The ministry of catechesis has many challenges in the Third Millennium. Some of the challenges going on in my ministry of Directing a School of Religion (Religious Ed.) Program is the fact that we only have the students once a week for an hour and 15 minutes (grades 1-6) to pass on the faith. The middle schoolers meet for an hour an a half. Most of the time students struggle to remember what they learned the week before due to the length of time between lessons (sometimes it is longer than a week). Most parents are so busy and over committed that they do not have the time to follow up and discuss with their child what they are learning. I’m not speaking about all parents but most of of the parents I’ve ever worked with this is the case. This poses a huge challenge to passing on the faith. One thing I’m doing is improving the lessons and equipping the catechists at our parish. Also, I’m trying to find ways to communicate with parents and encourage parents to grow in their faith and share it with their children.
There is a lot of work to be done and progress to be made but I’m continuing to learn the need to engage parents in their primary role of educating their children in the faith. Our program has a collaborative role, we are not the primary educators. Yes, we probably have more resources at our disposal and have catechists who maybe know the faith to a greater degree than parents who have not taken the time that an average catechist does to grow in the faith,but that does not change our role.
It would be great to hear from anyone who has insights regarding these challenges. Come Holy Spirit!
How do you use Scripture in your classroom? Using the Scirptures in your teaching is key to drawing students closer to Christ and His ways. Here are three great ways to use Scripture in your classroom:
1) Use Scripture during your Opening Prayer. Choose a Scripture that connects with the lesson of the day or the liturgical season or the feast/memorial of that day. This helps studnets see how important it is to turn to God and seek his wisdom and guidance.
2. Have Studnets look up Scripture. The primary way to helps students be familiar with the Bible is to have them look things up themselves. This may take a little longer to move forward with your lesson but the value outweighs the cost. If studnets are looking Scripture up then they are also learning that your teaching is rooted in Holy Scripture.
3. Close your Lesson in Prayer using Scripture. Seeking God at the end of your class time through prayer and again drawing upon the word of God to direct and lead them until you meet again is important. It would also be great to assign students a Scripture to look up this week and to pray with. For example, I’ve asked students to read Psalm 23 everyday this next week to see what God is saying to them. After a week there will be some who say that God spoke the same thing to them every day they read it and others who share that God spoke one thing one day and another thing the next time they read it.
We want to be soaked in the Sacred Scriptures. St. Paul said, It is “living and active cutting between bone and marrow” (Hebrews 4:12). May the students you teach see your love for God’s revelation through the Scriptures.
During the past 10 years memorization has had a resurgence in Religious Education circles because of the importance of helping students hand on the faith. It is very difficult to hand on our faith if we do not know what it means to be Catholic and what we believe as Catholics.
St. Thomas Aquinas speaks of 4 ways to help students memorize material:
1) Use a picture or image of the idea;
2) Organize material in a logical order;
3) Choose to memorize something important;
4) Repeat and reflect on the subject often.
These are 4 great ways to focus in the classroom on helping our studnets grow in their knowledge of the faith and retain it. Dr. Barbara Minczewski wrote a good article in the Feb. 2008 Catechist Magazine entitled, Spreading the Word: Catechetical Methodologies. In it she says: “For without knowing basic Catholic teaching, prayers, and practices on which to build a lifelong relationship with God and others, children can lose sight of their call to be people of God and to bring about the reign of God in this age and time.”
Together let us seek the assistance of the Holy Spirit as we empower our studnets to memorize their faith so they may be the very instruments of hope and God’s love in the world around them!
