Welcome to our cooperative Religious Education program

Register now for 2008 summer and fall classes

Click here to download the Summer 2008 Religious Education registration form and the 2008-09 Religious Education registration form. Please complete and deliver to the church office. Include payment to reserve a spot at your preferred time (as long as spaces remain). All families are guaranteed space in the RE program; however, late registrees may not be able to attend the service time they prefer. Families new to the program are encouraged to arrange an appointment by calling the Religious Educator, Gabrielle Farrell (202-332-5266 ext. 112).

Our 2008 summer program: Spirit-Nature Connection

Nature is all around us. When we lie on a patch of grass and cloud-watch, walk barefoot in a summer rainstorm, or play hide’n’seek amongst trees we are reminded of our relationship to nature. Summer is an excellent time for children to discover their connection to it. For summer RE, the One-room Schoolhouse group (ages 5 to 4th grade) will explore the Spirit of Life within nature. Some participants in the RE high school class will spend their Sunday mornings assisting the program.

Lessons.Over the course of ten Sundays, the children will learn the bare essentials of planning, preparing, maintaining, and harvesting a vegetable garden. To compliment All Souls going green, the children will also make a compost bin to be used by the church. The garden and compost will be on the Southlawn. The One-room Schoolhouse will meet during service time, in the Dining Room classroom.

6/22: Planning, Plotting, & Jump-start Gardening
6/29, 7/6 & 7/13: Make a Outdoor Compost Bin & Garden Maintenance
7/20 & 7/27: An Outie’s Watery Garden
8/3: Garden Maintenance
8/10: Leading a Tour of our Gardens and Trees
8/17: Harvesting the Fruits of Our Labor
8/24: Pet Blessing (open to all)

Field trips. To further the idea that nature is all around, the summer RE program will explore nature beyond the Southlawn. We’ll find nature through a telescope by visiting Rock Creek Park’s planetarium. We’ll also find ways to tackle water pollution when we go to the Anacostia Watershed Society. If you are interested in being a chaperone, please contact Nikevia Thomas.

Date TBD: Anacostia Watershed Society. $4
7/21, 1pm: Planetarium at Rock Creek Park Nature Center. Free
More trips possible!!!
*Preference for field trips is given to paid summer RE registrants.

– Nikevia Thomas
Summer RE Director
nthomas@allsouls.ws or 202-332-5266 ext. 115

Our 2007-08 program

(Check back in August for information on our fall 2008 programming.)

Vivian Gussin Paley’s You Can’t Say, You Can’t Play, a multitcultural, multi-racial, anti-bias, anti-oppression program, is lifespan religious education for the adult teachers and children. Acting as co-religious educators, adults and children gain insight as they work and play through the lessons each week. You can’t say you can’t play is a relevant way for children to think about building diverse and loving communities, as it offers direct experiential opportunities for using personal power. This program helps children and adults:

• learn about contemporary and historical figures and institutions from Unitarian, Universalist, and Unitarian Universalist traditions;
• practice employing their moral and collective agency on behalf of others;
• consider what behavior makes one a good citizen of the world as part of developing ethical behavior;
• develop their personal faith by articulating what they believe; and
• engage in classroom and church rituals and practices that nurture their spiritual development and their sense of community.

Program Components

Worship

Story for All Ages
Integral to a child’s religious education is worshipping with the entire church community. All children, except nursery-aged, attend the first 15 minutes of worship in the sanctuary on the first Sunday of the month or as otherwise noted. Middle and high school students attend the first 15 minutes of the service every Sunday.

Chapel Service
This service for kindergarten through fifth grade parallels the sanctuary service with singing of hymns, lighting the chalice, prayer, and a story three Sundays each month. Children participate as worship leaders. An offertory is collected, which the children direct to a social justice project.

Youth Choir
The All Souls Youth Choir is open to children in third grade and older. The choir rehearses weekly on Sunday mornings and sings in the service monthly, generally on the first Sunday. If interested, please contact Lenard Starks, the ASC Assistant Music Director.

Pedagogy (Study)

Nursery care
Childcare for infants through two year olds, supervised by two professional caregivers, is available in the nursery in the Tupper room on the second floor. Parents are asked to stay with their children until they are comfortably settled and to sit in the left balcony of the sanctuary in case they are needed during the service.

Very young learners (two and three year olds–9:15 am only)
This activity-based class meets in the Longfellow room (on the second floor) and does not attend the services. Teachers engage children in small- and limited large-group activities while also respecting their developmental need to act individually. The class typically includes lighting a chalice and singing, simple activities, a story, snack, and monitored free play. Parent help is often needed in addition to the scheduled parent helper. Note: This class is only available at the 9:15 service. At 11:15, two year olds go to the nursery, while three year olds join the Young Learners class.

Young learners (four and five year olds at 9:15 am; three through five year olds at 11:15 am)
This structured, story-based class gives children — as individuals, as family members, as congregants, and as citizens of the wider world — opportunities to grow in trust and caring, and the freedom to discover and express individuality. The class is primarily for children not yet in kindergarten. Children attend services intermittently through the year.

Primary through intermediate learners (K through fifth grade, 9:15 and 11:15 am)
Classes are grouped across three grade levels in an effort to model mixed-age learning communities. Primary classes include kindergartners through second graders, while intermediate groups include third through fifth graders. These mixed-aged classes encourage children to see each others as teachers and leaders. The morning typically includes a story in the chapel or a “story for all ages” from Unitarian Universalist history. The children then separate into classes to discuss and integrate the story. Children are encouraged to articulate their individual faith. Service learning and social justice projects are also introduced as the year progresses with children actively involved in developing the project.

Middle school (9:15 and 11:15 am) and high school learners (11:15 am only)
These groups, advised and taught by adults, meet Sunday mornings for learning, fellowship, worship, and social justice work. Integration with the adult community is encouraged and promoted. Students are encouraged to direct their own learning. The middle school group, focusing on stories of Unitarian Universalists whose lives and faith encouraged radical inclusion (from You Can’t Say, You Can’t Play), interpret these stories within the context of the world today.

Community

Coffee and lunch
Light breakfast foods are sold in the All Souls Cafe after the first service; a reasonably-priced lunch is available after the second one. The fenced playground, right outside Pierce Hall and the gymnasium on the lower level are open after the services. Both require parent supervision.

Classroom events
Intergenerational events happen throughout the year. These include pizza parties, cookies and milk, stone soup, etc., and are offered to help families get to know each other in smaller groups settings.

All-church events
The RE Committee offers church-wide events, often working with other committees, to encourage community-building and getting to know each other. These include the annual Halloween party and the end-of-the-church-school-year all-church picnic in Rock Creek Park (held on the third Sunday in June).

Parent helpers
Each family is asked to serve at least twice (for each registered child) as a parent helper in the classsroom. Parent already teaching are exempt. Parent helping teaches the children the importance of participation in the life of the church. It also lets parents become more familiar with the teachers and the ideas, philosophies, and theologies of Unitarian Universalism.

Proclamation and advocacy

Teaching
One is not qualified to teach in the religious education program by virtue of a “teacher’s license, but because of a devotion to a way of living and thinking that is so strong that it must be shared” (Hirsh). In this way, our children come to know what Unitarian Universalism is and what they as individuals believe.

Witness
There is at All Souls Church an historic tradition of standing as social witness to injustice in our community and the world. This tradition continues today and there are opportunities for children to join adults in these places of standing together for what is just.

Social justice learning

Acting on sincerely held principles and values is vital to religious education; the hands follow the heart. Classes identify social issues on which they would like to collectively take action and then help plan the project.

Projects are age appropriate and most often happen on Sunday mornings. These have included:

• helping to rebuild New Orleans with adult congregants;
• preparing and serving food at a local shelter;
• preparing and collecting food for various organizations working with hunger in DC;
• working with an euthanasia-free animal shelter;
• helping the All Souls Church Trash Free initiatives;
• raising money by creative and targeted fundraising efforts (i.e. bakesale for La Clinica del Pueblo); and
• participating in an overnight work-camp in the neighborhood.

Parents and other adults are strongly encouraged to participate in this portion of the program. Families are encouraged to participate in church-wide social justice projects with their children as well.

From The Minister

I’m too alone in the world, yet not alone enough
to make each hour holy.
I’m too small in the world, yet not small enough
to be simply in your presence, like a thing –
just as it is.

I want to know my own will
and to move with it.
And I want, in the hushed moments
when the nameless draws near,
to be among the wise ones –

I want to mirror your immensity.
I want never to be too weak or too old
to bear the heavy, lurching image of you.

I want to unfold.
Let no place in me hold itself closed,
for where I am closed, I am false.
I want to stay clear in your sight.

– Ranier Maria Rilke
From The Book of Hours: Love Poems to God

“I want to unfold,” exclaims Rilke, and so, too, do the throngs of people coming to Unitarian Universalist congregations seeking spiritual growth and meaning in their lives. “Unfolding” is an apt metaphor for this growth. Ever since the time of William Ellery Channing, the founder of American Unitarianism, our tradition has held that within each person there is a “divine seed” that can be cultivated such that each grows — “unfold” — toward the Holy. This is the lifelong process that today we call religious education.

Welcome!

– Rob Hardies