I love that one of our first lessons of the new faith formation year is the story of creation. We began with a prayer and then we read the creation story out of a children’s Bible storybook. There were two things in particular I loved about teaching this lesson. The first thing I loved was that I had the opportunity to teach that God’s love is unconditional. I explained how God created every person in […]
This past Tuesday, the fifth graders in St. Cajetan’s RE program assembled care packages of personal hygiene items for the homeless. This took place as part of a unique partnership between the fifth-grade class and the Action for Others campaign at Loyola Press. Employees at LP were invited, over the past two weeks, to purchase and donate personal hygiene items or cash toward the project. I delivered the items to the parish and assisted the catechists and […]
We are a few weeks into the new school year, and my third graders are finally settling into the routine of class. Our first lesson focused on the Holy Spirit. My students learned that the Holy Spirit helps guide us to live as Christians. As we read the chapter in our textbook, my students highlighted important sentences, phrases, and vocabulary words. We stopped several times during our reading to discuss how the Spirit guides us […]
Despite having 15 years of experience, I feel like a first-year catechist in many ways this year. Our parish has a new catechetical leader. I will be in a different classroom on a different floor of the school building. My room has tables instead of individual desks. The religious education office moved to different location within the parish space. Things are changing, and I’m hoping the changes bring positive effects for our program. On the […]
Quick question . . . have you checked Facebook today? Chances are you have, and you’re not alone. Facebook reports more than 800 million mobile active users alone. For many, social media and social networking are synonymous with Facebook. Users range from pre-teens to senior citizens. Now imagine being able to harness even a fraction of that interest and activity level for your religious education program. Believe it or not, it isn’t as tough as […]
My favorite radio station in Chicago—WXRT, 93.1 FM—features a movie critic who goes by the name of “The Regular Guy.” Since 1984, DJ Marty Lennartz has portrayed a stereotypical gritty Chicagoan giving his take on the current motion picture hits. The bit is brilliant, of course, because listeners fashion themselves as “regular people” who can relate to this movie critic who has no airs about him. That explains my answer to the question, “Who do you […]
I’m old enough to remember how Jackie Gleason would say, “And awaaaay we go!” at the beginning of his TV show every week. Those words popped into my mind as we kicked off the catechetical year at St. Cajetan Parish last week. We began with a prayer service in church, which included blessings of the parents, children, catechists, and Finding God textbooks. After some inspiring words from the pastor, Fr. Frank Kurucz, the young people were […]
As catechists, we always need to evaluate the way we present lessons to our classes. An approach that may work for one group may not work for another. For example, I was teaching a frisky group of second graders about the Real Presence of Jesus Christ in the Eucharist. However, all of the old tricks that had been effective with my other classes seemed to fall flat with this group. I was being challenged as […]
As a Church, we’ve been talking about adult faith formation for years and yet, here we are “beginning” the conversation at Christ the King parish. That’s not a knock on the parish—many parishes find themselves in the same boat: yet to realize what it means to make adult faith formation a priority. Thankfully, Fr. Larry Sullivan and his staff are determined to change all that! Recently, I met with Fr. Larry and the staff at […]
My three kids are back in school and I’m preparing to head back to the parish classroom as a third-grade catechist. It would be easy for me to overlook preparing for the class since I’ve been teaching the same grade for a few years, but I know that this would be a huge mistake. Just because I am familiar with the age and curriculum doesn’t mean I don’t need to prepare. Preparing to teach religious […]
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