The Past Year
The year has come to an end for most in Religious Education. As a DRE or a catechist, did you make any mistakes this year? It’s worth taking time to reflect upon those mistakes and not only admitting that you made a mistake or two but to learn from it. John C. Maxwell in his book Leadership Gold said two things that I’d like to share:
1) “Everyone makes mistakes – large and small. To get maximum attention, make a big mistake. To cause maximum damage, fail to admit it! That will keep you from growing as a leader (and may I add, as a catechist/DRE) (pg. 106).
2) Then he continues, “When it comes to success, it’s not the number of mistakes you make; it’s the number of times you make the same mistake” (pg. 106).
Looking Forward
As we take some time to wrap things up from our year don’t forget to take stock and learn from the mistakes made and taking the necessary action from the mistakes made. I definitely have a few things that come to my mind regarding mistakes I made this year. One of them I will share is regarding my desire to motivate catechist to do a great job. I think there were times that I lacked a sense of gratitude toward their commitment to the program. I wish I would have said thank you more often. My fear is what Maxwell said about “the number of times you make the same mistake”. I hope I don’t make the same mistakes again, but I know that it is not out of the realm of possibility. Come Holy Spirit, assist me and guide me.
What about you? Any thing you have learned from this year?
Catechesis in the Third Millennium 
June 3, 2011 at 11:35 PM
This is a good reflection! It is so important to learn from mistakes. I used to have an assistant that I could bounce this stuff off of. We’d sit and analyze what went right through the year and how we could fix it. I don’t have that anymore so I’ll have to figure out some mechanisms to take care of that this year.
Also, keeping notes along the way works way better at doing this than sitting and thinking at the end of the year. I forget so soon what worked and what didn’t.
June 4, 2011 at 6:45 PM
That’s a good idea to write it down along the way. You are so right that one can forget pretty fast what worked or what didn’t.