Five Questions for High School Religious Educators

• What is your highest hope for your students in your religion classes?
• What is your best assignment, the one of which students really learn, learning that stays with them, and one which they enjoy too?
• Are there specific skills you try to teach in your classes?
• How do you evaluate, grade?
• What has influenced your teaching most in your life?

• What is your highest hope for your students in your religion classes?
  That they appreciate Theology as an academic discipline that enriches their Faith.  That they connect the material we examine in class with their experience.
• What is your best assignment, the one of which students really learn, learning that stays with them, and one which they enjoy too?
  I would say it is the material we cover in Ignatian Vision that deals with Worldview, and the influence of “Cool” on their Worldview.  We watch a Frontline documentary called “The Merchants of Cool”, which discusses why and how teens are marketed to as well as how all this marketing influences them.  I then ask students to give presentations on what is cool to them, how important media and marketing are in their experience, and how this shapes their Worldview.
• Are there specific skills you try to teach in your classes?
    I think organization, reading comprehension, and consistent work ethic are keys to success in my classes, particularly with freshmen.  With seniors, I do not give any tests or quizzes, only papers, and my seniors are always complaining about how I “make their papers bleed”- I read them carefully and make a lot of comments, questions, and corrections.  So writing skills are really emphasized in Ignatian Vision.  With both freshmen and seniors, I like to give projects and presentations that involve or combine  research, personal reflection, collaboration, and speaking in front of the class.
• How do you evaluate, grade? Intro to Religion:
  Open-note quizzes 20%
  Journal Reflections 20%
  Tests and Final Exam 20%
  Projects/Presentations 15%
  Class Participation 15%
  Written Homework 10%
  Ignatian Vision
  Papers 30%
  Group and Individual Presentations 20%
  19th Annotation Journal 20%
  Participation 20%
  Senior Thesis/Binder 10%
  
• What has influenced your teaching most in your life?
  1.  Students and Colleagues (most)
  2.  Theology classes in high school
  3.  Philosophy and Theology studies in college
  4.  Negative PSR experience in grade school
  5.  Education studies in Graduate School (least)
  

• What is your highest hope for your students in your religion classes?
  I hope that students engage in learning that leads them to a better/deeper practice of their faith. I hope to model and engage students in becoming: “an alive burning offering before God.”
  
• What is your best assignment, the one of which students really learn, learning that stays with them, and one which they enjoy too?
  1. Death and Dying: Planning their funeral/writing a final letter to parents and family. 2. Social Justice: School campaigns educating students about different Millennium goals. 3. Christology: rewriting a gospel using the same literary devices and message of that gospel for today.
  
• Are there specific skills you try to teach in your classes?
  Yes. 1. How to read the Bible, AND to actually read the Bible. 2. The stages of grieving, the stages of death and dying 3. Catholic Social Teaching, UN millennium Development goals, compassion
  
• How do you evaluate, grade?
  Total points, fairly and ethically
  
• What has influenced your teaching most in your life?
  My faith, fellow theology teachers, Catholic documents, the Bible, my parents, and the Communion of Saints!

• What is your highest hope for your students in your religion classes?
  That my class helps my students build an underlying level of intellectual confidence in the Catholic faith tradition so that they are better able to hear and respond with the heart to the deeper call of God revealed in Jesus Christ. Another way to state it would be to say that I hope my classes work as mystagogy.
• What is your best assignment, the one of which students really learn, learning that stays with them, and one which they enjoy too?
  The "Take a Stand" excercise in sexual morality has certainly been very effective and memorable for students. I can share the basic structure with anyone inteterested. I also feel very good about the PASE (Personal Aesthetic and Spiritual Environment) project I have designed for Humanities. Again, I am willing to share with anyone interested.
  
• Are there specific skills you try to teach in your classes?
  1. Disciplined thinking and reasoning; mostly through dialogue
  2. Reflection; through directions on written assignments
  3. Verbal expression; through an in-class opportunity to speak
  4. Composition; through attention to language on papers
  
• How do you evaluate, grade?
  1. Straightforward points on reading quizzes and exams aimed at content
  2. Deductions for lateness, spelling, usage
  3. A judgment about depth of relection/effort on written work
  4. Some consideration of participation
  
• What has influenced your teaching most in your life?
  1. My high school teacher Fr. Jim Telthorst
  2. My own prayer life and reflection
  3. The Church's expectation of faithfully representing the tradition
  4. Dialogue with colleagues and peers
  

• What is your highest hope for your students in your religion classes?
  To foster a real metanoia in my students, a movement from ignorance toward toward truth, from selfishness toward love, from sin toward grace, from the values of self and society toward the mind and heart of Jesus
• What is a best assignment, the one of which students really learn, learning that stays with them, and one which they enjoy too?
  For freshmen, father and mother interview, reading scripture on three levels, prophet assignment. For juniors, right speech experiment and research projects, creating web sites.
• Are there specific skills you try to teach in your classes?
  For freshmen, organization and study skills, how to learn from mistakes, how to read the Bible, more mature forms of prayer, e.g. listening prayer, colloquy, praying with scripture. In Scripture I hope they learn how to use biblical resources, on the net and in the library. They also have to create a web page on a prophet.
  For juniors, methods and habits of living an examined life, methods of moral decision making, how to do web pages. I hope they learn to really and personally value the spiritual life, Jesus and the Church. I'd like to try teaching how to be a good contributor to class/group by teaching small group roles. Any advice?
• How do you evaluate, grade?
  For freshmen, grading is very traditional, tests and exams, with two interviews and a small research project.
  For my juniors, primarily tests and exams, but there are more reflections, and research papers are part of each semester.
  In all my courses, I teach my students that the purpose of test is not primarily evaluation, but education. There is a small class contribution grade, and while organization and study skills are taught, these are not graded.
  
• What has influenced your teaching most in your life?
  I think attending St. Louis U. High, and realizing that Jesus and religion can really help answer some important challenges in my life, was inspiring. The influence of other Jesuit educators, especially the summer JSEA workshops was very formative, learning from Fr. William O'Malley, S.J. converting the baptized, teach them how to think), Thomas Groome (shared Christian praxis), Fr. John Shea, S.J. (narrative theology), Julie Collins and Teaching History and Ourselves (using history to teach morality). I also learned that real education occurs inside and outside the classroom. Coaching has also been important. I think religious education is more like coaching than teaching other coaches, in that the goal of coaching and religious education is behavior change, not merely intellectual growth.