|
UU Faith Works Summer/Fall 2003 Administration
|
Concerns About Our RE Workshop Rotation?
Jude Henzy
Director of Religious Education
First Unitarian Church
Wilmington, DE
Recently, a parent expressed concern about the Religious Education Workshop Rotation mode for grades one through six we'll be field-testing this year. The worry was that our children would just come to RE and have fun, the content of the program would be watered down. The parent wondered if we would be sacrificing important material to make the program more entertaining for our consumer-oriented culture. These are valid concerns, to be sure.
Part of my response reflects a difference in educational theory. Some educators teach a “core curriculum,” believing that there is specific material or information that we need to teach our children. Opinions differ on the content of the core curriculum, but educators using this model have in common the desire to transfer information from themselves or a lesson book to the children.
The workshop rotation model approach to religious education is exploring programs and concepts and stories through child-friendly multi-media workshops: an art workshop, drama, music, games, puppets, story telling, computers and other educational media. The same UU (Bible World Religion/story) principle is taught in all of the workshops for four of five Sundays, rotating the young people to a different workshop each week. The teachers in each workshop lead the same workshop for all five weeks to different children. This approach honors the various learning styles and participants and matches teachers' interests to the different ways of learning. The theory that the method is the message. While this model covers curriculum content, it focuses more on helping children learn the concept of caring for the earth by creating a play or story about it; others will resonate, if you will, with songs and music on the topic; still others will need to use art, science, or physical movement activities.
While parents may or may not see this model as appropriate for school, I believe it is very well suited to Unitarian Universalist religious education. Like our faith, it draws from many sources, and when you look at the model in terms of our seven principles it makes a whole lot of sense. (Think about the inherent worth and dignity of every person, acceptance of one another, free search for truth and meaning, world community—it's all in there!)
I believe most important of all, that the Workshop Model is designed to accommodate a lot of different learning styles so that children can be their most authentic selves at church. Instead of having to fit the limited mold of the traditional classroom environment, our kids will be freer to shine where their talents are, or they'll discover new ones. What better foundation on which to build meaningful relationships with other members of our community and spiritual connections to our faith could there be?
UU Faith Works Home | Summer/Autumn 2003
© Copyright 2003 Unitarian Universalist Association
[an error occurred while processing this directive] accesses to this page since December 18, 2003