June 2024
Happy Pride Month!
As we wrap up the program year with teacher appreciation, Flower Communion, Bridging, and Father’s Day, I can’t help but feel like this year spiraled by quicker than last year did.
We have one more session of RE in June, and then the final two Sundays of the program year are multi- generational services for Flower Communion and for Bridging. We will be having childcare for all three services, but childcare will not start until after the teacher appreciation part of the service this coming Sunday.
Our youth leadership team of Donna Maria Cameron and Danae and Dan Allison will be retiring this year after seven years of wonderful service. They have been incredibly popular with the youth and have run an amazing program. I would like to create a memory book for them to look back on the many lives they have touched, and for that I need the congregation’s help. Since I only joined you post-COVID, I don’t have contact information for the teens that bridged before that. If your youth bridged in the last seven years and you think they would like to contribute to the memory book, please let me know. I can send them an email telling them about the project.
What Does a DRE Do Over the Summer?
It can be easy to tell what I do over the course of the program year--tell stories, organize classes, schedule people, write multi-gen services, but what does the DRE do over the summer?
Change of Office Hours
Starting June 18th, my office hours will switch to my summer schedule, which this year will be Tuesday and Thursday 8:30 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. This switches my main working hours to the cooler part of the day, to save money on running my office AC. If you want to see me in person, drop in during those hours. I will be available via email and text on Wednesday and Friday mornings as well.
Cleaning and Organizing
Anyone who has ever glanced into my office knows that by June it is lightly organized chaos. Summertime is when I fix that. This summer I will also be working to remove the last bits of RE ‘stuff’ that is stored in the ‘dungeon’ downstairs to the RE storeroom and classroom cupboards.
Professional Development
The first two weeks of summer break will be dedicated to professional development. I will be attending General Assembly online this year, as well as the special LREDA programming for religious educators that is held the day before GA. After GA is over, I’ll be heading to the Cape with a carful of books for a reading retreat. I’ve picked up a number of colleague-recommended books over the past several months, but with no time to read them--June is the time for that.
In July and August I’ll be taking two classes. One is an online continuing education module on bringing RE into worship (and worship into RE). That class is online/zoom-based. The second class is OWL Facilitator training for the K/1 and grades 4-6 Our Whole Lives classes. This one is an in person training. I am unfamiliar with the younger ages OWL materials and am looking forward to learning all about them and whether OWL K/1 and 4-6 might be good things to add to our programming.
Planning and Curriculum
And finally, planning for next program year. We had very successful RE classes in this past program year, but there is always room for improvement, and children grow older and change their interests. What ways can we grow the program? Do we want to offer more programming for families on different days, or will that just frustrate already busy families with more decisions to make? I will attempt to contact all our regular families in person over the summer to discuss potential additional programs that I think it would be interesting and beneficial to offer. I’ll be promo-ing these potential offerings in the summer edition of the REnews, due to publish June 20th, so watch out for those.
Vacation!
Yes, I will have some of that, too. I will be gone the first week of July and the first two weeks of August. My schedule is posted on my office door where people can check it if they have any questions as to where I am.
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