Contributor: Barbara Dellanno
We have been called by Sister Percylee to provide faith-based learning opportunities in our daily lessons. You may find the following resources helpful.
Faith-based Learning Experiences Across the Curriculum
We have been called by Sister Percylee to provide faith-based learning opportunities in our daily lessons. You may find the following resources helpful.
Education for Justice
To access this Catholic social justice site, you need to enter “bdellanno” as your username and “vikings” as your password. You will find faith-based lesson plans dealing with issues like protecting the environment, gun violence, and immigration. Explore the tabs at the top of the page as well as the many resources available on this site such as discussion guides, webinars, reflections, “backgrounders” (like Pope Benedict’s 2013 Peace message), information about Catholic saints/heroes/martyrs, and a Current Events page.
Check out #catholicedchat on Twitter.
Every Saturday morning, you can follow and participate in a live educational chat on Twitter, related specifically to Catholic education. Just search the hashtag #catholicedchat to see recent chats and find out what's coming up!
Questions for Response/Comments:
1. What do you think of the resources available on the Education for Justice site? How can you use these resources in your classroom?
2. Did you find any #catholicedchat topics relevant to you and your teaching? Do you have chat topics to recommend?
I spent a lot of time surfing around this particular website Education for Justice. There are many different areas I will use in my developmental psych class. We have been talking recently about raising children in a non violent world and the gun violence issue has always come up. So I will use some of the suggestions given in both the Gun Violence site and the Voices of the Gun violence debate. There were many great resources there for my psych classes.
ReplyDeleteI have used the EFJ resources in my English class several times this year. There always seems to be something available that is relevant! For the freshmen English classes, I think the Hunger Games resources are great, and the weekly Lenten lesson can be applicable to many different learning areas.
ReplyDeleteHi Christine,
DeleteOn the subject of Lent, I also found a daily Lenten poetry guide from a previous year. Although the exact dates are different, this would be an excellent way to introduce more poetry into our English classes while also focusing on the meaning of the season.
I have used this source before for my Catholic Social Teaching course for juniors. There is an entire section on the social documents of the Church that unfortunately majority of Catholics are not aware of. CST is a whole body of doctrines on social, political, economic and moral issues facing the Church. It is one of the Church's best kept secrets.
ReplyDeleteIn the said course, we cover the nine principles of CST identified by U.S. bishops in 1991. At U.C., we do a lot of works of charity such as the Thanksgiving and Christmas drives, and students' service projects. What we need to consider is giving our students opportunities to embark on works of justice.
Elito,
DeleteI think a lot of students do embark on works of justice but they are unclear as to what is really means in a relgious sense. Maybe it's something we can add to the service projects(??)
Good idea Rae! I think this could really give a "lift" to the service projects especially now that they are divided into four a year.
DeleteI found some of the sources on this site really interesting! In my classes we often discuss the issue of immigration. There is a lot of information here I can pull from and ask students to look through the "lense of faith" while examining this issue. How do our core values of compassion, respect, and community relate to this issue? This site will help my students answer these questions and formulate thier own opinions guided by faith... Great resource!!
ReplyDeleteFound relevant info: #lent and #USCCB. Lots of info on pope
ReplyDeleteAlso, found twitter access to info a great e-tool.
ReplyDeleteWith "Touching Saftey" coming up in March, this website offers resources for dating violence awareness. This is certianly something that can be used in the classroom (the attachments are pdf, I dont have access to them at home, but I will download them at school).
ReplyDeleteThe section on service learning is something that the Religion department can examine closer to help improve your growing service requirements. Even the articles about social issues, like the environment can be used during Earth Day. The teacher blogs section of the website seems useful as well. There seems to be a lot of information on this website, but it is well organized for easy use.
I like the catholic education for justice site. I have used it before and it works well in my world studies class in our adopt a country project when we try to tackle social issues in various countries and come up with solutions on how to solve them. I saw the site had a great prayer service in conjunction with Martin Luther King, Jr. Holiday. I would love to see UC do more to celebrate black history month and honor King. It might be a nice faith initiative to do a prayer service like this next year.
ReplyDeleteStudents have invaluable instructors who use realistic information to help our young people make better decisions. Considering other's feelings and treating others with dignity - no matter who they are or where they come from- is a serious issue in today's society.
ReplyDeleteI really like the contemporary relevance of the Education for Justice site and the lesson materials that are posted there. As I plan for an upcoming AP Government unit on foreign policy, I am particularly intrigued by the "Fog of War" lesson plan. I envision this as thought-provoking approach to engaging my students at the beginning of the module. The discussion guide for "Zero Dark Thirty" would be appropriate for this topic, as well.
ReplyDeleteThis site would also be useful in my English classes. Writing a film analysis using one of the Education for Justice study guides would be a useful learning activity to incorporate the consideration of UC core values into a class assignment.
Overall, Education for Justice provides excellent materials for teachers to address current issues with an approach guided by the tenets of faith. I am impressed by the selection, which includes the gun debate, immigration, and date violence, all of which are of interest and significant to the lives of Union catholic students.
I, too, was impressed, Marla, as you can see from my post below, with the three or four sections I had the time to explore. Your reference to "Zero Dark Thirty" and film analysis only provides more reason and incentive to return to this site again soon for more ways of incorporating faith-based and just plain valuable and interesting lessons into 3AP.
DeleteI have enjoyed using Education for Justice in my freshman religion courses. It ties in a lot of current events, such as the Pope resignation, but also offers educators a lot of resources for the classroom.
ReplyDeleteCertain days I will give students the chance to browse the site and pick topics for a group discussion. We have had a lot of talks/debates on gun violence since the Newtown tragedy and now we are we moving on to the pope's resignation and the process of selecting a new pope. The students become more engaged when they are picking the topics.
Great site with lots of resources!
Eddy, what great ideas you have for student-driven lessons! Thanks!
DeleteI have been searching for a way to introduce social justice into my classroom. The Education for Justice site will be a very useful tool. Like Eddy's idea about having students choose the topic of choice.
ReplyDeleteEducation for Justice. Where do I begin? First, thank you, Barb, for introducing it. I have looked for ways to provide faith-based learning experiences and, I suppose, tangentially I have provided them. But this site not only crystallizes for me the meaning of "faith-based learning experiences" but provides abundant resources (I only touched upon a few in the past hour!) for providing them. Some examples: the section on gun control for writing, discussion, or debate (How does each person "disarm his own heart"?); from the Book Discussion Guide, "To Kill a Mockingbird" and its connections to Catholic social teaching; also from the Book Discussion Guide, suggestions for summer reading (for example "Reading Lolita in Tehran," a memoir, timely, about the role of books and language, perfect perhaps for 3AP) ; even prayers, like the one posted "For Those Who Suffer from Mental Illness." I will be returning to this site.
ReplyDeleteJulius has a great deal to offer for insight into humans and their interactions. The ability to read and absorb stories can make us much more understanding. But first we must read!
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