Several of our Youth Education teachers recently attended a Regional Teacher Training event. All were inspired by many of the ideas presented there, and as a result, plans are currently underway to adopt many of these concepts for our Children's Church, specifically regarding the Living Curriculum philosophy of teaching. As we plan our adventures for the Sunday Morning Experience, which we create for the children in our congregation, we need to ask ourselves how we can best serve them all. We choose to move past an outmoded belief that a teacher's job is to pour information into a child's mind. Instead, we are reigniting the wisdom of Myrtle Fillmore who states that our job is to
And so, we are embracing the fact that each child is on a spiritual path, each have access to the Christ within and each are looking for a place that will allow our inner knowledge to unfold in a way that is unique to each one of us. A Living Curriculum is designed to ‘draw forth’ the truth mainly through experiences, storytelling and creative expression. Each lesson relates to an issue in a person’s life and seeks to facilitate an experience of God connected to their life.
We are developing a plan that will base our Living Curriculum on a monthly theme that will be used in all the classrooms and shared in the Sunday bulletin so that the congregation will also know what is being taught each week. Also, the congregation will be invited to attend monthly sessions to ‘brainstorm’ discussion ideas with the teachers to aid them in preparing lessons for the Sunday Morning Experience. The goal here is threefold:
1) to give more of us the opportunity to explore our Unity principles;
2) to create a high quality spiritual experience for our children; and
3) to create an awareness that the families in our community represent the future of this ministry
and are key to the growth of our beloved Unity Chapel of Light.
