Category Archives: Liberal religion

Religious literacy: Assessment grid

After getting lots of help from commenters on my list of topics that should be included in religious literacy for Unitarian Universalist (UU) kids, I’ve taken the next step and created a “Religious Literacy Assessment Grid”.

This grid lists each suggested topic for religious literacy, assigns that topic to an age group (with grid squares colored light orange), and begins to offer some suggestions for assessing children’s knowledge of each topic. As always, your comments are welcome.

Within a week, I hope to have another list for your comments. Another of our big four educational goals for UU kids involves teaching basic religious skills that are appropriate for UU kids to learn (e.g., mediation, public speaking skills, etc.), and this list would cover some of the basic religious skills we’re thinking are central to our tradition.

Volunteer management and “model-scaffold-fade”

Joe and I were talking last night about ways to train church volunteers. Joe has degrees in cognitive science and education, and teaches course in using technology in education, and he had some great ideas of how our church might train volunteers.

“Those are great ideas,” I said, taking notes, “but I’m going to come up against the classic problem in volunteer management, which is how to deliver training to busy volunteers. From the point of view of volunteer management in churches,” I went on, “the best thinking I know of on delivering training is to immerse your volunteer in their volunteer task, and then when they run into problems, to be easily available so that they can consult with you, and you can coach them.” One description of this process may be found in The Coming Church Revolution: Empowering Leaders for the Future by Carl George (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Fleming H. Revell, 1994), pp. 75 ff.*

“Oh,” said Joe, “you mean like model-scaffold-fade.”

“What’s that?” I said.

Joe explained that model-scaffold fade begins with the teacher modeling how to solve a given problem or complete a given task; then the teacher provides a kind of scaffold to support the learner while s/he works on solving the problem or completing the task; and then when the learner has mastered the material, the teacher fades away. Today I did a little more research on model-scaffold-fade, and after reading this online article discovered that it’s based on Vygotsky’s concept of the Zone of Proximal Development, and the way a “more-knowledgeable other” (MKO) can help the learner move beyond his or her current level of development.

Seems to me model-scaffold fade is a nice tool to add to my volunteer management toolkit. It also fits in nicely with one of Carl George’s observations: “Most churches would be more effective if they shifted from being orientation heavy to being supervision heavy” (p. 83). Both approaches allow adult volunteers to be self-directed learners who are in charge of their own learning; in fact, George’s approach to leadership development, where a new leader is apprenticed to an experienced leader (i.e., to an MKO), offers pretty much the same approach as the model-scaffold-fade approach — the latter is more explicit in offering effective instruction, while George’s approach is more explicit in how this can work in churches.

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* Note that Carl George bases his approach on the work of educational theorist Malcolm Knowles; you can find Knowles’s book (American Society for Training and Development, 1973 / Houston, Texas: Gulf Publishing)The Adult Learner online.

Religious literacy: What do kids need to know about religion?

We’ve tentatively identified four big educational goals for the religious education programs in our church, and one of those goals is to make sure children have basic religious literacy compatible with the society they’re living in. More specifically, we want children who have gone through our program to know: (a) the main Bible stories they’re likely to encounter in Western culture (in literature, film, painting, etc.); (b) stories and facts about the main world religions they will encounter both in their immediate environment and in current events; (c) a basic knowledge of the history of Western religion (primarily Western Christianity), and in particular the history that led to the formation of Unitarianism and Universalism; and (d) the main characters and stories of Unitarianism and Universalism in North America.

Yesterday I had lunch with three of the lay leaders in the children’s religious education program to talk about assessment strategies for our religious education program. I suggested that part of our assessment strategy for this educational goal of religious literacy should be a list of the specific things we want to teach our kids; i.e., which Bible stories should kids know? which famous Unitarians and Universalists should they know? etc.

Below is my first attempt at generating such a list, with material to be covered from ages 3 to 18. I would love to have your comments on, suggestions for, corrections to, and additions to this list.

Continue reading →

Summer Sunday school

This summer, here in the Palo Alto Unitarian Universalist church, the theme for Sunday school has been “UU World Travelers.” People from the congregation who have been to another country, or lived in another country, come into the Sunday school and share something about that country with the children. The person who was scheduled to lead the UU World Travelers program this Sunday had a last-minute crisis and couldn’t come, so I said I’d lead the program. But what country could I talk about? I haven’t been overseas in thirty years, and the last time I was in Canada was quite a few years ago. But I realized I had lots of photographs and information about New Bedford, so that’s what I did in Sunday school today — told the children about New Bedford.

The best part was teaching the kids how to say “New Bedford” with a New Bedford accent. “Say it like this,” I said to the children, “Nu Befit.”

“New Bedfod,” they replied, raggedly.

“No, more like this,” I said, “Nu befit.”

“Nu Befit,” they said in chorus.

“And these,” I said pointing to a photograph of marine crustaceans with claws, Homerus americanus, “are lobstihs.”

“Lobstihs,” they said, grinning at me.

A little more practice, and I think I could teach them how to speak in Nu Befitese.

Class, locality, and race

In all the coverage of the Henry Louis Gates arrest, there are two things I have not seen mentioned:

(1) Race relations in the Boston area are among the worst I’ve experienced. The contrast between the Boston area and New Bedford is astounding — as a white guy in the Boston area, I find it that almost any encounter with someone who is black is fairly tense, even when both people are friendly towards one another; here in New Bedford, there is far less racial tension. Given the racial tension in the Boston area, any encounter between a white cop and a black man is going to start off tense. I would expect tension to escalate quickly unless one of the persons involved is very calm.

(2) Working class Cambridge residents aren’t exactly buddy-buddy with Harvard professors. In fact, there’s a big divide in the entire Boston area between those who identify positively with Harvard, and those of us who don’t. The people who don’t identify with Harvard are liable to be prejudiced and think of Harvard people as snobbish, egotistical, and overbearing. And perhaps those who identify with Harvard are liable to be prejudiced and think of the rest of us in terms that are not entirely complimentary.

You can see this dual prejudice playing out in the encounter between the Cambridge cop and the Harvard professor. Here’s how the story would be told from the cop’s point of view: Cambridge cop asks Harvard professor to identify himself; at first Harvard professor refuses, then instead of showing his driver’s license he pulls out his Harvard I.D., and when Cambridge cop asks for a government-issued I.D., Harvard professor starts yelling. Here’s how the story would be told from the professor’s point of view: while in own house, Cambridge cop with working class accent asks Harvard professor for I.D., then cop refuses to accept Harvard I.D. (!!), and refuses to listen to rational, reasonable explanations.

My conclusion: both parties are at fault, and each man should apologize to the other. The cop should have apologized immediately, because as a public servant it’s really part of his job, and his supervisors should require him to apologize before race relations get any worse in Cambridge. The Harvard professor should recognize that while race played a major factor in this encounter, class divisions and town/gown divisions also played a significant role; but I don’t think Gates really understands the deep, raw, vicious class divisions that exist in New England, so I can’t imagine him ever apologizing.

I hope Gates’s arrest promotes a widespread and rational conversation about race relations in the United States. I wish it would also promote a discussion about class divisions, but I don’t see that happening.

Uncle Bob’s challenge

I went over to Martha’s Vineyard today to visit with Uncle Bob and Aunt Martha one more time before we move to California. Uncle Bob, a life-long Unitarian (he grew up in All Souls Church in Washington, D.C.), asked me, “So, do you think Unitarian Universalism can grow?”

“Yes, I think it can grow,” I said. “But I’m not sure it will grow.”

This got us started on a long discussion of what is needed to make Unitarian Universalism grow. Uncle Bob, who worked as an executive at GTE for many years, understands marketing. He said that he thinks the big challenge for Unitarian Universalism is to come up with a short, easily remembered summary of what we stand for.

“Well, I think we could do that,” I said.

“OK,” said Uncle Bob, “but no one has done it yet.” He added, “What you come up with has to be short, pithy, and easy to remember.” We both agreed that meant that the so-called “seven principles” were not adequate for our purposes, because they are too long, don’t really say much, and are difficult to remember.

“How about this,” I said. “First, from our Unitarian side, we know that there is an essential unity to everything, to the universe. Second, from our Universalist side, we know that the destiny of all people is bound up together, and therefore we work for the salvation of all humanity. Third, we are post-Christian, which means that although we come from the Christian tradition, we don’t accept any of the traditional Christian creeds and doctrines.”

Uncle Bob didn’t like the term “post-Christian.” “I don’t know what that means,” he said. This is supposed to be a short, easy–to-remember definition, and so we don’t want to have to engage in a lot of explanation. I said that he was right, but what I wanted to do was make sure that we affirm the Golden Rule as a basic moral principle. Then Uncle Bob added another point: we affirm freedom of conscience. I wanted to phrase it that human beings have freedom of will (i.e., I wanted to affirm Arminianism), and we went back and forth on what exactly we meant by this.

We argued all this back and forth for a good three quarters of an hour. We never got to the point where we completely agreed on exact wording, but we came to a general agreement on four points. Here’s how I would summarize these four points (Uncle Bob would put them differently):

  • We affirm the essential unity of all that is. [Unitarianism]
  • The destiny of all people is bound together, so we work together to save the world. [Universalism]
  • We follow the Golden Rule, not creeds or doctrines. [Non-creedalism]
  • We have the freedom and the responsibility to shape ourselves and the world. [Arminianism]

Obviously, any such short list is not meant to be comprehensive, it is only meant to give a concise summary; if people are still interested after hearing the short summary, we could then trot out the “seven principles” or whatever else we might wish. Equally obviously, such a list is not meant to be binding on anyone — you don’t have to use this list, it’s just another possible tool to use to help explain who we are to newcomers.

I am not entirely happy with this list — some of the individual points are too wordy, and not memorable enough. And maybe four points is too many to remember. But I think we’re getting close to meeting Uncle Bob’s challenge — close to having a short, easy-to-remember list that would help us to explain the core of our religious faith to newcomers.

What do you think?

Small RE programs, pt. 6

Read the whole series.

A.

This session, we opened with a reading from an old Unitarian book titled The Little Child at the Breakfast Table, a collection of 31 daily readings for Unitarian parents to read to their children at the breakfast table. (You can download the entire book, or read it online, here.) I read the introduction by the editors, William and Mary Gannett, where they explain the purpose of the book. They say in part:

Are not many mothers and fathers today vaguely longing for some kind of “household altar,” fitted to our own time and feeling? A few of these may like to try our simple way. Not a return to the old form of “family prayers,” but some custom akin to it is needed, — greatly needed, if conscious reverence be a quality as worthy of culture in ourselves and in our children as truthfulness and kindness.

While many of the readings now sound dated to our Unitarian Universalist ears, some of the readings could still be read aloud by parents to their children between age 5 and 10 (see, e.g., p. 16). I suggested that this kind of resource would be a great help in trying to reach some of the big outcomes we identified. For example, if one of our desired outcomes is to help UU kids become UU adults, this kind of simple activity could help move towards this outcome by making Unitarian Universalism and UU values become a part of everyday life. Unfortunately, The Little Child at the Breakfast Table was put together in 1915, and it won’t work for us today. But if enough of us start thinking about it, I’ll bet we could assemble a similar book for 2009 UU kids. (I’ve collected a few such readings here, but this is a bare beginning.) Continue reading →

Small RE programs, pt. 5

Read the whole series.

On the fourth day of the workshop, we began once again with two of the participants teaching a sample lesson. Helen was the lead teacher, and Mary was the assistant teacher.

What interested me about watching these two skilled teachers in action was that they had two very different teaching styles. Helen is calm and centered: she tends to keep her body still, leaning forward slightly in her chair, and she engages the participants with her voice and facial expressions. Mary, on the other hand, uses her whole body to teach: she stands up, sits down, moves, she’s a very physical teacher. Both Helen and Mary are skilled teachers: watching them teach together was both a study in contrasts, and a vivd reminder that there is no one right way to teach.

Watching Helen and Mary caused me to reflect on my own teaching style. I’m a fairly physical teacher, and I find it hard to sit still. Often I have to think hard and force myself to be physically still when the lesson requires it.

After the sample lesson, we shared out evaluations with each other. A couple of the participants mentioned that they weren’t sure where Helen had assessed the learning of the group. As it happened, Helen had included assessment in the lesson, but some of us didn’t notice that she was assessing our learning. This raised the interesting question of whether learners should know they are being assessed or not. I favor always letting participants know when they are being assessed; but I recognize that there is a case to be made for teachers sometimes doing assessment without letting learners know.

After a break, we came back and worked on the religious skill of singing. We learned a new song that we’re going to sing tonight at the conference talent show.

We wound up the session talking about appropriate assessment genres for religious education. In an earlier session, we had agreed that testing is not an appropriate assessment genre for religious education — we all felt that paper-and-pencil tests do not accurately measure the kind of learning that should go on in religious education programs. So what are the appropriate assessment genres? We came up with the following list: Continue reading →

Small RE programs, pt. 4

Read the whole series.

We began this morning with a sample lesson taught by one of the participants. I acted as the observer during this lesson — that is, I did not participate, but sat off to one side observing and taking notes.

The lesson began with a story about forgiveness, and quickly took the participants to a fairly deep emotional level. It was fascinating to be the observer. I listened to what the teacher and the participants were saying, but more than anything I observed body language and facial expressions. When you sit back and watch all the participants — when you are not a participant-observer — you get a very different perspective on teaching.

The lesson was brilliantly taught by Lynn, assisted by Kate. But what really struck me while I was observing this lesson was how much I can learn about teaching from observing someone else teach. Lynn is a skilled and gifted teacher, but she teaches differently than do I — she emphasizes different things, she has a different bag of teaching tricks, etc. By sitting there and observing how she teaches, and by trying to articulate that in writing, I was forced to think more deeply about teaching. What are my assumptions about how one should teach? What things did Lynn do that I simply don’t do, i.e., what are my blind spots as a teacher? How is her philosophy of teaching reflected in her teaching praxis, and how does her philosophy differ from my own? All these questions were in the back of my head as I was observing. Continue reading →