In the end though, Catholic education is not about being “socially useful.” Nor is it about good “values.” The values language of social science is too thin to satisfy the human soul, and too bland for the people of Christian character and courage God wants us to be. Catholic education is about making saints; about growing the seeds of virtue and truth. Anything less cheats our students of their dignity
--Charles J. Chaput O.F.M. Cap, Archbishop of Philadelphia
As part of a formation day for teachers of the Archdiocese of Philadelphia on the Feasts of All Saints, Archbishop Chaput released a pastoral letter on Catholic education and faith formation, entitled "Equpping Saints." Read the entire document here.
The National Directory for Catechesis reminds catechists of several distinct features of catechetical programming with adolescents. Take some time to review the features named below. Specifically, catechesis with adolescents
Teaches the core content of the Catholic faith as presented in the Catechism of the Catholic Church. The purpose is to provide a solid foundation for the growth in faith.
Recognizes that faith development is lifelong. This means that content and processes should be age-appropriate.
Integrates knowledge of the Catholic faith with liturgical and prayer experiences. It also helps students develop practical skills for living their faith in the world.
Dialogues with adolescents about his or her joys, questions, struggles, concerns, and hopes in tandem with the wisdom of the Catholic Church.
Utilizes a variety of learning approaches including music and media and responds to different learning styles of individuals.
Inspires a warm atmosphere in a climate characterized by trust among adolescents and catechists.
Provides for real-life applications of learning by helping adolescents apply the lessons of faith and anticipate obstacles that will arise as they grow into adulthood.
Works in tandem with parents and other family members to incorporate a family perspective to catechesis
Promotes Christian attitudes toward human sexuality
Recognizes and celebrates the multicultural diversity of the Church
Incorporates a variety of approaches including small group programs, mentoring, and self-directed programming
Explicitly invites adolescents to explore through participation in the sacraments their own calls to ministry
Review the complete treatment of these themes in Part D, Chapter 7, "Catechizing the People of God in Diverse Setting" from the NDC.
It feels great when someone calls you buy name. When someone addresses you by name, it adds a level of connection that you just don't feel otherwise. When someone who you have just met or barely know uses your name in conversation, it can be surprising and it makes you feel very good about who you are.
Remembering and using someone's name is a simple gesture that goes a long way. How, then, can we learn students names quickly and correctly?
A few years ago, I shared some tactics for learning new names at The Religion Teacher website. I suggested using a few simple tools:
Note Cards
Desk Name Tags/Tents
Seating Chart
I also made a few suggestions for activities and games you can play in the first week of school to get to know someone's name. These games included:
Adjective Name-Game
Scavenger Hunt
Student Interview
To read the full post and find out how to implement all these suggestions, visit The Religion Teacher website.
(photo credit: Flickr)
As the spring semester winds down, it’s never too early to plan ahead for your own summer reading. We’ll leave the choices for the latest novels and current bios to you and instead suggest some ideas for reading in the areas of education, religious education, and spirituality.
Education Books
Mark Phillips (teacher and educational journalist) recommend several choices in his Edutopia blog.
The Dimensions of Engaged Teaching: A Practical Guide for Educators by Laura Weaver and Mark Wilding. This book invites teachers to consider their students’ emotional growth as well as their academic progress. The authors focus on five dimensions:
Cultivating an open heart
Engaging the self-observer
Being present
Establishing respectful boundaries
Developing emotional capacity
The Age of the Image: Redefining Literacy in a World of Screens by Stephen Apkon
Leaving to Learn by Elliot Washor and Charles Mojkowski. An objective of this book is to connect education in school to the real world applications.
Essential Questions: Opening Doors to Student Understanding by Jay McTighe and Grant Wiggins. This book builds on the authors’ “Understanding by Design” process and explores how to design and frame questions that promote deep thinking
Religious Education
31 Days to Becoming a Better Religious Educator by Jared Dees. This book of daily reflections and ideas to improve your teaching is applicable to both Catholic school teachers and parish catechists.
Spiritual Growth
Ave Maria Press has recently released several titles that you might find spiritually refreshing. Peruse the links below for more information on the following:
Walking the Disciple's Path: Eight Steps That Will Change Your Life and the World by Linda Perrone Rooney.
The First Spiritual Exercises: Four Guided Retreats by Michael Hansen, SJ
Eyes of the Heart: Photography as Christian Contemplative Practice by Christine Valters Paintner
Real Men Pray the Rosary: A Practical Guide to a Powerful Prayer by David N. Calvillo
Blessed, Beautiful, and Bodacious: Celebrating the Gift of Catholic Womanhood by Pat Gohn
Imitating Mary: Ten Marian Virtues for the Modern Mom by Marge Fenelon
Enjoy your reading!
What is the single most important thing for my students to learn?
We often overlook this important question. Our textbooks have so much information. The curriculum is very demanding. The days, weeks, and months we have to do actual instruction in class seem to be getting shorter and shorter as time goes on often interrupted by assemblies, sports, and other school events.
There is just too much to teach and not enough time.
Then exam time comes and we find our students can barely remember a thing we taught them months ago. How is this possible? They studied it. We reviewed and reinforced it again and again. How could they possibly forget?
Let's cut our students some slack. They have a lot to remember and learn well beyond our subject areas. It is a lot to take in for anyone.
So what can we do as religion teachers to plant in their minds and hearts an enduring memory of the concepts we are teaching?
Keep it simple, stupid!
That's right: simplify. It is extremely hard to do for many of us, but it is the best way to create a long-lasting memorable experience of you as a teacher and of your subject.
How to Simplify What You Teach
Try answering these two statements:
If they learn nothing else, they must learn . . .
The single most important thing for students to learn is . . .
Ask yourself these questions at the beginning of the school year, at the end of the school year, while you are planning each chapter/unit plan, and each lesson plan.
You can easily transform these simplified statements into your lesson objectives or unit goals. Or, if you use the Understanding by Design system, turn these statements into your enduring understandings (big ideas) and essential questions.
Simple Quotes to Help Keep Things Simple
"Plurality is never to be posited without necessity." —William of Occam (Occam's Razor)
"It is futile to do with more things that which can be done with fewer." —William of Occam
"It is superfluous to suppose that what can be accounted for by a few principles has been produced by many" —St. Thomas Aquinas
"Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler." —Attributed to Albert Einstein
"Nature operates in the shortest way possible." —Aristotle
"Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication" —Leonardo Da Vinci
"Behold, I am sending you like sheep in the midst of wolves; so be shrewd as serpents and simple as doves. —Jesus to his Apostles (Mt 10:16)
This simple post is an adaptation of "Day 23: Simplify Your Lesson" from 31 Days to Becoming a Better Religious Educator by Jared Dees. Get your copy here at Ave Maria Press.
When students graduate from high school, they should know their preferred learning styles. If so, they can choose higher education that best suits these styles as well as classes and study environments that help rather than hinder their learning.
Just posing the question, “How do you learn best?” may not yield answers immediately. Try using some images from Classroom Portraits by Julian Germain, captured in the article, “How Children Learn: A World Tour of Class Portraits,” by Maria Popova ,
Putting some or all of these images in front of the students may result in some of the following type of comments.
“I couldn’t learn in a classroom with fifty or sixty people!”
“I couldn’t learn standing up”
“Those desks look uncomfortable”
“I couldn’t concentrate with a dog in the classroom”
“I wouldn’t want to be only with other girls” or “I like single-sex classes”
“I wish my desk was that big!”
“I am glad that our uniform does not require a tie!” or “I would hate a uniform!”
“How could a teacher teach all of those boys at once?”
These types of comments can then lead to reflection or conversation about these topics. I learn best . . .
Alone or with lots of people
In a quiet classroom or a lively one
With space or crammed in with others
With or without distractions – opposite sex, a dog in the classroom
Wearing my own clothes or with a uniform
Sitting or standing
Listening or talking
This could move on to discussions such as . . .
I find that music helps me concentrate or distracts me
Doodling during lectures helps me listen
Taking down notes helps me learn the material
I prefer group work to solitary work
I find myself thinking through test material while running
Helping students learn how they best do homework, study for tests, research, or take tests is valuable knowledge both for them and for you. Students can also share ideas about how they discovered their own best environments. The idea that the quiet bedroom is the ideal study place may work for some students, may not work for others, or may not be an option for still others.
Marc Smith, a secondary teacher and psychologist in Great Britain, made the point in a recent blog article that Olympic athletes have something important to teach students about success and failure.
Smith points out that sports psychologists play an important role in the success of British athletes. These psychologists teach athletes to understand their personal psychology as well as their physical capabilities, enabling them to deal with failure better. Students do not learn these same skills and are unaware of the relationship between success and psychology. In school, students are more likely to think of their intellectual abilities as fixed and unchanging whereas scholars have found that adolescent intelligence, here measured by IQ scores, fluctuates significantly. Dr. Angela Duckworth of the University of Pennsylvania has concluded that academic success has more to do with motivation and “grit” than genetics.
Stanford psychologist Carol Dweck believes that a person determines his or her own success or failure based on self-perception, some people possessing a “fixed mindset” while others having a “growth mindset.” People with the fixed mindset believe in pre-programmed intelligence. In this mindset, students label themselves intelligent or unintelligent, or a teacher believes that some students are innately more capable of success than others. A growth mindset, on the other hand, views intelligence as fluid and under the control of each individual. A person with this mindset sees failure as a temporary setback on the path to success and a teacher associates hard work with success in his or her students.
If this “fixed” versus “growth” mindset is relevant to athletics and academics, does it also apply to the spiritual life? When we pray with our students or join them on campus ministry retreats, are there those who have decided already that they are not very spiritual and will never be? Are there those who think that they can be spiritual without effort? It might be a good idea to point out that the need to persevere in prayer applies to everyone. Dragging oneself out of bed for Sunday Mass is a common challenge of the spiritual journey. Failure or sin is a temporary stop on the path to success if we avail ourselves of the Sacraments and other opportunities for grace.
From the growth perspective, discussing both the successes and failures of saints, for example, can help students see when, like sports and school, holiness requires determination and effort, and when only God’s grace is necessary.
Frank Mercadante, founder of the very successful Cultivation Ministries that has offered training seminars for youth ministers for the past twenty years, offers the following acronym to help youth ministers be better catechists to the youth they serve. His suggestions also are very applicable to classroom teachers. The acronym E-D-U-C-A-T-E with some notes from Frank taken from his book Growing Teen Disciples (St. Mary’s Press, 2002) follows.
E Emphasize Interaction
“When a teen is not given the opportunity to interact and be a partner in learning, he or she concludes that the class does not belong to him or her in any way, shape, or form, but is solely possessed by the catechist.”
D Diversity of Learning Approaches
“Variety of activity is a boredom-buster….Teens learn differently. By utilizing a variety of different methods we increase our likelihood of satisfying a greater number of our participants.”
U Utilize Life Experience
“Every adolescent arrives at a session with relevant experiences. We need to capitalize on these experiences by helping draw a connection point from their life to the teachings of the Church.”
C Content Moderation
“Our meetings should emphasize only one, two, or maybe three points of content. We are on a lifelong journey. No one needs to know everything before their eighteenth birthday.”
A Applicable to Real Life
“When a young person describes a class or subject as “boring” or a “waste of time,” what he or she often means is that “I will never have to use this information in real life.” Faith is a verb. We are meant to live it.
T Three-Fold Response
“Genuine faith involves a response of the whole person—mind heart, and will. Effective catechesis helps foster faith in all three dimensions: trusting (heart), believing (mind) and doing (will).”
E Environment of Concern
“We may employ all of the above principles for effective adolescent catechesis, yet foster little or now growth. Without a warm, caring, and accepting environment, we possess only the “batter” for spiritual faith and growth. This batter is transformed into the real thing when “baked” in an atmosphere of genuine love.
