Thanks to all the folks who spent the day with me today at the St. Charles Borromeo Pastoral Center in the Diocese of Joliet, IL, for a Being, Knowing, and Doing workshop. We had a wonderful day looking at how we can provide formation for catechists that includes these 3 dimensions. Special thanks to Tom Quinlan, the Director of the Religious Education Office, and Joyce Donahue, Catechetical Associate. I was also honored to have in attendance 2 representatives from the Catechetical Office of the Diocese of Springfield, IL, Jonathan Sullivan, Director, and Chris Malmevik, Associate Director. A great big THANK YOU to all of the catechetical leaders who came out today to talk about ways of caring for our catechists! Best wishes to you all!
Intermediate Grades
First Session for 2013-14: Off to a Great Start!
I couldn’t be happier with how my first session went last evening, thanks to a great group of kids, a highly organized DRE, and a wonderful aide (my wife!) I ended up with 9 students having lost one boy and gaining one girl, so now, I have 6 girls and 3 boys. They come from 5 different schools but have “traveled” together through religious education at St. Cajetan for 6 years and have a great […]
Miscellaneous
Nice Thoughts About Honoring Parents
I came across some nice thoughts about parents of children in religious education from Lisa Mladinich. She relates how many catechists lament the fact the some parents take little interest in their children’s faith formation. She then goes on to offer some positive advice for honoring them instead of critizing them and provides some practical ideas for catchists to reach out to parents. Good article. Honor Their Fathers and Their Mothers I do have a […]
Technology in Catechesis
Using SKYPE in Catechesis
My friend Victor Valdez, a DRE in Mountain View, CA, sent me this link about an 8th grade language arts teacher in Iowa who invited his students to select a name from the CNN Heroes finalists so that he could arrange for them to speak with him or her using SKYPE. Eighth Graders Learn Big Lessons from CNN Heroes Assignment Victor astutely suggests that this would be a great idea for a religious education class in […]
Thank YOU, Joe! It was great. Lots of good comments after.
Joyce, you and Tom are doing great work in Joliet…keep it up!