Listening to the Buddhists in Our Backyard (L2BB) reimagines how we teach—and learn—about Buddhism, in and beyond the classroom. L2BB asks: What happens when we center local Buddhist communities? What if people come first, textbooks later? What changes when we focus on the monastics and laypeople of Asian heritage who make up the majority of American Buddhists?
I could spend all day sharing the highlights of L2BB with you: The way it emerged in collaboration with the brilliant educator Andrew Housiaux, who read my first book, Be the Refuge, and decided he was going to transform the way he taught Buddhism to his higher schoolers. The Cambodian, Chinese, Lao, Thai, and Vietnamese Buddhist temples of the Merrimack Valley in Massachusetts that welcomed us for hours each time we visited. The scholars and practitioners who answered the students’ many questions via online and in-person meetings. The exceptional public-facing work the students produced—even though they weren’t getting a grade for this immersive ten-week learning experience.
But the best way to understand L2BB is through the students’ original L2BB website (housed on the current L2BB website, which was produced with the support of a Public Scholarship grant from the Luce Foundation and the American Academy of Religion). And the best way to understand the ethos of L2BB is to spend some time getting to know your own local Buddhist communities.
Learning alongside the high school students, Andy and I produced some public-facing work of our own:
Journalists and educators reported on L2BB:
There’s even an L2BB Easter egg in this New York Times piece!
