Dear Friends in Christ,
I had previously written about our anticipation for this to be a year of more silence on this website due to our daughter’s upcoming wedding. We indeed did follow that decision for most of the year. The happy couple were married in October, just a few weeks ago, in a splendid ceremony at our parish. We could not have asked for a more perfect sunny, warm, October day surrounded by our friends and family. After spending many months preparing for this wedding I did not envision a return to the classroom setting for this academic year.
Then as the days of summer went about being lazy and without purpose…I ended up volunteering to be an assistant in two academic classes for our parish Homeschool Program as well as a substitute for that program. Not long after that decision in a random moment of conversation with a dear friend I found myself in another classroom. I agreed to co-teach a Virtues class for girls in the parish Homeschool Program, The Little Women Hospitality Program.
I happily went about wedding planning and working on these classes. Everything was compatible with my time and I was enjoying the feeling of being in a classroom again. You can see where this is going. God must have heard this in my heart and sent another choice for me.
Last year I filled in for a few catechists and ended up being a substitute for the program. For this year I decided to offer my name officially as a substitute for the program. This I believed to be an easier way to become more involved with the catechism but without the weekly commitment. We have 2 children in the non-sacramental year of the Family Faith Formation program so it would be the very best timing for extra teaching. Around the end of September I was asked to be an assistant for a sacramental class. I was to be paired with a first year lead catechist to offer some mentoring. I had been a lead catechist for the second year of communion prep for 16 years and this was a subtle way of offering this new catechist some training. I agreed to assist but only after the October wedding.
Fast forward to October. More changes. It turns out that my presence was desperately needed for another class. I was assigned to be the lead catechist for the second year communion prep for the OCIC class. The class had not been able to keep a teacher and had been in a series of substitutes. Then once they found a teacher a month later that teacher needed to take an unexpected leave of absence. The class was in need of a permanent catechist. This class would be similar to the classes I used to teach before 2020. A return to my original teaching days. Something I feel I can take on.
As of this month I am officially back in the classroom. I still attend the 5pm FFF class with my youngest two children and afterward I teach my new class at 7pm. In addition I will be tapped for more substituting as the need exists. Keith will not be teaching. He is still working on his brainstorm ideas, planning family pilgrimage trips, and helping me with good ideas for lessons.
What I would like to do is share some of the lessons I create for my current class. I have a few written in a scribbled mess. I suspect many are very much going to be similar to our 2020-21 year and can be found in the older posts.
When will I get to publishing? Who knows? I do hope to find the time, the consistent time, to write and publish. What I know is that I am using most of my time writing supplemental lessons for the Little Women Hospitality Program. That program is designed to be taught in a home using equipment found in a house with a class time being 2-4 hours in duration. We are teaching in a parish classroom in a 90 minute session. This has required a significant amendment to the lesson plan and creative solutions to using equipment not found in a church.
This is where I am in the journey. Glad you are here.
Pax Vobiscum,
Yvonne & Keith
Note: The default plan is to release supplemental lessons based on the sessions we feel will be helpful resources. I will make a note in each post with the original date of the topic. Any and all will be published after the date, many months later, but will be published in relation to the year they occurred. A revisionist history it is not. This backdate publishing is with intent to help us keep track of when this lesson was originally taught. As a point, much of what we wrote did occur in that precise moment, we are only getting to the editing months later.
Author’s note: For those who have not followed us long we decided to step away from teaching in the classroom in 2021 because our son was born in 2020. We thought just a short break would be good for us to be more present at home. Now that baby is an exceedingly active little boy that really does take far more of my attention than I would like to admit. Long days with little time for extras we had to be intentional with our time to the family. We enrolled our children in the catechism program at our parish. Continuing the new format where the parents attend class with their children: Family Faith Formation. If you are not familiar with this type of catechesis our parish sets the program up based on a particular focus for each week of the month. The first and last weeks of the month are taught in group form (think one room school house ages together) with a Leader and the mini-lesson activities are taught by the parents. The second week of the month is reserved for the sacramental children. Only those families with sacramental-prep children attend in class and the others remain home to teach an assigned lesson. The third week was reserved for the children being taught in class by the Leader while the parents attend a lecture/discussion on challenging topics relevant to raising Catholic children. The parent classes are very much like continuing education. Topics for adults vary from social media safety, importance of marriage, teaching skills, deeper catechism, and book suggestions.
The Small Pencil Catechist 