Amazing Catechists

Teaching and learning the faith together

Class Planning: You Can’t Do Everything

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It’s time to start planning your class for the new school year.  My trouble in planning is never a lack of ideas — it’s having too many.  As a catechist, I’ve got to say No to 1,000 great ways to teach so that I can say Yes to a few good ones.  How to choose?

I start with three big questions:

What’s required?  When the students walk out your door, is there anything they absolutely must know?  Is it your job to make sure they know how to receive Holy Communion, or make a good confession?  Does your diocese have teaching standards for your grade that include the memorization of certain prayers or facts about the faith?  Sometime you have to set aside time for plain old practice and memory work.  There are fun ways to practice and memorize — just make sure the activity you pick will accomplish your goal, and not just be entertainment without results.

What’s needed?  What can you bring to the classroom that students aren’t getting at home, at Mass, or in their every day life?  What are parents trying to teach at home, that they need your help in reinforcing?  I’ve been impressed as I read through Christian LeBlanc’s new book The Bible Tells Me So by how he weaves in comments about chastity and the holiness of marriage into his Bible history course.  When our parish designed our own vacation bible school program last year, one of our priorities was the study of saints — a topic that is easy for Bible-belt kids to miss out on.  During the school year, our parish emphasized Bible-reading by having 5th-8th graders look up, read, and journal the coming Sunday’s Gospel at the start of each class session.

What am I good at? I wish I knew the Bible as well as Christian LeBlanc (I’m learning!), or had knack for theater like Lisa Mladnich with her fabulous collection of free puppet-show scripts.  Maybe that’s you.  I have a friend who is skilled at leading conversations. She can draw kids into  exploring and sharing their faith just by talking about the news and the Church year.   Another catechist has years of experience as a sacristan, and captivates her class with the details of liturgy and traditional devotions.  As you read about different teaching ideas, grab onto the ones that naturally play on your strengths.

Answering these three questions will help me come up with a general idea of what I want to teach and how I want to teach it.  Then I’ve got to do two more things: Organize and Prioritize.

Organize.  I’ve got my list of ideas — now what’s the natural order for fitting them into the class schedule?  In our VBS plans last summer, we wanted to include games.  (Of course!  It’s VBS!)  We also wanted to teach fun but serious Bible and saints stories.  The plan was obvious: Main course first, dessert second.  It didn’t matter too much if we did the saint or the Bible story first, so we experimented and  picked the most convenient classroom set-up.  But it did matter that we saved games for last, so that students had an incentive to work seriously, and so they wouldn’t be all wound up from freeze tag just when we wanted them to sit still.

Prioritize.  One of the cardinal rules of classroom planning is that you should always have a little too much material.  So as you write down your plans, put parentheses around the optional activities, and underline or circle the non-negotiables.  If you’re crunched for time, skip the optional items.  If you need to fill time, have fun with the extras.

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What does your religious ed or vacation Bible school class look like?  How have you picked what to include and what to skip?  Any insights you’d like to share?  Any planning problems you’re struggling with, that you’d like to discuss?

 

Student Journals and the Sacrament of Confession

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A reader asks anonymously:

Is it appropriate for religion teachers to ask students about their sins?  In my friend’s  religion class, the teacher asked him to write in his journal about one of the sins he would be confessing at his next confession.  What do you think?

The answer is a big fat NO.  No, no, no, and NOOOOOOOO.  Just no.  Not appropriate.  Never appropriate.  Religion class is not the place to perform a public examination conscience.  No no no.

I do want to share three thoughts related to my reader’s question.   The first is my own class policy on journals and sensitive topics.  The second is on the limits of journal writing as a teaching tool; the third is on the proper role of catechists in sacramental preparation.

1.  Journals are personal, but not private.  The first time students open their journals, I explain that:

a) I will never force you to read your journal entry aloud,

but that:

b) I  do read your journal entries (and pray for your prayer intentions), and that your parents have free access to your journal as well.

I don’t require reading aloud, because that’s not the goal of my class.  I teach religion.  Not composition, not public speaking, and not group therapy.  Journals provide an opportunity for students to explore their faith and their life in writing, and that’s a legitimate part of a religious education course.

But I can’t guarantee privacy.   Physically, the journals are not kept under lock and key.  Professionally, it is inappropriate to set myself up as arbiter of students’ secrets.  Journals are a great way to share ideas that can be difficult to express aloud — but they are, fundamentally, a tool for sharing.

2. Journals fit the learning style of some, but not all, students.  I have two types of students who love journals.  The first are introspective and prayerful students   Often they do not want to share their entries aloud, but they relish the process of writing out their thoughts.  I allow them as much time to write as they want, even after the rest of the class moves on to the next assignment.

The second group are students who learn by talking.  They work through the day’s topic by jotting down a few quick notes, then expand on their ideas when it’s time to share.  The big trick is to strike the balance between enough sharing and too much sharing.

But what about everyone else?  I keep on hand a “back up” assignment.  If you finish your journal early because,  let’s be honest, you wrote two flippant words, or “I don’t know” or “I hate this dumb journal”, come to the front table and grab the alternate assignment.  Students learn in different ways.  Offer more than one way for students to connect to the lesson.

3. What role do catechists play in preparing students for the Sacrament of Confession?

We have three important jobs:

  • We teach the mechanics of the sacrament.  Sign of the cross, “Bless me Father for I have sinned,” etc.
  • We answer questions about the nature of the sacrament.   When must I confess?  What if I forget my act of contrition?  Will the priest tell the police if I confess a crime?
  • We explain what is, and is not, a sin.  We also answer questions about what circumstances lessen or remove culpability for a sin.

My approach should be positive, encouraging, and sincere.  But we catechists aren’t the parents.  We aren’t spiritual directors.   The classroom setting is not the appropriate place for pastoral counseling.  It certainly is not the confessional.

It is important to respect these distinctions.  In setting firm boundaries, we strengthen our role as catechists. Students are often willing to ask outlandish or difficult questions of a catechist, specifically because they know it’s not personal.  It’s just a question.  If they ask out of mere curiosity, be thankful they are curious about the faith.  If they ask out of personal need, be thankful they have a place they can get clear and honest answers to difficult questions.

But in all cases, my role as a catechist should always respect the privacy and the dignity of my students.

Joining the Team

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Hello everyone, I’m Jennifer and I’ve just joined the blogging team here at Amazing Catechists!  Today I want to tell you a little about myself and my story as a catechist, which I think is typical of how many of us start out teaching religious education.

When my son started kindergarten, I enrolled him in our parish religious ed program.  Since I was going to be driving to and from class anyhow, I figured I ought to go ahead and volunteer.   I loved teaching, though I’d never taught large groups of younger students before, and I was confident that my knowledge of the faith would be enough to get me started.

Let me tell you, I learned two things my first weeks of teaching 5th grade religious ed:

  • My DRE was a saint.
  • I stunk.

Turns out I knew absolutely nothing about how to get two dozen restless 10-year-olds to settle down and pay attention.  I needed to either figure out what it was the successful teachers were doing, or else give it up and find a new hobby.  I’m stubborn sometimes, so I voted for figure-it-out.

The cool news?  By the end of the year, instead of parents calling to complain, they were calling to tell me how much their children enjoyed my class.

That experience has convinced me that anyone can learn to teach, and to teach well.   My mission here at Amazing Catechists is to explain some of the problem-solving how-to’s that allowed me to turn my class around.

Some teachers seem to “just know” how to teach, and sometimes I wish I had that natural talent.   But those of us who have to really work on our skills, and make a concerted effort to figure out how good teaching works?  We’re the ones who can explain what it was we did that made the difference.

So yes, I’m a veritable treasure-trove of first-hand knowledge about Things That Don’t Work.  If that’s you, too, let me encourage you not to give up!  Let’s use this column to compare notes, share ideas, and figure out how to keep improving your class week after week.

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A little bit about me.  In my regular life, I’m a homeschooling mom of four children, currently in kindergarten, 2nd, 4th and 6th grades.  We use Faith and Life for religion at home.  In the classroom, prior to becoming a catechist I had done a lot of odds-n-ends teaching, including one-on-one professional training (I’m an accountant by trade), teaching a parenting class at our local crisis pregnancy center, and a bit of tutoring (French! I love that language!).

At the parish, I’ve been settled into 5th grade since the very start. We’re using Loyola Press’s Finding God.  In the summer and for holiday events, I teach multi-age classes, usually kindergarten and up.   Last summer I helped to write and implement a home-grown VBS program — everybody needs an excuse to buy buckets of balls and a good foam bowling set, right?  For the coming year, I may be making the switch to teaching adults — though it’s too soon to know for sure.

How about you?  I’d love to “meet” you!  Tell me about yourself — are you teaching now?  How’s your class coming?  What have been your challenges this year, and what’s something that’s gone right for a change?  Are you thinking of teaching?  What questions do you have?  What excites you most about being a catechist, and what are your concerns?