TEACHING THE FAITH

SPRING 2021

POSITIVE LESSONS IN A PAINFUL YEAR

AS FALL 2020 BEGAN, RELIGIOUS EDUCATION DIRECTORS IN NEW YORK weren’t sure what to expect. They had spent the summer coming up with plan B for delivering faith instruction to the children of their communities during a pandemic. Some planned to go high tech, others low tech, but for all there was uncertainty. [In photo: Ava Hagan, a second grader at St. Stephen’s in Warwick, created this Lego version of the church as a project for her religious education class (plus a video tour).]

The first questions were whether parents would sign their kids up and whether the kids would actually attend. “To our surprise, there was less than 20% drop-off in registration from the year before,” says Ela Milewska, director of the Archdiocese of New York Youth Faith Formation Office. “And those who registered are participating. Parish directors and coordinators have engaged those families in a way that has been phenomenal.”

TAILORED SOLUTIONS

The ministries’ approaches have been as varied as the parishes they serve. Only 10% to 15% of parishes have conducted all classes in person. The rest have used a hybrid or fully remote approach, depending on conditions in their area. Some remote classes have been conducted via Zoom, others have used video lessons, and some have provided digital materials to parents for home teaching.

“When the whole thing started in March of last year, we switched to e-learning – Google Classroom,” says Marie Noel, religious education coordinator at St. Clare’s on Staten Island. “That was a learning curve for the catechists. But the kids, the families, the catechists really came through.” Spring sacraments were postponed, but almost all of the students successfully completed their classes for the academic year.

“When we resumed in the fall, we completely changed the structure of program again,” Noel says. “There was no way we could return in person, so we did weekly classes on Zoom to give students face-to-face lessons with the catechists. At first, people were a little confused, but once it kicked in, around October, it was a success.”

The response from families has been very positive. “Sometimes the teachers send activities home that involve the whole family or assign online activities that involve the parents,” Noel says. “One father told me, ‘I’m so happy, I’m learning so much myself!’ The catechesis of the parents has been the highlight of the year for me.”

At St. Joseph’s in Bronxville, director of religious education Antoinette Gilligan recalls how the stakes changed in March 2020. “When we went into lockdown,” she says, “we had confirmation two days before Masses were suspended. I spent the next two weeks worrying about people getting sick.”

Over the summer, she made plans for fully remote instruction, but she took the technology in a different direction from St. Clare’s. “The archdiocese didn’t want us to do live Zoom sessions unless the parents were in the conference,” she says.  So instead of using live Zoom, St. Joseph’s created highly engaging video classes. “We have 35 catechists who volunteered to teach remotely. Each week, they record themselves teaching the chapter. Then they use an application called Screencast-O-Matic to embed videos, pictures and quizzes. I have learned so much from our catechists, who all approach things differently.”

FAMILY CONNECTIONS

Gilligan treasures the emails from parents. One wrote, “The time we spend together reading the lessons with [our daughter], watching the videos and discussing the stories ... has reinforced our understanding of our faith as well as teaching our child.”

In a providential bit of timing, St. Stephen’s Church in Warwick had a video system installed to enable livestreaming one week before the shutdown of churches. “We’ve been blessed,” says Lydia vanDuynhoven, the religious education director. “We didn’t skip a beat. We were able to provide parishioners with Mass and Holy Hour. Our children were able to log on to come to Mass on Sundays or during the week. That helped a lot.”

For weekly classes, vanDuynhoven took an approach that focused on family catechesis. “We’re using a program of study called CatholicBrain,” she says. “It has lessons for various grade levels with text, pictures and videos. I’ve written lesson plans for each grade to correlate with the guidelines from the archdiocese and make use of the lessons offered by CatholicBrain.” 

Children and their parents have to sign on together to complete lessons. “Parents make sure their kids are signed up and signed in. I can see how they are doing with their lessons: The student’s work gets posted, and I go in, see how they’re doing, and if there’s a problem, I let them know. ‘OK, good try, but I think you could do better; let’s look at this again.’ So it’s really kind of a one-on-one even though I’m not with them.”

In a normal year, there are 65 catechists teaching in the St. Stephen’s program. This year there were none. The teaching was done by parents, overseen by vanDuynhoven.

SILVER LININGS

Sometimes restrictions come with unexpected blessings. When limitations on guest attendance were imposed at in-person events like First Communions and confirmations, vanDuynhoven found, the social aspect of the occasion took a back seat to something more meaningful. “I’m sure you’ve been to confirmations where the church is packed and people are climbing over pews to take pictures,” she says. At this year’s rite – not a Mass – attendance was limited to confirmandi, sponsors, and two parents. “The people who were present  were truly present. It was beautiful.”

At St. Clare’s, “The pandemic pushed us to think outside the box, to make religious education a little more fun for the children,” Marie Noel says. “Many catechists came up with their own programs. Sometimes they used Kahoot when teaching. One of my catechists is 84 years old. She learned how to do Zoom. Many of us learned we could do things we never thought we could.”

Antoinette Gilligan is coming out of this painful year with a strong sense of optimism. “I come from Ireland,” she says, “where I was raised with a deep knowledge of Irish history. At one point, Catholics in Ireland weren’t allowed to go to Mass. The faith was outlawed, so it became a priority.

“This year, life has been very challenging for our parents, having to balance work, home and school. On top of everything else, they have made it a point to be involved in their kids’ religion classes. They’ve made it a priority. That gives me hope for the Church, that there will be a new generation of Catholics who are motivated by the love of Christ.”