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?

 

G-Rated Saints

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I like to teach about the lives of saints, but I always run into one small hitch: Real life is R-rated. Teaching my own children is fairly easy.  I know the child’s maturity level, I know what will and will not be disturbing . . . as a parent, I can delve into tough topics at a fairly young age.  I also have the luxury of time — there’s always another chance to share more details, or answer more questions.

But in the classroom, my job’s a lot tougher.  I need to hone in on the essentials, and avoid watering down the faith, but still keep my material suitable for all-audiences.  Here’s how I do it.

Pick a Saint.  Most saints are suitable for a g-rated classroom . . . but not all.  There are tricks for toning down sensitive topics, for example by glossing over a gory death with a simple, “she died for her faith.”  But as much as I love St. Maria Goretti, there’s no getting around the pivotal moment of her life — she died from injuries received while resisting rape.  Not a topic suitable for pre-teen classrooms, and one that needs to be handled carefully even in high school.

Do your own research.  If you are using the saint suggested in your textbook, teacher’s manual, or VBS curriculum, there may be a kid-friendly saints bio in your book.  It’s worth the time to do some research of your own.  My two favorite sources are Butler’s Lives of Saints and Wikipedia.  Don’t laugh!  They tend to provide concrete, action-based biographies — whereas more devotional-style works often skip over the story to focus on a deeper message.  Children learn concretely.  Not “Saint Martin de Porres was kind to animals,” but “St. Martin de Porres took care of injured cats and dogs.”  As you research, look for those little details that will interest your students.

Look for a theme.  Try to tie your talk into the wider topic for your class.  For some saints, you’ll have way too much information.  Focusing on just one aspect of your saint’s life can help pare down your talk to a manageable size.  At the other extreme, if there is a scarcity of information about your saint, you can flesh out the lesson by taking the one or two available details, and tying them to a broader discussion of Christian virtue.

Write up your talk.  You won’t want to read this aloud to the class, but write it down in complete sentences anyway.  Why bother?  You need to know in advance what words you’ll use.  Is there new vocabulary you’ll need to teach?  Is there a sensitive topic, such as a gruesome martyrdom, or a dispute over divorce and remarriage, that you’ll need to put into nightmare-resistant, child-friendly terms?  Pick your wording in advance, so you aren’t caught trying to improvise.  Ask your DRE, pastor, or another catechist if you are struggling for ways to share something delicately.

–> For Vacation Bible School, give a copy of your Saint-of-the-Day talking points to the other volunteers.  That way other leaders can reinforce throughout the day what students have learned at your VBS station.

Anticipate difficult questions.  In teaching St. Joan of Arc to a mixed-age group (1st grade and up) last summer, I intentionally glossed over the fact that St. Joan was condemned in an ecclesiastical court.  It sufficed to explain that her enemy had tried her unfairly, and that Joan had stood firmly for the truth even if it meant her own death.  But I’m glad I prepared an answer to the thornier question, because one of the parents asked it!  Plan to either answer the tough question in a child-friendly way, or to politely demure.  When a student asked me about the details of St. Josephine Bakhita’s early life, my answer was, “That is too disturbing to share in class, but your parents can research it and let you know what they find.”

How about you?  Have you ever run into saintly disaster?  Or have a success story you’d like to share?  I’d love to hear from you.