Finding the Right Teaching Style

This week has flown by and been so busy that I haven’t had an opportunity to sit and write until now. On Monday I was able to go to dinner with my friend Jenny (the one who used to live in Naperville and now lives in Texas) because she was visiting family and competed in a marathon with her mom! It was a fun visit and we got to catch up on work, life, etc. The rest of the week was really busy with work, trying to fit in exercise and planning this week’s lesson. There is actually a lot of material to cover tomorrow morning, so planning the lesson took about 1 – 2 hours. It is definitely a time commitment but I’ve been enjoying planning out the lesson and coming up with fun hands-on activities for the kids to do. I know it can be a challenge for children to keep their attention focused for long periods of time on one activity so I’m trying to incorporate meditation, group projects and worksheets, quizzes and tests to be sure they are learning the material.

As a kid I hated tests. Now on the other side of the podium I see how not only it is important for the kids, but also that the teacher evaluate their teaching style. In one of the books I read prior to starting of the school year (The Catechist’s Toolbox by Joe Paprocki), the author talks about how you have to consider the age and maturity level of your group. You can pick activities that involve speaking (lectures, large-group discussions), to dramatization (role-playing, storytelling), drawing and art (collages, holy cards, portraits) and writing (crossword puzzles, quizzes and reports). Since it’s my first year back into teaching religious classes, I think I will learn what the right teaching style is as I go along, and to help me do so, I plan to use several of these teaching styles in each class. I hope that God will provide me the patience and guide me in the right path. It is a commitment of both time and energy, but if I bring just one child closer in their relationship with God I will consider it a success.