French Religious Education Program A brief overview and request for UCM families’ input

This is the introductory letter from the questionnaire I sent out to all Religious Education families and RE leaders and helpers as of 3/23/11. If you would like to complete a copy of the extended questionnaire, please contact my office and we will send you one: dre@ucmtl.ca

The French RE programme is nearing the end of its third year as an integral part of the Religious Education programme at UCM. Lessons have been offered six times a year. The first year, the curriculum was centered around the seven UU principles. For last year and this current RE year, we have been exploring First Nations culture and spirituality.

Originally, the French RE project, which has now created the first French UU RE curricula ever in the world, was started by the Francophone Group and the MUUQ (Mouvement unitarien universaliste au Québec). Its purpose was to attract more francophone families to the UCM, as well as to UUism in general, internationally. In order to have children pilot the lessons, the curriculum was integrated into our RE programme here at UCM.

While our children certainly can benefit from a linguistically and culturally enriched RE programme, with the addition of French lessons created with a francophone audience in mind, the original purpose of the project should be kept in mind. There are several questions to consider when evaluating this programme, such as:

Do we want our children to benefit from an enriched programme, linguistically and culturally speaking—specifically focussing on that of the larger community we are a part of here in Quebec?

Do we feel that this is a way we can participate in outreach, as a member of the UU community?

Do we feel that our children are benefitting from this particular programme, as it stands?

We have prepared the following pages of further questions for which we would love your detailed response, but we would appreciate any of your thoughts on these matters. Please take some time to go over the following questions (or those that feel relevant to you) with your children, and return the questionnaire to us (either by email or paper copy). Some of these issues will come up at the March 27^th Conversation with our Minister and Director of RE –we hope to see you there!

We thank you most sincerely for your input in these matters!

The RE and Francophone Committees

Happy St Patrick's Day!

I hope you are enjoying the current March warmth and brightness! Maybe you have even been wearing some green for St Patrick --or have seen some glimpse of green grass. On my just-over Toronto trip I did see lots of yellow willow tree and red oosier dogwood branches, giving suprising colour to the end-of-winter scenery.

As I have mentioned before, there are some terrific parent resources for helping crying infants sleep, managing toddlers tantrums, fostering adolescent success, building emotionally resiliant children, etc, including some new free teleseminars, to be found at: www.handinhandparenting.org/ - I have known of the work of this organization for many years and will be happy to share more about it with anyone interested.

The last yoga session planned for this year for Spirit Play, featured a story about Ganesha, the elephant headed god of Hinduism. These special winter movement sessions have gone so well we are considering offering yoga-with-stories once a month next year –comments welcome!

Appropos of next year, please remember our annual « RE Conversation with the Minister » that will take place March 27th at 9 am –it will be a special breakfast, followed by childcare fun for the children while you share your thoughts about RE programming and your family’s needs. We are interested in feedback about French RE, children's choir timing, and Spirit Play in general [to learn more about the latter, checkout http://www.spiritplay.net/

From RE families and helpers letter for Friday March 4th

Happy March (I actually love the pun of tomorrow's date --will any of you be marching forth?) and hurrah for the lengthening days!

Last week I published the blogs of two of our RE families, as I announced the launch of this one –Please « meet » Laurel Tidman, mom of Clara and Leo, at http://clarabandleo.blogspot.com/
And check out Gail Schwartz’s thoughts about parenting at http://www.twodykesandaboyby.blogspot.com/, She is partner to Lucie Gagnon and mom to baby Alexi.
And, I asked RE families to send me THEIR OWN URLs, to circulate, so we all get to know each other a bit better! So now here are two more people’s blogs who are part of our RE community :
1. Yoga leader Eliza Moore can be found at :http://www.elizamoore.com/ . . . She performed her music during our services last year, and is the mother of baby Xavier. She also says that she and her husband “jeremy are about to release a single on feb 28th for our new band "JE". www.myspace.com/weareje --we are really excited about this project!! The itunes link is: http://itunes.apple.com/us/album/magic-single/id422115984

2. Ariel Hunt-Brondwin is the CUC National Youth and Young Adult Programmer whom some of you may have met during the Eastern Regional Gathering in November. She writes a blog about the work she’s doing, which you can see at Gather the spirit, harvest the power http://www.yayacuc.blogspot.com/

Finally, a word about the stairwell bulletin boards –I have agreed to let the new Art Committee take over the stairwell, and although I am sad to lose those areas to share material relevant to our programs and the opportunities to have had some visual fun doing so, it means I might spend a bit less time here, AND we’ll get to see some great professional art shows –first opening will be May 6th, so watch for it! However, I would really love some feedback about whether any of you have any time to read what we put up? I seldom see people looking at any of the boards (and there are still two, one outside the Nursery and one on the lowest level, outside the Chapel), and would really appreciate response about what you do notice or would like to see posted . . . ditto for the RE pages of the website.