Promoting Cultural Awareness Through Interdisciplinary Learning

At LAS, we believe in the importance of learning about different cultures. After all, we have over 50 different nationalities represented on campus! With students and faculty from all over the world, we believe that learning about different cultural nuances makes our students global citizens. At LAS, students gain cultural awareness and understanding day-to-day through activities such as our cultural trips, meeting roommates from all over the world, and eating foods from different countries. However, we also integrate this into the academic curriculum by combining our students’ studies with lesson content that teaches them about the world around them.

Over the past weeks our middle school social studies class embarked on a comparative analysis research project on the topic of various world religions. Students have engaged in class discussions and ultimately created their own websites and to present their findings. Through this, students expanded their awareness of the links between religion and culture and discovered the similarities and differences between different faiths. One student compared how Amish and Hindu people worship God or the supernatural, while another compared Orthodox Christianity, Sikhism, and Taoism. Other websites compared Hinduism with Protestantism, and another found links between Roman Catholicism and Buddhism. 

In addition to learning about different religions, students also developed their technology skills by designing their own websites. This curriculum content, combined with design and technology skills, is what makes LAS learning really unique. Combining different subjects to develop a non-linear curriculum allows students to create connections between their subjects and the world around them. In this case, students learned about making websites and presenting their research in a coherent and eye-catching way while also gaining knowledge about different faiths.

Learning about the similarities between religions promotes cultural understanding and allows students to take this knowledge into their own lives and connect with more people in our community from around the world. Well done to all the students that created such outstanding websites for this project!