Res Ipsa Loquitur 4

Here are the audio files to the first of two Isaiah classes. This one is recounted in the post The Christmas Prophet. The written account is a condensation of this class, and classes from prior years covering the same material, so the audio and the post vary a bit in content & flow.

Isaiah part 1

Isaiah part 2

For more live classes, click on the Res Ipsa Loquitur label at lower right.

Catechist Tool

I bought a digital recorder last year (not that specific one). It's been much more useful than I had imagined; I should've bought one sooner. If you're a catechist you want one too, even if you don't know it yet.

In 2010 I was using an all-new, no-textbook-in-class curriculum which I had developed during the summer. I decided to record all the classes so I could compare each lesson plan to the reality in the classroom. Within a day or so after a given class, I'd listen to the recording, and mark on the lesson plan what needed review, what I'd missed, etc. (For example, in last Wednesday's class, I forgot to introduce myself, and didn't discuss the inspiration of the Bible, even though both were in the lesson plan. Next week I'll take care of those items before beginning the new lesson.)

At year's end I had an mp3 file of each class, and moved the whole year onto an external drive. Every class is about 50mb; less than a mb/minute.

But there are other benefits which I wasn't aware of when I bought the thing:

1. If there's any "my child says the teacher said thus & so" heartburn, I have a record of what I said, and what the kids said. Heh. By the way, the sensitivity of the microphone and the quality of the sound are shockingly good.

2. Before this year's class I listened to last year's class; a terrific head start.

3. The recorder can do basic editing of the files. It's easy to split a 55 minute class into topical chunks, trim the getting settled/ roll-calling minutes from the beginning, and chatting from the end.

4. It names each new file with the date all by itself.

And the best thing about recording your classes:

5. To listen to yourself teach is a great way to refine your skills.

One problem I do have is that I forget to take the recorder with me after class. I tell the kids when class starts to remind me to pick it up and turn it off when class ends.

Catechesis Basics: The Lesson Plan

In case anyone in their first year of catechesis has stumbled in here, I posted an article a couple of years ago on how I write a lesson plan.

Motivation

 Nice Cadre

Wednesday was the first Catechism class of the year. When classes ended last spring, as usual I had the pleasant sense of a burden lifted. That first free week always seems like a little vacation. But after a month, I start to miss the stimulation of teaching. Then as September approaches I think of the impending year of catechesis more as a duty than a satisfaction, and grow wistful about summer's free Wednesdays.

This Wednesday evening the mood was here we go again: same bag of books, props, and notes; same lesson plan (new last year); same classroom; same bisected evening. But then class started and it was the best: better grasp of the content; bright, unspoiled kids; lots of thinking and learning and laughing. Within five minutes I was completely re-motivated.

Going home I thought again about being motivated, and what motivates me in particular.

In July I read the obituary of a friend I had in middle school. He and I both attended our parish school, cut up on the bus together. I still belong to that same parish, and hadn't seen him in decades (I bump into other fellow former schoolmates and their siblings from time to time), so I was naturally curious about how his life had gone. Per the obit, he'd gotten married, had kids and a grandchild, still lived in town. The visitation and funeral were being held at a local non-Catholic church. So even though he'd gone at least through 9th grade in Catholic schools, he fell away from the Church in his adulthood. Of course he didn't fall away from Christianity, but from Catholicism.  I have no idea why; maybe he married outside of the church. Or like many Bible-Belt former Catholics, maybe he was unable to respond effectively to a Bible-based critique of the faith. By respond I don't mean argue, but as St. Peter so winsomely put it, "Always be prepared to make a defense* to any one who calls you to account for the hope that is in you, yet do it with gentleness and reverence." St. Peter not only gets it right on "gentleness and reverence," but also on "calls you to account." There are lots of serious Christians here, thank the Lord, and Catholics can expect to be "called to account" (not necessarily in a bad way). I don't want my kids to be unprepared for that; rather, I want them to anticipate it (not necessarily in a bad way). And in particular, I don't want them to leave the Church because they couldn't explain their faith to themselves, much less a stranger. That's my negative motivation to be a catechist: I'm personally worn out from seeing decades of poorly-catechized Catholics abandon what they really don't understand.

6th-graders shouldn't be trained to be little apologists. But in order to hold fast to the faith and evangelize here, Catholics must have a working knowledge of the Bible and Catholicism as an integrated whole. And the process of acquiring that knowledge can begin when they are young. That's my positive motivation: to teach the children a cadre, a framework of faith in which both Bible and Catholicism are inseparable.

So this year will be like last year, but better: 25 classes of learning the Catholic faith by going straight through the Bible from Genesis to Revelations, followed by 3 classes on the Mass.

* ἀπολογία, apologia: an explanation, a verbal defense.

Deus ex Caelis

My Fabulous Wife and I watch crime shows on Roku. We regularly hit pause to discuss new clues, spy something that may be a clue, and refine or propose new hypotheses. We try to figure stuff out before the detectives/ cops/ lawyers do.

Last night we watched a murder mystery in which the victim was one of a group of academics at a college campus, who were held there by the cops until they sussed out who the killer was. We were keeping up with the plot, adjusting our theories, when out of the blue in the final scene a cop reveals a critical datum. The killer, whom we never suspected, was a martial-arts expert. The cop had looked him up (and the others,  I suppose) in the school library's copy of  Who's Who.

So I was way unhappy with this clunky solution. I whined to The Beautiful One, "I can't stand to watch a mystery and have the writers pull this Deus ex Machina (DeM) crap." DeM isn't always a bad thing, but the phrase usually carries a negative connotation. In this case it was definitely bad. Anyway, that got me thinking about the whole Deus ex Machina history, dating back to Greek actors playing gods, and being hoisted onto the stage with little cranes. And I thought out loud, "Hey, the most memorable DeM I can think of is at the end of Lord of the Flies (LotF) when the naval officer saves Ralph." I Googled around on Deus Machina Lord Flies, and confirmed that the officer is widely understood to be a Deus ex Machina. But in the case of LotF, I believe the author, William Golding, wasn't simply resorting to DeM as a cheap fix, but carefully using plot devices to make puns on the very term Deus ex Machina in its literal sense of a god plopping into the scene to fix things.

 [I assume y'all have all read Lord of the Flies (1954) in school. If not, here's a way-brief synopsis: the Cold War has turned hot, and a group of English boys are being flown to a place of relative safety. The plane is shot down, and the boys are thus left to their own devices on an island (the TV series Lost was partly inspired by LotF). The boys try to be responsible and civilized, but in short order become a mob of little murdering savages. There are thousands of words on the net discussing LotF, its symbolism, its themes; I'm confining this post to Golding's literal use of Deus ex Machina.]

Midway through the book, the boys have become about half-savage. Following an air battle, a pilot parachutes onto the island. The pilot and his parachute drive the plot for a while, which I'm not concerned about here. What I like is that the pilot is a literal Deus ex Machina, that is, he descends God-like from his machine (American note: other countries colloquially have used the word machine in lieu of airplane or automobile), out of the blue (so to speak) into the boys' world. This is very much unlike my detective movie, in which there was a DeM in an abstract sense, but not a literal sense. Indeed, the pilot would be better described as a Deus ex Caelis, a God out of the Sky. The parachutist isn't just a plot device, but a pun on the original idea of Deus ex Machina. If he had landed intact, the story could have ended right there: a responsible adult restores order, drama over. But he floated down dead, foreshadowing the arrival of another literal DeM.

By the last chapter, all the boys but one (Ralph) are weaponized killers, and they are hunting Ralph down. The boys set the island on fire to flush him out. Chased onto the beach, Ralph is saved by the abrupt arrival of a naval officer whose machine/ship drew near, having seen the fire. Chastised by this bigger, stronger Deus ex Machina, the killers revert to their prior status of little boys.

I see Golding carefully creating this second literal, recognizable, Deus ex Machina partly as an amusement. But he also makes a point about the wider world. By using Dei ex Machina, Greek playwrights acknowledged humans' inability to manage their own affairs. The audience of a play sees an imaginary problem resolved by an imaginary god; but within the play itself, real human problems are being resolved by a real god. In other words, in the story a real Deus comes down out of the sky without need of a Machina.

Golding is drawing a literal Deus ex Machina parallel: in a Greek play the DeM is a literal, fictional device that represents a real god, without whom a problem is insolvable. In Lord of the Flies, there is also, oddly enough, a literal, fictional DeM who also represents a real god. Not so much in terms of the fictional story; the naval officer is clearly not a god (although he's commonly understood to represent God). But as the story is an allegory of humans beings in general, making a mess of everything since Eden, the officer, as a literal Deus ex Machina, points directly to the real Deus, who of course isn't just an actor on a pole.

Until Deus really does come down out of the sky (with the clouds of heaven there came one like a son of man) the mess will continue. So in Lord of the Flies, the Deus ex Machina isn't a cop-out: it's the point.


illustration by Houston Trueblood

Book Review

Fellow catechist Lisa Mladinich has written a new how-to booklet, Be an Amazing Catechist: Sacramental Preparation. If that sounds familiar, it may be because I link all of my catechetical posts to Lisa's Amazing Catechists website.

I have not reviewed a book before, but given my particular interest in, you know, catechesis, I'm inclined to go through Sacramental Preparation a section at a time, hitting a few points, and see how each compares to what goes on in my classroom. By the way, I think the content would apply just as well in the homeschool classroom. Not that I have ever homeschooled.

That's the cover: is your class like that? Fired-up, attentive kids? Lisa's classes are, and if you follow her instructions, your class can be, too.

Let's start with the introduction, God's Living Grace.

I like the opening line: This small booklet is a guide for teaching the Seven Sacraments accurately and vibrantly, so that both you and the children will come to a more complete appreciation for their purpose, beauty, and power to transform lives. Number one, vibrant is good: kids won't learn a thing if they're in a stupor. Teacher is vibrant/ kids learn. Number two, the teacher learns too. Three, if the sacraments can transform lives, then catechesis can transform lives as well (although not in the same way). No point in aiming low, is there? You say: NO!

Chapter 1: Here I Am Lord! (btw, that's from 1Sam 3)

This bit reminds us that a catechist, like Samuel, is called by God to a particular task. And like Samuel,  catechists can't be casual about their vocation. That's right: vocation. Like marriage and parenthood and all that. Serious, substantial business. Lisa writes that if you do take it seriously, God will support you, just as he supported Samuel, Isaiah, and Jeremiah. You're in famous company; you should feel ennobled. I do.

Chapter 2: God's Faithful Love

Handing down the faith isn't just serious business, but joyous business as well. What? In the classroom you aren't feeling the joy? Lisa tells the reader that the catechist stands at the living tip of a long shoot going back to Jesus & the apostles, who may be reasonably regarded as the first Christian catechists. The future depends on how well that tip hands on a living faith to the kids. Still no joy? It may take some time, and the support of the Holy Spirit. No kidding: my #1 catechist prayer is Holy Spirit don't let me screw this up. 

Chapter 3: Heroes in the Classroom

The title photo is a kid in a homemade Superman outfit. Don't think for a second that the kids are the heroes: that's a kid imitating the heroes the catechist has got him fired-up about. Great points in this chapter:

Mention those "quiet heroes" who care for the sick (I use Mother Teresa, Fr. Damien, St. Clare). You know, small-scale heroes.

Introduce the kids to Bible heroes and Saints: I like to discuss the tough-guy saints: Isaac Jogues, Max Kolbe, Joan of Arc. (Yes, Joan is a tough-guy saint). Lisa doesn't give you a list of saints: you're supposed to teach the ones that matter to you. Don't have any? Then go find some, and not just Peter and Francis.

Saints are sinners: not as in 'sin,' but as in SIN. Like St. Augustine...ewww. Hey, Jesus doesn't demand perfection. Thank the Lord...so to speak.

You are the face of the Church to a lot of your charges: oh, man, how many kids in my class actually go to Mass? Don't ask. So be aware that you may be it as far as religion goes in their lives. That's not bad: it's an opportunity. God put you in front of the class for a reason.

Chapter 4: Holy, Holy, Holy (from Rev 4; known in Greek as the Trisagion, the triple holy. Also like Hagia Sophia, Holy Wisdom)

Teach the kids to be reverent...among other ways by treating God and His stuff with reverence yourself. Lisa suggests a lot of good things I, ummm, don't do in my class, such as praying a decade of the rosary; actually going into church; praying before the Tabernacle; simply learning to be reverent in church. Ehhh...ummm...on the other hand, she also recommends using religious art in class regularly, to which I can offer an emphatic ditto.

Chapter 5: Lesson Planning Basics

I am a fervid believer in the Lesson Planning Gospel.  Lisa doesn't tell you how to make a lesson plan (that would be a whole 'nother book), but rather covers some stuff that you (or at least I) may not have considered, such as:

A quick and useful rule for gauging attention spans. No I'm not going to give it away for free. Buy the book.

Learning styles. Uh-huh...I agree with the three she describes and how to adapt to them. What three? La-la-la, I can't hear you!

Taking risks: I support this 100%. How else will you learn what works? Hey, that reminds me of a famous saying I like in Italian better than English: chi non risica, non rosica (nothing ventured [risked], nothing gained). It's true even in catechism class. And when stuff bombs, just channel Pee-Wee, say "I meant to do that," and change the subject.

Be crafts conscious. Uh-oh: I am not only crafts un-conscious, I am crafts-comatose. But hey, Lisa's advice and examples extend way down to a younger crowd where I can see it'd be indispensable. OK, I allowed crafts once; it was terrific, I must confess.

Give the children your best: Pray for them, dress nicely, and smile! All catechetical gospel. I always wear a coat & tie (if not a suit & tie) to class. Early on a child will always ask why. I say it's a way to show that I respect them. Oooh...it makes a difference.

Chapter 6: IGNITE. That's an acronym. Letters I really like:

I for Investigate, as in investigate the Catechism and the Bible. Totally valuable advice. It does take time to do it, but I bet God took up a lot of  Peter's time, too. And catechists can still live with their spouses, which is a better deal than Peter got.

The other I for Illustrate: Not just drawing on the board which I do, but telling stories with vigor, and other stuff such as...just get the book.

T for Trust: ya can't do it all; leave something for the Holy Spirit to do so He can keep His job.

Chapter 7: First Reconciliation

Like most sacraments, Confession is given depth by comparing it to everyday circumstances when we screw up, have to apologize and make amends. Lisa offers ways to to get these points across in class.

Chapter 8: Be Not Afraid! (Matt 28, John 6...)

This chapter isn't about drownproofing per John 6, but about putting the kids at ease for First Confession. I've never had to teach kids this young, but the advice is practical and doable.

Chapter 9: First Holy Communion

15 (as in fifteen) pointers here. I might have thought of five of them. Per First Confession, I teach kids who have already had their First Communion. Regardless, my favorite here is to tell miracle stories (especially food miracles such as Feeding the Multitudes) and act them out. Did Jesus teach by telling stories? Why, yes he did! Did he tell them while firmly grasping a lectern? I doubt it.

Lisa also adds a block of points about the physical reception of the Eucharist.

Chapter 10: Confirmation

My excuse this time is that my 6th-graders are too young for Confirmation, so I never have to cover that sacrament in any detail either. Here Lisa is concerned with dealing with teens, which is definitely different from teaching the 11 and 12 year olds I'm used to. Lisa reminds the reader that vivid storytelling connected to Catholic concepts is always a winner no matter what the age of the audience.

And this is worth remembering: the teacher is not the kids' friend.

Chapter 11: Rote, Rote, Rote Your Boat

Aaack! Memorization! I don't make my kids memorize anything! But Lisa outlines 9 sets of Catholic terms or concepts that students should know by the time they are confirmed. Let's see...Gifts of the Holy Spirit...aren't there 7 of them? Yes! That's a relief. What are they? Ehhh...let me look at this list.

Chapter 12: Go Team

Lisa discusses reinforcing the teens' Catholic identity, which is a critical part of the kids acquiring a Catholic worldview. The first of 7 points is the Life & Dignity of the Human Person, which even 6th-graders can begin to understand.

Chapter 13: Parents & Progress

Uh-oh. Lots of useful ways to keep parents engaged in the children's catechesis. I'm a slug where parent stuff is concerned; although per Lisa's last bit, I do recognize that I may be the face of the Church to the parents as well as the kids.

Chapter 14: Help Wanted

This editorial reminds the catechist of the importance of his work, points out that the catechist should always grow in faith and knowledge, and emphasizes how much the Church needs committed catechists.

Chapter 15: The Holy Last Word

On this last page, Lisa offers some final words of prayer and encouragement.

The verdict: 30 pages of pithy catechetical advice, including many how-to's; a good tool especially for those looking to invigorate a textbook-based curriculum.  

Here's the order page.

And the order page for Lisa's first book.

Not the Usual

 I bet he get lots of appreciation

News for my readership (both of you):

My double-secret blog (that's this one) has been nominated in the Best Underappreciated Blog category of the 2011 CANNONBALL CATHOLIC BLOG AWARDS.

Of course I'll post about it again as the deadline approaches.