For instance, when then-candidate Ben Carson said a Muslim couldn’t be president without rejecting sharia law, Kareem asked the students how that held up against their own knowledge of Islamic teaching.

“He hasn’t had lesson 101 in sharia law,” Kareem said about Carson. He helped the students reach their own conclusion, that a Muslim could indeed be president.

When the Southern Poverty Law Center polled 2,000 teachers about their students’ impressions of the election, they collected hundreds of accounts of fear and anxiety particularly among Muslim students. One fourth grade teacher wrote in their report, released this month: “One of my students who is Muslim is worried that he will have to wear a microchip identifying him as Muslim.”