administrators, and the first year all the faith leaders came in, and they just made presentations, like everything you would ever want to know, but were afraid to ask. And they open themselves up to tons of questions, but they also tried to put a presentation together of things that we they thought would be would be interested in. And really, it was all focused on kids, and how we could be more sensitive to student needs. And cultural asks, you know, for things like praying five times a day during the school day, or praying in groups, or fasting and what's involved in that, and maybe trying to make accommodations for a student that might be fasting. And it just opened our eyes to so many different things that we just didn't know before. It's almost like when you know better you do better. So anyway, that that was the beginning of it all and sort of how I got involved because I started programming, regular guest speakers, for our staff to come in and talk and just help us increase our awareness and understanding of different cultures.

Chip Gruen: 6:40

It's interesting to me that that this all started with the baccalaureate, because I know that this is a tradition that is held, you know, at various districts in the area across the country. And it's always seemed to me to be potentially thorny, because in other districts that I'm familiar with that there, there is less awareness, right of the complicatedness, not only of the diversity of traditions that might be represented in the student body, but also just the relationship between the public institution of the school district and the establishment of religion, which obviously runs afoul of, you know, of some of our founding documents and legal tradition in the country. So it's interesting that that potentially problematic tradition is what led to sort of a more of awareness of, of literacy. And, you know, and an awareness of what that conversation might look like, you know, in the district.

Nicole McGalla: 7:39

Yeah, for sure. I mean, I'm really proud that we had leadership in the district that embraced that at the time, because there were a lot of districts I think, especially 15 years ago, that wouldn't have touched it with a 10 foot pole. But we couldn't ignore the fact that we were becoming more and more diverse. I mean, I, whenever we hire new teachers, I do an orientation for them on communication. And one of the things I tell them is, when I started here in 2006, we were like 92%, white, and today, we're 60%. And that's a big change, I think, in 15 years. I think that we just are, we also recognize the fact that our staff is very white, as a teacher teaching staffs are across the state of Pennsylvania. So we just, we just, we needed to educate ourselves. And we're in the field of education it seemed ridiculous that we wouldn't at least try to educate ourselves. But we've been able to turn key a lot of what we've learned to not just administration, but offer teacher workshops, we offer secretarial training, we offer bus driver training. So it's cultural awareness training across all facets of the school district. And also now we also have one of our favorite programs is to hear from our international students that move here and there in our speak English as a Second Language program. And they talked to us you know, you're after they've come in high school and talk to us about all the challenges and all the differences from what school is like back in their home country to you know, what, what the differences are and what what they enjoy and what they miss, then it's just one of our favorite things to do every year is just to hear from our high schoolers that have moved here from I mean, just every country you can think of.

Chip Gruen: 9:19

So you address this a little bit already, but I just particularly since we have a global listenership people from all over listening, for the sake of context, can you tell us a little bit about that history, the district you talked about the increasing cultural and racial diversity in the district itself, but I think we could flesh that out a little bit more with demographic and economic realities that might have changed over the course of just your career say.

Nicole McGalla: 9:43

Yeah, we've changed so much. I mean, almost every demographic has had a drastic shift. Another big one for us is free and reduced lunch. You know, a lot of people think Parkland is this Taj Mahal they call our high school on the hill and doesn't have need and you know, we're up to 33%, free and reduced price lunch, qualifying children, which I think a lot of people don't realize that one in three of our students are in that space. So that's, that's another big shift. And then even our special ed population has really increased and our gifted, the number of gifted students that we have, has really decreased. So it used to be like when I started, I think 8%, special ed 15%, gifted, and now it's reverse. It's 15%, special ed and and 8% gifted. So Oh, the other big, big area is English as a Second Language, we have 330 students that qualify for English as Second, as a Second Language service services here in the district. So that's another area that's just really expanded. And I think our teachers, those teachers that teach English as a Second Language, they, they can't possibly speak all these languages. So they might have a caseload of 25 kids speaking 25 different languages.

Chip Gruen: 10:59

Oh wow.

Nicole McGalla: 11:00

So they really, really do amazing work. And of course, with all the translation tools that are available at our fingertips on our cell phones, it's, it does make things a lot easier.

Chip Gruen: 11:09

So just, again, as context, our paths have crossed on multiple occasions in a lot of different places. And I'm so happy to have this opportunity to sit down with you. But the reason our paths have crossed is because we share a lot of concerns and values about religious and cultural literacy and understanding. But that being said, we operate in very different contexts you in K to 12, public education, me in higher education, and then the community outreach that the Institute does. So I wonder if you can share with us a little bit of the nature of the discourse in from where you sit? Where is there consensus about these issues? Where is the disagreement? What what does that conversation look like when it's happening in your particular context?

Nicole McGalla: 12:00

Yeah, I mean, I, I wouldn't say there's a lot of discourse here, I think that everybody agrees no matter what, where you are, I don't know if you're getting talking politics here. But we just want children to feel a sense of belonging, and just feel that they belong and not feel threatened in any way. So whatever we can do to make school, that safe space where we can help others come from a place of understanding, or at least trying to understand, you know, what it's like to be in their shoes, it's just really breaking down the, the unknowns too, and, you know, trying to foster that spirit of getting to know the other because I mean, even as adults, we tend to run around in circles where we feel comfortable, because we have a lot in common with someone. So it's kind of like, I think as educators, we challenge ourselves to break out of that mold a little bit, because we are educating all different types of people. So it's been, it's been good. And I think, you know, for a long time, we were really challenged with diversity in hiring practices, just because for whatever reason, there's not a large, diverse pool of candidates that are graduating from Pennsylvania teaching schools, they just aren't going into the program. So the colleges are trying to recruit diverse candidates too and that's what we've set up actually some kind of unique scholarship programs with some colleges over the past couple years where we offer a scholarship to somebody that wants to go into teaching. And we guarantee them a placement student teaching here, and we guarantee them a job interview. So you know, we're just we're trying to work together and kind of come up with creative partnerships to increase that diversity and understanding. But it does take, I think, a little bit of work to do that it takes, you know, pulling people outside their comfort zone. And I do have to say that our hiring has become we've been hiring a lot more diverse people lately, like in all jobs, not necessarily teaching, but obviously we employ a lot of people, teaching is only half of our 1500 employee staff, we still have 750 people at work on the support side of the district.

Chip Gruen: 14:06

So it seems to me that there are two main parts of this conversation and just because of who I am, I like to sort of tease that out and think about, think about them separately and sort of label them. One is curricular. What do students regardless of their background, regardless of who they are, what do they know about religion and religious diversity or culture and cultural diversity for that matter? And then the other is the identities of the students themselves, the identities that are in the community, and whether that be students, faculty, or staff. Do you see that, I mean, do you see that the way I see that that there are these two big conversations, or do you think there's a better way to frame the conversation from where you are?

Nicole McGalla: 14:48

Well, um, interestingly enough, I had to do a little research on the curricular side because I'm not a teacher, obviously I'm a communications person here but you know, when it comes to our curriculum maps because I I looked at them and kind of highlighted, you know, everywhere religion came up in the curriculum maps. And obviously, it comes up the most in social studies and English or literature. But really, the way that it's being taught is, you know, with the state standards is kind of where religions were developed over time. So in a historical perspective, maybe when an ancient Hinduism might have started, or, you know, what was the first religion during a specific time period that the students are studying, or what was a religious influence during the time period the students are studying. So, um, but I feel like where the controversy lies sometimes is, like, I was telling you that we turnkey, when the faith leaders come in, and they share information, we try to work with organizations that are like the umbrella organization. So MALV, the Muslim Association of Lehigh Valley, but within the, within Islam, there's many different sects. And so just like in Christianity, there's so many differences between the different sects of Christianity, it's it, you may say one thing, and then you might offend somebody that is also a Muslim, but they don't follow that same practice. So again, it's just kind of, it's just been really interesting, as we've studied these religions, as administrators to say, and look at it like, wow, everybody sort of is saying the same thing. But we just have different cultural practices, and we practice the philosophy differently. So um, so that's, I think, been been a big thing. And one of the things that faith leaders have asked of us is, hey, you know, I'm, I'm a Hindu and I belong to this temple, I want to see how Hinduism is taught in your textbooks. Can you pull that out for me? Can I read through that? And then, you know, so we have had that as a result of these conversations with different faith leaders, not not just the four I mentioned, but we've that was 15 years ago, we've expanded into many others. But we do share our texts. And they do sometimes chuckle, because they're like, Wow, it's funny to see how it's depicted in here. And not all of this information is necessarily accurate. So they'll offer to come and be guest speakers in the classroom, for instance. So that's been, that's been interesting, too. Same thing with events in history, like the Holocaust, obviously, is studied extensively. And we take field trips last year, there was an eighth grade, whole team that went to the Holocaust Museum for the day in Washington, DC, DC. And we have Holocaust survivors in our community that come in and speak in the classroom. So those kinds of experiences too, I think, are so important.

Chip Gruen: 17:34

Yeah, it's, it's interesting when you talk about, you know, recognizing diversity within a tradition, right, that not not every Muslim individual or community practices the same way or likewise, with Christianity, Judaism, right Hinduism, whichever religion, you can point to that there's there's great diversity within those traditions. And so it's, it's interesting when you have and we deal with this in our WorldViews program, as well, when you have somebody who comes as a to offer their perspective on their own community to recognize that they are offering their perspective on their community. But even a religious leader is not necessarily representative of the tradition as a whole. So it is something of a complicated question to think about, who does one rely on as a source right, for, for the religious tradition? And I think one of the things that we end up coming back to is that, you know, you could have 20 different voices from any particular religious community that are going to disagree sometimes about what's what's important, or what's essential, or how their tradition should be depicted?

Nicole McGalla: 18:43

Yeah, I agree. I mean, I think one of the biggest changes we've made is listing a lot of cultural holidays on our printed calendar, because we still do a printed calendar, if you've ever teacher has it hanging on their wall, and parents still love it. I've surveyed the community, they still want a printed calendar, even though they keep a lot of things on digitally. And I think they just like to be seen, you know, they, all these different cultures in our community ask, it doesn't cost me anything to put a holiday on a calendar. But where it gets tricky is sometimes the holiday falls on a moon sighting day. And some Muslims, for instance, will follow the moon sighting of when it's seen in Saudi Arabia, and some will follow the moon sighting of when it's seen here in the Lehigh Valley, and that's where we get differences. But I think that as long as they know that we're trying, and we understand that they're happy, because I just put tentative on the calendar. And I think, you know, again, it's just about being seen about being heard about respecting the fact that we do have people that are celebrating in our community and they just love the fact that that's being noted, noticed and recognized.

Chip Gruen: 19:47

So when I was thinking about this conversation ahead of time, I developed this question about a hesitancy or a reluctance to deal with topics of religious history or religious literacy. And it seems to me from what you've said, so far there, it doesn't seem to be as prickly right as maybe I perceive it to be. But what is what is your I mean, your perspective? Or do you think that Parkland might be different from other places that there is not a hesitancy or a fear to talk about religious identity? Or topics that have a religious component to them? Or is it? Is there a bubble? If you talk about it historically, rather than in the contemporary world? I mean, how does that piece of what you've seen from the curriculum, interact with changing values and changing ways that people understand those topics today?

Nicole McGalla: 20:38

Yeah, I don't, I don't see we don't get a lot of prickliness when it comes to current curriculum. I think it's because of the way that it's taught it, does it, we have to follow state standards, so everybody's doing the same thing. I think where you see some differences are, for instance, affinity groups, like, we do have all types of affinity groups at the high school. So we have a Jewish Culture Club, we have a Hindu American Club, we have a Black Student Union, we have a Muslim Student Union, we have Christian Athletes Association. So there's all kinds of groups. And I think, you know, when we had looked at there's a school district out in Pittsburgh, that they have a really interesting, director of diversity, equity inclusion, and his, his take on affinity groups is you shouldn't have one, they have something called, um, Shout. And it's like all minorities basically are involved in one group. And they all have kind of something in common as a minority. And so they just kind of group everybody together. And they study and appreciate each other's differences. And I think, I think it's two schools of thought, right? Like, we have all these different groups. But as long as the group is open, to having anybody join the group, in other words, you don't have to be Black to be in the Black Student Union, we actually have many students of all different colors in the Black Student Union, as long as you want to be there and just learn and participate and come in with an open mind, then everybody's welcome that you know that those groups are exist and exist in this, particularly in our high school, then with the teacher advisor, so the students have to come up with a game plan, you know, why that group should form what what is missing already at the high school that a group like this needs to exist? They have to agree to meet monthly, agree to be open and welcoming to everybody. So I think that's, that's kind of the key. But curricular wise, I know, I'm just getting back to curriculum, again, it really hasn't been a hot topic for us.

Chip Gruen: 22:40

Okay, so I'm gonna hit you something that you may not want to talk about. And that's okay. But in our area, it was what Southern Lehigh that had the big controversy over one of these affinity groups, but it was a Satanist club, and there was some back and forth and some reversal and policy and it was okay. And then it was not okay. And really caused a tremendous amount of, of controversy and shouting at school board meetings. And, you know, it's interesting when you talk about these types of groups, some of them are traditionally religious, some of them are a cultural or a minority group that is based on ethnicity or nationality or what have you. It just seems very, I don't know, even the state standards around curriculum are the same, it seems like these sorts of issues are dealt with very differently from district a district about what's Okay, and what's not. And a lot of that is I mean, to to come to it tinged by sort of contemporary political sensibilities as well.

Nicole McGalla: 23:47

Yeah, I mean, that the thing with Southern Lehigh, that was an outside group that wanted to use their facility. And that was just unfortunate that it got back thrown back and forth with ACLU getting involved, I believe, and things but it is, I think, a risk that we take by letting students kind of formulate groups because I guess something like a group like that could form. But I think it's important to give everybody the opportunity to have a voice and say what they need to say, as long as it's done in a, you know, welcoming open manner. Again, you could be educated on something that you think might be taboo, or maybe it isn't, you know, I I think that as educators, we come from that place of trying to be understanding and wanting students to be able to explore, but do it in a respectful way. And being able to have dialogue in a respectful manner is so important these days, right? Almost, you know, I feel like schools are doing a really, really trying to do a good job of educating students on how to have discourse, but have it done in a respectful manner.

Chip Gruen: 25:00

Yeah, so you mentioned this, about education and the role of educators to be one of the things you want to do is model civil conversation model conversation across difference. And that seems to have really changed dramatically over the last decade or so. There, there's mobilization of some political voices, both in public office, on school boards, in community organizations. What has changed you think over the last decade? I mean, how does that I mean, obviously, if we see videotapes of some of the school board meetings, what is being modeled is not always civil conversation, right conversation across difference. I mean, there's something else that's going on there that is much more vitriolic. I mean, we don't need to sort of point fingers here. But but how has that conversation changed? And and, you know, what do you see as the way forward for both valuing voices from the community but also wanting to model a more healthy pattern of social engagement?

Nicole McGalla: 26:01

Yeah, I think, I mean, social media, obviously, I think has been used. So what's changed in 10 years is definitely I think social media has influenced that behavior. You know, I think, some some of its human nature. I don't know, it did get nasty and ugly, especially during the pandemic. Things happen that I never thought I would see happen after working in this field for 20 years. I feel like things have become a little more stable now. And maybe it's just people were so frustrated and stressed out during the pandemic, I don't know. But it was very polarizing. For sure. And that was really difficult, because I feel like schools kind of got in the middle. And we didn't know we, we weren't the authority right on health. So and then also, we suffered here in the Lehigh Valley, because we don't have the Health Bureau out in the city of Allentown has one but like all the other districts surrounding Allentown, we don't have we don't even have a countywide health director. So we we were sort of like trying to rely on the hospital systems to give us advice and things. And it just got really hairy, it was really hard. Because we didn't, we thought we were doing what was best for everyone, then somebody would say we weren't. So it was just a hard time. But again, I feel like schools are a place that are so important, because they do teach students how to have respectful conversations with each other. And I think classes like history classes, and social studies and language arts, foster that kind of conversation and dialogue. And it's so important. I mean, I've heard you talk about the importance of a liberal arts college. And for me, personally, just having two teenagers, I think, learning about what a liberal arts college has to offer was so eye opening for me, because I think that's, that's kind of like isn't that sort of some of your principles guiding principles is being able to discuss things and, and have a lot of open conversation and being able to listen to each other's ideas and just be accepting?

Chip Gruen: 28:08

Yeah, so I'm going to take a minute just to get on my soapbox for for for just a second. But if you look back at it, public education, and maybe, maybe you have an opinion on this, maybe you don't or don't want to share it. But if we look back a couple of decades to something like No Child Left Behind, that really wanted to elevate the importance of reading and math. And obviously, reading and math are very important. But if that happens at the expense of science and social studies, you might end up with a society that doesn't understand how vaccines work and doesn't understand their own government. Right, that we, you know, it is at least my perspective, that some of those chickens have come to roost where, you know, science and social studies, you know, get taught, and it's different in high school, because you have different blocks, right, but in, in earlier education, that that it becomes the afterthought. And if you don't have a good understanding of science and social studies or civics, by the time you're in fifth or sixth grade, you're you're you're kind of behind the eight ball to catch up to expect high school to do everything. So so I don't know, I am a liberal arts professor, I am somebody who values the humanities very, very much and values the that we should be paying attention to meaning and values in our education. But, you know, again, just my soapbox. My perspective on some of the shifts that have happened over the last couple of decades.

Nicole McGalla: 29:35

That's really interesting. I've never heard anybody say that before, but it's definitely food for thought and I could see why somebody in your seat could see it that way. Yeah, for sure. I mean, I always tell new teachers this too like here in Parkland. I feel like we're pretty fortunate because we don't. There was a time and a place in public schools where some schools are really putting just time tons of emphasis on the those reading and math PSATs. But now I think our, our whole state has moved towards a system that just, you know, really focuses on showing that students grew, like they grew from one year to the next, no matter where they were, at any given point, they're looking at growth, right how much a student can grow and how much they can learn over the course of a year, it doesn't have to be that they're all learning at the same pace. And I think that that's, that's been like a really good shift in our standardized testing system.

Chip Gruen: 30:29

So to get back for a second about, you know, what has changed the nature of public discourse, you know, within the district and with the public, a lot of the current controversy here recording in 2023. It's about other kinds of diversity, sexual identity, sexual orientation, those sorts of issues, gender issues, do you think that this is a same the same conversation as the difference around culture and religion? Or do you think it's different? I mean, is this are these conversations that should be tackled by the same groups the same with the same kind of agenda? Or are these two totally different things that need to be dealt with separately?

Nicole McGalla: 31:14

That's a good question. I don't know, I guess I'm still, I'm still thinking about it. Um, you know, our, our group has always been called the Multicultural Awareness group. So it hasn't really fallen on my plate to explore in that in that way, but you know, the whole idea of just having students feel like they they belong somewhere. And that they could be, you know, feel safe is so important. So I think it does fall in the same basket, when you look at it from that perspective. I think with social media, and just trends and with students having so much information at their fingertips, they're just exploring so many different identities and just ways to be just always to exist. And I think a lot of our at least my teenagers, they're just like, Okay, you do you like they seem so accepting. But I thought that my generation was way more accepting when I was growing up. And then when I became an adult, I still saw so much prejudice around me. And just a little background for me, I grew up in Pittsburgh, in a suburb of Pittsburgh, and I had, well, I have a multiracial background, my father's from India. And my mom's from Pittsburgh. So that was kind of taboo, though in the 60s when they got married. And especially in Pittsburgh, it's where it's about much more like Midwestern than it is out here on the eastern side of Pennsylvania. And I just had so many people that were prejudiced and and nasty to me when I was growing up because of my color of my skin. So I guess I'm more sensitive to that, then maybe somebody who had a different upbringing, you know, different different way of growing up. But I am, I am just, I'm personally sensitive to, you know, just wanting students to be able to feel safe to be feel like they belong and feel like they're good. They can be exploring, because as they're growing up, it's just it is that such tricky time of exploration, probably all the way through their college years too I don't know what it's like on your campus. But for sure, our students are exploring themselves all the way through.

Chip Gruen: 33:23

You know, it's funny, when we talk about this, what sort of pops into my mind, and and this is something I noticed in the way that we talked about these conversations, but is undercut by what you said there, is we like to talk about our communities becoming more diverse over the last few decades, as our communities become more diverse. And in some ways, that's true as immigration patterns change, particularly with immigration from South and East Asia in the 60s to laws changing. But to some extent, some of these issues are no the diversity has always been there, it is just now a matter of recognizing it, you know, of making a place for it. And certainly, that could that would be true, racially and ethnically, but I think even more so thinking about sexual and gender difference, as well, that these are diversities that have existed, you know, for a very long time, they're part of the human experience. But now they are being named and and are becoming much more a part of the public conversation.

Nicole McGalla: 34:25

Yeah, and I think kids are just much more apt to share their personal information or show their personal selves, you know, out there to the world than they were whenever we were growing up, even though like I said, I felt like people were pretty accepting and understanding, especially when I got to college, right. And I went, I left Pittsburgh because it was so limiting. And I felt like I was in a bubble and just really didn't feel a good sense of belonging. So I went to college in New York City, thinking that you know, I would be in this big melting pot, but when I got there, I wasn't Indian enough. You know, like for them, they were like, you're not really Indian. So I just never really felt like I found found a place where I found really my people per se. And what I love about my kid's friends now that they're teenagers is they just, they don't care, you know, what you are what you identify with. They're just really try to find out who you are as a person, you know, who you are as you as your, your personality and what you have to offer the world. And I just love that.

Chip Gruen: 35:29

So one of the things, you know, we talked about modeling conversation and modeling, you know, the ways that we think we should talk to one another, one of the things I always try to model in this is to recognize our own myopia around these topics, right? So sitting where I sit, you know, being very late 40s year old white guy who teaches college at a liberal arts place on the East Coast. You know, I recognize that I might be missing parts of this conversation. So what is it that you see from your perspective in your chair, both professionally, and personally, am I not addressing that we really should address as a part of this conversation of the confluence of public education and religion?

Nicole McGalla: 36:14

I guess just, you know, I, like I mentioned before, I think we were at the forefront years ago of trying to study these types of things and, and understand the needs of our kids. It all boils down to everybody that I know that works in public education, no matter what school district you work in, we're really in it for the students, we're really in it for the kids, we want K through 12 education to be a place where students learn, grow, thrive, and maybe find their inner passion, something that really sparks curiosity or interest for them to give back to society in the future in some fashion, whether it be arts, athletics, and of course, academics. And I just, I just would, would wish and hope that people can, if they get upset about something that they hear about at school, that they can take a deep breath. And whenever they contact us, or hopefully, they will contact us to see if that what they're hearing is, is really the truth. And know that everybody here just wants kids to be able to thrive. And, and, you know, we're all in this together, I think it truly takes a village to raise children. And school is such a big part of that. But our community members, and the adults in our community are such a big part of that, too. So, you know, you mentioned behavior and things like that, at public meetings, just know that, you know, these, these little, these little people that are watching, and we're all role models for them. It's not any single one of us, it's all of us as a community. So, you know, I just really applaud people that are in the trenches, all of the teachers out there that do such amazing work and spend so much time with our kids. And sometimes they're put in difficult situations, teachers get asked questions all the time, those kids may not have anybody else to go to, to ask a question. And they may be putting teachers in an uncomfortable situation, because a teacher in other places, and other states may be told they're not allowed to talk about a certain subject. And I just think that's a dangerous place for a teacher to be. And it's a shame to see teachers leaving the profession because of it in certain parts of our country. But I, I hope and, you know, my my hope and prayer for our community here in Pennsylvania is that we can just, we can just be in this together and know that, you know, our teachers really, really got into this profession for one reason, one reason only, it's because they love children. And they really want to make a difference and inspire that child to for the future for them to consider that can be better for everyone. And that's really it.

Chip Gruen: 38:48

So these podcasts are like little birds that sort of fly out in the world. And you never know where they're going to nest. They're never never know where they're going to be. But just in case this one hits a strand of your students in Parkland or other students in in high school who are thinking about, you know, thinking about their college careers and thinking about what they're studying two messages, one, stay broad, be interested in humanities and the social sciences and why people operate the way they do and their worldviews and cultural difference. And two is if you're really really interested in this, and you want to participate in these kinds of conversations, drop me a line and we'll talk about your you know, if you have a place in the Institute, and you know, working at Muhlenberg on these issues, because we're always super excited to have students who are, you know, willing to have these conversations and able to have these conversations about religious literacy and the place of or the way that the public conversation happens around religion. So so that's my commercial. I try not to do it, but since we're talking about public education, I think it's an appropriate one.

Nicole McGalla: 39:52

Love it.

Chip Gruen: 39:53

All right. Well, Nicole McGalla, thank you very much for appearing on ReligionWise. I really appreciate you taking the time.

Nicole McGalla: 39:59

Thank you so much for having me Have a great day.

Chip Gruen: 40:03

This has been ReligionWise a podcast produced by the Institute for Religious and Cultural Understanding of Muhlenberg College. ReligionWise is produced and directed by Christine Flicker. For more information about additional programming, or to make an inquiry about a speaking engagement, please visit our website at religionandculture.com. There you'll find our contact information, links to other programming and have the opportunity to support the work of the Institute. Please subscribe to ReligionWise wherever you get your podcasts. We look forward to seeing you next time.