From the category archives:

Growing as a Catechist

Teaching About Jesus Using “New Media”

by Joe on November 2, 2009

26973EDURGB600At the recent plenary assembly of the Pontifical Council for Social Communications, Pope Benedict XVI encouraged the use of new technologies of the digital age to spread the word of God.

With that in mind, for the first time in my life as a catechist, this evening I will be having my students create Powerpoint presentations rather than posters!

For the last few years, during the Jesus unit, I have had my classes work at Jesus Learning Stations, fromwhich they prepared posters to teach about Jesus to the rest of the class. This year, I’ve decided to do something very different.

It turns out that I have access to 3 laptop computers: my own, a work laptop, and my daughter’s laptop. With 10 students, I can easily form groups of 3 or 4 and have each group work with a laptop to create Powerpoint presentations that teach about Jesus. I will have 3 groups (I rearranged the material from the previous 5 learning stations into 3 groups):

As you’ll see from clicking on each of the above, I am providing a resource packet to each group with all of the information they need to create their presentation on their assigned topic. I will be telling them to imagine that they are going to be explaining who Jesus is to someone who’s never heard of him before.

Before they do any work on the computers, however, they will have to show me a hard copy of their plan. I have created the “templates” for each of their PowerPoints and will provide hard copies of the slides they need to complete…each slide includes a header that asks a question they need to answer using the information from their resource packets. Each group will divvy up the slides they are to complete and then will get to work. Here are the slides:

This week, they are to complete their slides which I will take home and combine into one presentation. Next week, we will show the PowerPoint presentation and each of them will “narrate” their slide.

The one “fly in the ointment” is that the clip art gallery on each computer does not have much in the way of Christian clip art so I’m going to need to spend some time this afternoon downloading some clip art that will be readily available to them (the classroom does not have wi-fi access) so that they can “dress up” their slides.

I’m excited and nervous about this new venture. I’m so accustomed to working with paper, scissors, and glue, but I’ve been curious about how to use technology in the classroom so I think this is a perfect opportunity. Pray that we meet with success.

Any pointers and suggestions are most welcome!

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Advent Webinar!

by Joe on October 29, 2009

Preparing for Advent: A Webinar

Facilitator: Joe Paprocki, DMin
Brought to you by Loyola Press, A Jesuit Ministry


Wednesday, November 18, 2009
7:15 – 8:15 pm (CST)

Advent begins on Sunday, November 29, 2009—
are you ready?

Joe Paprocki, National Consultant for Faith Formation for Loyola Press and veteran catechist, invites catechists, religion teachers, and RCIA leaders to join him in this Webinar that explores how to create engaging advent-themed faith-formation activities drawn from the Sunday Scripture Readings of Cycle C (the Gospel of Luke). Joe will take us through the readings for this Advent season, explore the theme for each week, and share some unique ways you can develop the theme into activities that inspire children, youth, and adults to enter more deeply into the beauty and holiness of Advent.

In the days following the Webinar, Joe will offer additional Advent-related activities on his blog, Catechist’s Journey. If you are unable to attend the Webinar, you may view the video on Joe’s blog. It will be posted the week following the Webinar.

This free Webinar is led by Joe Paprocki, an 8th-grade catechist in the Archdiocese of Chicago with over 30 years of experience in pastoral ministry. Joe, National Consultant for Faith Formation at Loyola Press, is the author of numerous books including the best-selling The Catechist’s Toolbox and A Well-Built Faith, as well as the host of the blog Catechist’s Journey.

Register for this free Webinar today by clicking here.

If you have additional questions about the Webinar, please contact freyer@loyolapress.com.

 

Brought to you by
Loyola Press

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On Second Thought…

by Joe on October 20, 2009

ED000418Last evening’s session went OK, however, as I look back over my attempt to walk the young people through the Bible in preparation for the unit on Jesus, I’m having second thoughts about my approach.

Frankly, I think it was a bit beyond them to explore so many Scripture passages (as outlined in my handout)  in one swoop. As brief as most of those passages are and as easy as I thought it would be to tell the story of salvation history by glancing at each of these, I’m not so sure that the lightbulbs were going on. I have to hand it to the kids…they behaved well throughout and we had some nice moments (especially when reading about the giving of the Ten Commandments). However, I think this approach of reading so many Scripture passages in one sitting is better suited for high school students and adults. I think it would have better suited my 8th graders for me to simply lead them through the sections of the Bible as I describe in my book The Bible Blueprint - inviting them to find one or two passages in each of the 8 sections of the Bible (Pentateuch, History, Wisdom, Prophets/Gospels, Acts, Letters, Revelation).

Overall, I think they got the idea of the story of salvation history but I don’t think I was hitting the nail on the head. To top it off, the CD I had for my song of the week didn’t work last night so that threw me off a bit. Luckily, they were very well behaved for the guided reflection (sacred space) and things ended on a good note because of that.

The good part is, they did read directly from the Bible for a couple of weeks in class, and they encountered the wonderful stories of Abraham, Moses, and David. The “bad” is that I’m not so sure that reading certain other passages was very effective (too many unrecognizable names of people and places) and I’d hate to think that they would come away with the idea that reading the Bible is too difficult for them.

We live and learn, right? And, we teach and learn! Each time we teach, we can step back and evaluate how effective our approach was and make adjustments so that the next time we teach that same topic, we can improve our strategies. With years of experience, we learn not to beat ourselves up over sessions that are less than satisfactory but to simply make the necessary adjustments to find the right vehicle for proclaiming God’s Word in the future!

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The Ponderings of an RCIA Catechist

by Joe on October 12, 2009

I came across these thoughts from an RCIA catechist pondering the first session of breaking open the Word. Take a look…

http://catholicwideweb.wordpress.com/2009/10/11/rcia-catechist/

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My First Session – Part 3

by Joe on September 17, 2009

30716166So far, I’ve summarized the first 45-50 minutes of my first session with my 8th graders this past Monday evening, detailing the Engage and Explore steps of my lesson. Today, I’ll detail the REFLECT step which is designed to lead the young people to pray from within the truths they are learning. Here are the details:

  • Before class began, I had set up on my prayer center, a circle of battery operated tea light candles (I purchased at CVS…very cheap).
  • I had the young people put their textbooks on the floor underneath their chairs and told them that it was time to move into another segment of the class that they are going to really like.
  • I introduced the concept of sacred space telling them that, as much as possible, we will spend about 15 minutes of each class in quiet prayerful time. I explained that, one by one, I will call them forward to pick up their candle, turn it on, and proceed to a location anywhere in the room (under a table, on top of a table, behind a desk, in a chair, on the floor, etc.) that they will then claim as their own personal sacred space.
  • One by one, they came forward to do just that as I made sure that each location chosen was about 10-15 feet away from the nearest classmate.
  • Once they were all in position, I turned the lights out and put on some quiet instrumental background music.
  • I invited them to get comfortable, to put their candle down and just stare at it, and led them in some breathing exercises for about a minute and a half.
  • Surprisingly they were very quiet and cooperative – usually I get a few wise guys who make wheezing sounds when I invite them to breathe deeply!
  • I then led them on a guided reflection, inviting them to imagine that they were aboard the Space Shuttle, orbiting the earth. I invited them to imagine looking down at the earth below and taking in all of the beauty of God’s creation and to look at the moon and stars, thinkin about how good God’s creation is. I did this for about 2-3 minutes.
  • I spoke about how we can trust God because of the goodness of his creation that he shares with us. I invited them to talk to God, thanking him for creation. I then invited them to thank God for this quiet time, for the beautiful weather we’ve been enjoying, for the peaceful sounds of the night outside our room, and so on. I did this for 2-3 minutes.
  • I then allowed them to just rest in the quiet presence of God for a couple of minutes – complete silence. I finished by telling them that they most likely feel very peaceful right now and to remember that the next time they are in Church and extend a Sign of Peace to someone, that they are wishing that this person will experience the same peace you are feeling right now.
  • I slowly called them back to the room, turned a few lights on slowly, and made sure we had not lost any of them to sleep! I’m happy to report that they all stayed awake! They then returned to their seats, placing their candles back on the prayer table.
  • When we gathered back, I asked if this was the quietest moment of their day and all but one raised their hand. I said that this is how we are going to pray each week whenever possible – that this is a little different from how they may have prayed before but that it is a grownup way to pray. I asked if they liked it and they responded positively (no gushing or anything, just a few nods, a few “yeahs” and a couple of “uh-huhs”)

All told, we took between 15-20 minutes total for the Reflect step. I never once used the word meditation…kids can often act goofy when they hear that word. I’ll tell them in a few weeks that this is what they’re doing.

Only once during the guided reflection did I need to stop and correct some behavior. One of the boys was trying to hold back laughter and finally let loose with some giggles and guffaws. Over what, I have no idea. I just stopped and said to the whole group, “you need to resist the urge to laugh and giggle when we do this because that’s what children do and you’re not little children anymore. You need to act like young adults.” That seemed to work.

When we were all done, I complimented them on their behavior, telling them that they acted very maturely. We were now ready to move into the final step of the class, the RESPOND step, where I send them out through “my door” (remember, St. Ignatius’ advice? “Enter through THEIR door but be sure to leave through YOUR door!”) I’ll describe that experience tomorrow.

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