The way you interact with students in between the bells is just as important if not more important than the lessons you teach during class. Those moments before and after class when you get to speak with students on a personal level have the potential to be transformative experiences for them. When you deliberately talk…
Evangelization
12 Ways to Encounter Christ in Class
Every Day, Every Class, Every Student, an Encounter with Christ That is the vision we aspire to at The Religion Teacher. So much of what religious educators do, however, focuses almost entirely on education and not encounter. As a result, Christ becomes just another idea to learn like everything else in school. As catechists and…
School-wide Prayer: Tips for Making an Impact
Every Catholic school I know gathers together to pray in some way beyond the celebration of Mass. In grade schools especially, there are many times throughout the day that students and faculty stop and pray in unison. The challenge is making sure these public prayers do not become so routine that students and teachers lose touch with the deeper meaning…
How Parents Pass on the Faith (and What We Can Do To Help)
I’m preparing for the workshop I’m giving at the Los Angeles Religious Education Congress and I wanted to share one small piece of the message I plan to present. The workshop is focused on empowering parents as the primary religious educators of their children, or more specifically, as disciples and teachers. So this begs the…
A Five-step Process for Evangelizing Parents
This post is a part of a series of teaching strategies that get beyond catechesis and into the realm of evangelization. To get a 10,000 foot view of where we are going, read this: A New Vision for Catholic Religious Education. This article and the others in this series are inspired by the book, To…
A New Vision for Catholic Religious Education
If we were to evaluate the impact of our religious education programs in the Catholic Church today based solely on the number of students whose lives were transformed, do you think we would score well? What if our religious education programs and children’s ministries were measured by the number of disciples that we made in…
Are You a Witness? A New Focus on Teaching AND Testimony
“You will receive power when the holy Spirit comes upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, throughout Judea, and Samaria, and all the ends of the earth.” Acts 1:8 I started something new this semester and it really made a big impact on my students. I started using a new approach to…
Joe Paprocki on “Evangelizing Discipline”
I am happy to welcome Joe Paprocki, author of The Catechist’s Toolbox: How to Thrive As a Religious Education Teacher, as a guest at The Religion Teacher. Joe is celebrating the fifth anniversary of his very popular blog this week! Joe was an inspiration to me in starting The Religion Teacher three years ago, so…
