Archive for August, 2007
OK, the title for today’s post is just to get your attention. I don’t want to propose that Labor Day become a holy day of obligation. I like to sleep in once and a while. However, I would like to make the point that work is what we spend the majority of our time doing and, if the Church wanted to help people “find God” in their everyday lives, it would do well to help people focus on the spirituality of work.
As catechists, we can help those we teach to begin to develop a spirituality of work by talking about how we strive to live Gospel values and serve the Kingdom of God through our daily work. We should talk about our jobs…the challenges and the joys…and help our learners to see that we do not separate faith from our daily living.
I recommend Greg Pierce’s book Spirituality at Work as a good Labor Day weekend read. Likewise, Living the Mass, which I co-authored with Fr. Dom Grassi, shows how the Mass connects with daily living which, for most of us, involves going to work.
I wish you all a great Labor Day weekend and God’s blessings to all of you catechists who begin classes next week! (I start Sept. 10). I’m taking the weekend off from blogging and I’ll meet you back here on Tuesday, Sept. 4.
Here is a Labor Day prayer from the Archdiocese of Detroit Web Site:
On this weekend, when we rest from our usual labors, loving Father, we pray for all who shoulder the tasks of human labor—in the marketplace, in factories and offices, in the professions, and in family living. We thank you, Lord, for the gift and opportunity of work; may our efforts always be pure of heart, for the good of others and the glory of your name. We lift up to you all who long for just employment and those who work to defend the rights and needs of workers everywhere. May those of us who are now retired always remember that we still make a valuable contribution to our Church and our world by our prayers and deeds of charity. May our working and our resting all give praise to you until the day we share together in eternal rest with all our departed in your Kingdom as you live and reign Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, one God, forever and ever. Amen.
The first parish I worked in, St. Mary of the Assumption (Chicago), had a fairly substantial resource library of videos that could be used in religious education. Likewise, when I taught high school religion, we had a large collection of videos to use in religion classes.
I realize that we often don’t have that much time in our classes however, showing a good video can be a very effective means of engaging those we teach.
What video(s) would you recommend as a “must see” for religious education? Tell us the name of the video, the company it’s from, the topic, and what grade/age level it is best suited for.
I look forward to hearing from you!!!
On Monday evening, I had the pleasure of attending the first catechist meeting of the upcoming religious education year. The meeting went very well and there is a wonderful spirit among the catechists and staff. The pastor and DRE offered warm welcomes and the Deacon and his wife offered a very helpful formation session on understanding the Bible with a focus on the Old Testament.
I also had the pleasure of meeting my catechist aide. Most of the aides are high school students, however, my aide, Kris, is a professional 3rd grade teacher in a public school! She is very excited to be participating in the RE program and I am very excited to have her as an aide. Here is the e-mail I sent her as a followup:
Kris, thanks for sending me your contact info. I look forward to working with you. While the high school aides are nice to work with, I like the idea of having another adult in the room to team with.
I will rely on you a great deal, not just for taking care of business such as distributing materials and taking attendance, but for helping to facilitate learning, especially when we do group work which requires supervision and input for the kids.
If you’re comfortable with it, I will often ask you to share your thoughts and experiences concerning various topics. The more they hear from adult witnesses, the more they will feel encouraged to do so themselves.
I think your most important job will be to just develop a rapport with them…not trying to be their best friend, but establishing lines of communication that express the fact that we respect them, want to talk with them, and want to listen to them.
I will most likely send you an e-mail each week with some thoughts, ideas, and info about the upcoming session. Feel free to share any insights and suggestions along the way.
I look forward to working with you, Kris, as we embark on this spiritual journey with our 8th graders! Thanks! -joe
Let’s hear it for all of our catechist aides who are a very important presence in our catechetical settings!
I have an article appearing in September issue of Catechist Magazine titled, “Assessment in Catechesis.” I hope you get a chance to peruse it and the many of the other fine resources offered in this excellent magazine.
Also, I received a nice plug from Gilles Côté in his Catholic Educator News about my blog and about The Catechist’s Toolbox. Thanks, Gilles! Don’t forget to visit his website, 4Catholiceducators.com.
P.S. Tonight is my first catechist meeting of the year. I’ll let you know about it Wednesday, as I’ll be on the road tomorrow.
The sales people at Loyola Press tell me that the phones are ringing off the hook with requests for my new book, The Catechist’s Toolbox! Apparently, almost 20,000 copies have already been sold! I’m so excited! This is a testament to the catechetical ministry and to catechists everywhere who are showing that they are passionate about this ministry and hungry to grow in effectiveness as we proclaim God’s Word!
Please take a look at a comment from yesterday’s post (8/23/07) that surfaces a situation that is all too common: a volunteer catechist with no training (and, as a recent convert, not a lot of familiarity with Catholic Tradition) being asked to teach a group of 30 - that’s right, I said THIRTY - 6th graders!!!
Ugh!
This is just not fair to any catechist, let alone a new one. Even Jesus had 12 Apostles to help him! In Mark’s account (6:34) of the Feeding of the 5000 (now there’s a big class!), we find that Jesus put his disciples to work, organizing the crowd, distributing the food, and collecting the leftovers.
I encourage you to write a comment offering some supportive suggestions to Tina on yesterday’s post. My initial response to her is filled with a great deal of frustration toward the DRE so maybe some of you can be more positive!!!
And I’m not just talking about food.
Last night, I was with about 40 catechists from 2 different parishes and the interesting thing was that all but 2 of them were returning catechists! That rate of return is a testament to the care and support of their catechetical leaders who are both very professional and have outstanding vision for the catechetical ministry. They know how to “feed” their catechists.
We catechists owe so much to our catechetical leaders (DREs) who provide support, guidance, and resources so that we may be more effective catechists.
Let’s pray that the Church and especially pastors continue to find ways to offer the same support and care for catechetical leaders. Too many parishes are trying to do without DREs, thinking that all that they need to do is order books and fill catechist slots with warm bodies while saving money with reduced payroll.
This approach is like shooting ourselves in the foot. In the short run, parishes without DREs will have leaner budgets and the RE program might maintain itself for the most part for a few years. However, in the long run, there will be no vision for growing the catechetical ministry to better form catechists and to make adult catechesis the priority it should be. Catechists who are not supported, formed, and nourished quickly burn-out and drop off and a vicious cycle begins of constantly recruiting new catechists who will never get proper formation and will not last. And without proper formation, the quality of catechesis suffers, and eventually the catechetical program becomes moribound.
So please, FEED THE CATECHISTS!
I’ll be talking with my DRE today about finalizing the schedule (syllabus) for the year for grade 8. I know that both of us will have to resist the temptation to “try to do too much.”
There’s so much great stuff packed into the textbook (Finding God, Loyola Press) and we also schedule a number of additional events that take us out of the classroom and into the Church, meaning that there’s just never enough time to do it all.
I keep going back to the notion of: it’s better to do a few things and to do them exceptionally well than it is to do a number of things only fairly well.
I think the same holds true for each class that we teach. Sometimes we try to do so many things that we end up accomplishing very little. It’s like a homily that tries to accomplish too much…if you can’t summarize a homily in one line, then it’s not a good homily. This can be applied to our lessons: we need to focus on one BIG idea and hammer it home. We should be able to summarize the focus of our lesson in one sentence. If we can’t, then there’s no way the kids will be able to respond to their parents’ question of “So, what did you learn in religious education today?”
Today, catechists not only have excellent catechetical textbooks placed in their hands, but they also have access to quality Websites offered by the various publishers where additional resources can be accessed. The nice thing is, for many of these resources, you don’t have to be using that particular publisher’s textbook to gain access to. (Of course users of that publisher’s textbook have access to even more).
Be sure to visit these Websites for quality resources for your sessions:
Finding God (Loyola Press) - http://www.findinggod.com/loggedin_home.asp
Christ Our Life (Loyola Press) - http://www.christourlife.org/index.asp?bhcp=1
Faith First (RCL-Benziger) - http://www.faithfirst.com/
Christ Jesus, the Way (RCL-Benziger) - http://christjesustheway.com/program/cjtw/index.html
We Believe (Sadlier) - http://www.webelieveweb.com/ as well as http://www.cyberfaith.com/
Coming to Faith (Sadlier) - http://www.comingtofaith.com/
Blest Are We (Silver Burdett Ginn) - http://www.blestarewe.com/index.cfm
Call to Faith (Harcourt) - http://your.harcourtreligion.com/ctf/nsmedia/menu.html
I’m terrible at remembering names! That’s why I work so hard at trying to get to know the names of my students on the first day of class.
My inspiration comes from a college professor I had at Loyola University, a Jesuit priest, who brought in a Polaroid camera on the first day of class, arranged us in groups of 5 or 6 (the class had over 50 students!), took photos, and had us write our names on the back of the photo in the order we were standing.
The very next day, as we entered class, he greeted every single one of us at the door BY NAME! And this was a college theology course!
The sooner we get to know our students’ names, and use those names, the better our rapport with them will be.
God calls us each by name. Let’s use those names!
