flipped-classrooms-webinar--2.mp4
PAT KAHN: Yay! So welcome, everybody. This is our third monthly webinar series. Tonight we're going to talk about the flipped learning concept in faith development. Outside In & Upside Down was the great name that our creative Gail came up with, I believe. I don't know. Was it Susan or Gail? Anyway, it was great.
So we're glad that you're all with us tonight. And I'm Pat Kahn, the Children and Family Programs Director at the UUA in the Faith Development Office. And I'm joined by Gail Forsyth-Vail tonight. And our webinar co-hosts are Susan Lawrence-- wave, Susan-- and Alicia LeBlanc.
And so the first thing we're going to do is turn this over to Alicia to do some housekeeping.
ALICIA LEBLANC: Thank you, Pat. Hi, everyone. I am Alicia LeBlanc. I'm the Administrative and Editorial Assistant for the Faith Development Office.
If you have a camera, please keep it off during the webinar. If you have a computer audio problem, you log out of Fuze and call in by phone. And the recorded webinar will be online at the address there. And that address will also be pasted in the meeting chat box as the webinar continues.
All attendees are going to be muted during the presentation. You will raise your red flag when you wish to contribute to sharing, ask a question, or make a comment. And we will call on you in turn. You can mute or unmute yourself.
Now we're going to do a little practice. You should see your red flag near the meeting chat box. And if you click it, you'll raise your flag.
PAT KAHN: Ta-da!
ALICIA LEBLANC: Great. And if you click it again, it will lower your flag. Awesome.
PAT KAHN: All the experts.
ALICIA LEBLANC: And you can do the same thing with your microphone to mute and unmute yourself. If you hover over your microphone next to your name or phone number, you'll unmute. Great. And if you click it again, you'll mute yourself again. Thanks.
Watch your meeting chat box for links to resources. I'll be pasting those in there throughout the webinar. And you can cut and paste from the meeting chat into your own computer to a Word document. And if you have follow-up questions or comments, you can email us at religiouseducation@uua.org.
And now I'm going to pass this on to Gail for an opening reading.
GAIL FORSYTH-VAIL: OK. And Pat and I are going to do this reading together. It's number 466 in the gray hymnal, written by Vincent B. Silliman.
"Let religion be to us life and joy."
PAT KAHN: "Let it be a voice of renewing challenge to the best we have and may be; let it be a call to generous action."
GAIL FORSYTH-VAIL: "Let religion be to us a dissatisfaction with things that are, which bids us serve more eagerly the true and right."
PAT KAHN: "Let it be the sorrow that opens for us the way of sympathy, understanding, and service to suffering humanity."
GAIL FORSYTH-VAIL: "Let religion be to us the wonder and lure of that which is only partly known and understood--"
PAT KAHN: "An eye that glories in nature's majesty and beauty, and a heart that rejoices in deeds of kindness and of courage."
GAIL FORSYTH-VAIL: "Let religion be to us security and serenity because of its truth and beauty, and because of the enduring worth and power of the loyalties which it engenders."
PAT KAHN: "Let it be to us hope and purpose, and a discovering of opportunities to express our best through daily tasks--"
GAIL FORSYTH-VAIL: "Religion, uniting us with all that is admirable in human beings everywhere."
PAT KAHN: "Holding before our eyes a prospect of the better life for humankind, which each may help to make actual."
GAIL FORSYTH-VAIL: Thank you. Well, hello, everybody, and welcome. And we're going to start-- whoops. Back up one there. We're going to talk about flipped learning. And I thought I'd start with the definition of what flipped learning is.
When we talk about flipped learning, we're talking about the idea that the exposure to educational content can be done on one's own time. And instructional time-- or, for us, time spent in RE community groups-- is best spent processing and exploring the content and interacting with the facilitator, the teacher, the leader, and with others.
So this model of flipped learning is characterized by flexibility. It focuses on the needs of the learner. It positions the teacher or the facilitator as a guide and not so much of a conveyor of content. And there's an emphasis on developing skills that can be applied in other contexts.
So that's a big definition. And if that was too much for you to take in and it felt really complex and difficult, I'm with you. At first brush, it does feel complex, but it really is a reframing, reorganizing, and refocusing of the educational process. And it makes a lot of sense.
And as Pat and I intend to show through this webinar, it makes very good sense for Unitarian Universalists and for Unitarian Universalist faith development. But before I get ahead of myself, I want to tell you a little bit of a personal story.
Pat and I have been batting the flipped learning thing back and forth for a while. And I got a phone call a few weeks back from my youngest. My son is a TA at Georgia Tech. He's a graduate student at Georgia Tech. And he has responsibility for freshman physics. And everyone at Georgia Tech takes freshman physics.
So up to now his responsibility as a teaching assistant was to help the students with their labs and so on and so forth. But they flipped the instruction this semester. And so as a TA, his responsibility is not helping with the labs. The students are to use the instructional materials on their own and do the labs. And his responsibility is to help them learn to present their results and to engage with other students about their results.
So he said, you know, I'm teaching a lot of public presentation more than I am teaching laboratory skills. And so it's a flip. And it's really interesting and different. And I'm eager to learn more about how it works.
But I wanted to start there to say that this idea is taking hold in all kinds of different educational contexts. And I think it has some pretty significant applications for us.
We have actually invited you to engage in flipped learning for this webinar. We gave you content to read and view and think about ahead of time. And we're going to spend most of our time tonight figuring out how to apply those concepts, rather than spending our time telling you what the concepts are. So we'll definitely get back to your pre-work as the webinar unfolds.
But for right now we are going to do just a short presentation of what the concepts are. We're going to show you a short-- oh, thank you. I skipped that slide. We're going to show you a short video that features Aaron Sams, who was one of the founders of the new flipped movement. He's a teacher of biology and chemistry at Woodland Park High School in Colorado.
In order to show you the video, I'm going to need to take a minute to share my screen so you can see it. It's about 2 and 1/4 minutes long-- 2 and 1/2 minutes long.
[VIDEO PLAYBACK]
[MUSIC PLAYING]
AARON SAMS: I'm Aaron Sams. And I teach science here at Woodland Park High School. My ultimate goal, I guess, as a teacher, is to help students become learners who can learn for themselves and by themselves.
One of the problems that I was guilty of even prior to flipping my classroom around was the classroom was centered around me. I told them exactly what to learn, how to learn it, what assignments to do to learn it, and when to learn it, and how to prove to me that they learned it.
I don't do that anymore. I changed the place in which content is delivered. Instead of standing in front of the class and delivering, here's how you do this type of problem, here's how this works, I deliver that direct instruction now asynchronously at home through these videos that we make with [INAUDIBLE] Studio.
SPEAKER 1: I'm still whole. Because in the last step, they were already whole numbers. We had 1, 1, and 4. Here we don't have a whole number. So here's a few little tricks when you need to multiply by whole numbers. If one of your numbers ends in 0.5, you're going to multiply by 2.
AARON SAMS: Something 0.5 times it by 2.
SPEAKER 1: Right.
AARON SAMS: OK. Write this down, guys.
SPEAKER 1: If something ends in 0.33 or 0.66, you multiply by 3.
When the kids come to class, they don't show up to learn new stuff. They show up to apply the things that they learned at home and to ask me questions about the things they learned at home so now they can have my lesson, if you will, what I would normally have stood up and lectured to them in class with some added features. They get that at home. And then what they were expected to do for homework is now what they do in my class.
Life is different for me because I no longer am the guy who stands up in the front of the classroom and just react to the students for an hour or however long the class is. Now I walk around the class and I help kids. I'm a tutor. I'm a guide. I'm the putter-outer of fires, whatever it happens to be in my crazy chemistry class. I walk around and do that. I don't stand up front and teach under the traditional model.
I'm Aaron Sams. I'm a teacher. I'm a dad. I'm a husband. And I love [INAUDIBLE] student.
[END PLAYBACK]
GAIL FORSYTH-VAIL: All right.
PAT KAHN: Great. Thanks, Gail. Every time I see that video, when the bubbles go on fire, I think of some conversations that were on the REACH or LREDA list a while ago about whether or not it was really safe to use flash paper and have flames going up in RE. So I always laugh when I see that vision of the fire going up.
So we wanted to talk a little bit about flipping and what we know about lifespan faith development and how the aspects of flipping fit along the lines of things that we already know and do in lifespan faith development.
I think one of the key points that Aaron had in that video was teaching the students to become lifelong learners. And that certainly, I think, is something that we all strive for in our religious education programs.
The whole point of honoring the questions and having the questions come from the children or youth is something that we think is really important. In fact, there's that wonderful hymn, "We Laugh, We Cry," that ends with, even to question is the answer. So the value of questions, the value of making meaning of what's relevant in our lives and putting that together, understanding different points of view, multiple perspectives, and the sense of creating a sense of belonging, whether it's within the classroom or within the congregation. Those relationships are a lot easier to foster when there isn't one person in charge. It gives the teacher a lot more of an opportunity to enter into relationship with all of the students in the class.
And the whole importance of stories and experiential learning, those are all things that we value in lifespan faith development, and that are also very conducive to flipped learning. In fact, these are a few of the statements from the Tapestry of Faith vision of phase development. Exploring the religious big questions-- or I would say any questions-- applying one's faith to life issues, exploring and articulating one's evolving beliefs and personal faith, and reflection-- reflecting, discerning, and critical thinking.
And whenever I think of critical thinking, I always think of Paulo Freire, who's a Brazilian educator and activist. And when I found this quote in probably his best known work-- Pedagogy of the Oppressed-- I thought, oh, he knew about flipped learning long ago.
"The teacher is no longer merely the-one-who-teaches, but one who is himself-- or herself-- taught in dialogue with the students, who in turn while being taught, also teach. They become jointly responsible for a process in which all grow."
And probably many of you are familiar with Freire's concept of the banking method of education. Here is the teacher over here, giving the education-- or the knowledge-- to the students and pouring it into their heads, making a deposit, and moving instead to problem posing education, wherein the questions are asked and the students and the teacher together in dialogue are really creating knowledge from the conversation and the discussion of questions.
And another phrase that I'm sure many of you have heard-- "the method is the message"-- comes from Angus MacLean, a Universalist religious educator and theologian. He promoted a child-centered and experience-centered, rather than Bible-centered approach. But how religion is taught is more important than what is taught. That is the whole concept of "the method is the message." And certainly looking at flipped learning, it's a method. And it sends a kind of message.
And I'm going to turn this over to Gail now, who will take us a little deeper into our theology.
GAIL FORSYTH-VAIL: Sure. As we began to really talk about this, it became so clear that our foundational religious education theologians and philosophers and educators really-- it meshes very nicely with the ideas behind flipped learning.
So Sophia Fahs said life is religious whenever we make it so. And she further believed that human beings have a deep need to be religious, to kindle and sustain their sense of curiosity, to make meaning of what is happening in their lives, and to connect with themselves, with others, and with the transcendent.
So when we talk about flipping, in many ways with Fahs'-- the content with what was happening out there in life and what was happening when the children-- and she really did talk about children-- were with their teacher was really making meaning out of that content.
So she said that the matter of faith development is to learn to help people transform what they experience in life into religious experiences and to help them develop religious and ethical values. So life itself and our emotional responses to our lives are the content. And in religious community, children are guided to make meaning of that content and also help to strengthen their ability to access religious emotions and values.
So I wanted to give you a little bit of an example about that. When I was a religious educator serving a congregation, there was a week when I sent out an email and said that I wanted to create a dinosaur worship service with the children. And I invited them to bring all of their dinosaur stuff-- their stuffed animals, all of their dinosaur things.
And so on Sunday what arrived were just dozens and dozens and dozens of LEGO dinosaurs and little plastic dinosaurs and stuffed dinosaurs and books about dinosaurs and everything you could possibly imagine. And along with all of that stuff, which was coming from outside, these kids came with so much knowledge-- way more knowledge than I have about dinosaurs. And they shared it. But as we moved through this worship, we began to together create a worship that lifted up the idea of diversity and complexity in the dinosaur world but also in our own world and the wonder that that diversity and complexity can help us experience.
So together, the kids and I made some meaning out of the things that they were bringing from outside-- all of their wonderful engagement with dinosaurs because nine-year-olds and dinosaurs are just a perfect kind of thing. So that's a little bit of an example. And Fahs has lots of examples of her own in her writings.
And I also wanted to-- whoops. Back up. I wanted to talk about Emerson because we really got to call up all the ancestors today-- not all of them, but a lot of them. And Emerson told people who were preachers that good preaching is life passed through the fire of thought. And I think for us today in Unitarian Universalism, it's not just good preaching. It's being a good Unitarian Universalist-- to pass your life through the fire of thought, which is really similar to the ideas that Fahs had.
So if you viewed the Ramsey Musallam TED talk with the three rules for student engagement ahead of this webinar, you might recall that he said that student questions are the seeds of real learning. And I love the quote. So I picked it out. He urged teachers to have the guts to confuse our students, perplex them, and evoke real questions. And I love that quote. I think I want to put it some place.
But he had three rules. And he said the first one for effective learning is that curiosity comes first. And I think about that wonder and awe and curiosity and how much of a part that plays in our own Unitarian Universalist faith. I know that the congregation that I am a member of, curiosity is right there in the mission statement.
His second rule was embrace the mess. That with the curiosity comes kind of a mess and a little bit of chaos. And you embrace it.
And the third one was practice reflection, that what we do deserves our care, but it also deserves our revision. He was talking about chemistry class. But none of what he says is very far from the educational ideas of Emerson, of Fahs, of MacLean, and of Freire. I think that there's an awful lot of coming together of all of those ideas.
And I am going to-- yes, that's totally bloggable. You're right. I'm looking at the chat box. Agree.
PAT KAHN: Yes. I can't wait to see it, Katie.
GAIL FORSYTH-VAIL: So I'm going to pass this on over to Pat.
PAT KAHN: So as Gail mentioned before, she and I have been talking for really a couple of months at this point, going back and forth. And every time we turn around, we see another connection with a lot of the concepts of flipped learning. We can see it throughout Tapestry of Faith-- just in the whole approach to the vision statement that we talked about before in faith development. Talking about bringing our lives into and making meaning-- if you're familiar with Karen Bellavance-Grace on Full Week Faith, you can see connections there as well.
So many congregations are now doing thematic ministry. But instead of just worship-- tying worship and religious education together in the theme so that there is some thought and intentionality about everyone looking at the same theme and thinking about that and then bringing that into what we do on Sunday mornings-- whether it's worship or whether it's religious education.
And certainly small group ministry as well-- you see this happening a lot-- where there is a topic or a theme or a question that you consider ahead of time. But then when the small group comes together, that's where you're really making meaning and the connections and relationships with each other.
So we see lots of connections all the way through. And Gail is going to give you a couple of stories.
GAIL FORSYTH-VAIL: OK. So stories-- here we are. The first one actually, again, comes from my time working at a congregation. And we were struggling with RE committee and the two-hour meeting once a month where we really wrestled with who was going to teach third grade and who was going to bring the snacks for what and all of that.
And I think they were feeling unhappy about how this was going and me also. And what we eventually decided to do was-- of that two hour meeting, we set aside the first hour as what we called contemplative time. And the RE chair would pick a topic and send out something short-ish to read or view-- so magazine article length.
We took topics like violence and children or meditation and children. We did creation and evolution. We talked about sexuality. Whatever the topic was, people came together and began to share what their experiences were and their thoughts about this particular topic. For me, as the religious educator, I was partly using this as a think-tank for children's worship and for program planning and getting a handle on the needs of the congregation.
But that was really only secondary because for the RE committee members it was a chance for them to really do some good processing of their own experiences, to bring their questions to one another, and to really step into a role of religious leadership rather than an administrative task force. And I will say that we got as much done in the second hour in terms of finding the third grade teacher and figuring out the snacks as had previously taken two. So it really was the right thing to do, I think.
Second story is about the brand new history Renaissance Module, which is online. It is an online experience. And there's a theology one coming soon. And that really is a flipped learning experience. The Renaissance Module, participants do reading or viewing of videos outside of the time in which the module participants come together. And when they come together, it's to talk about how does what I read apply to my life, to my Unitarian Universalist faith, to my professional practice?
We actually have a couple of people here who were-- Barb and Thomas. Anybody else that were part of that initial field test group with this? And it really is an experience in flipped learning because our big questions when we came together were about, what does this mean for me in my professional practice now? So that's a flipped experience.
And the third one is-- I can just say quickly what it is. And then maybe if you want to just address it a little bit because it's your project. But it's the Lent Tumblr, the practicing Lent Tumblr, and the idea that people are bringing their experiences and their photos from outside in together to this joint learning experience. And Barb, if you don't mind being put on the spot and you just want to say a little bit more about that, that would be fabulous.
SPEAKER 2: Sure. I'd be happy to. And it's interesting. I hadn't really thought of it as a flipped classroom when I was creating it. What I was looking for was an opportunity for folks in my congregation to bond over a spiritual practice. And ironically, it didn't work in my local congregation. But it's gone viral.
And so the delight has been that it's bringing Unitarian Universalists and a few non-Unitarian Universalists together to engage in the spiritual practice and through written text to share the meaning of their pictures. So they're going out and doing their work and coming back and processing together. And it's just beautiful. And it's never too late to join for those of you that haven't joined yet.
GAIL FORSYTH-VAIL: Fabulous. Thank you. So those are the stories I wanted to share for now. And what we're going to do is we're going-- I'm going to flip slides here.
PAT KAHN: Got it.
GAIL FORSYTH-VAIL: Whoops. Too many. We're going to actually talk a little bit about how this might be applied in your work. So if you are listening to this webinar in its archived version-- not live-- this would be a really good time for you to just stop the video and do your own work in your group of figuring out how to apply this in your context.
But if you are live with us here today, then we're going to go on and do our reflecting together. So if you would like to speak, offer an idea, ask a question, ask for input from other people, would you please raise your flag? Pat's going to call on you. And then you can unmute yourself.
We're also going to ask that whatever your idea is at some point-- either before or after you speak-- you put it in the chat box. That way people can cut and paste and take it and we can have a record of what you said. All clear?
PAT KAHN: Great. We have a flag up already. Katie Cartman, we'd love to hear from you. Katie? Here. I'll unmute you.
GAIL FORSYTH-VAIL: Thank you.
PAT KAHN: You're welcome.
GAIL FORSYTH-VAIL: Technology is not my friend today. So 8 million examples, but the one that is near and dear at the moment is stewardship ideas around this, of getting people to start thinking about the spiritual side of money and then come together into something that is not just a packaged sort of, give us all your money so that we can run the church.
PAT KAHN: Interesting. Wonderful. Who else?
Lane has written in the chat box-- for those who are just listening online-- with the time approaching for summer club programming. Any ideas of how this might be applied for summer? Have you started off with any ideas, Lane? Oh! Wait a second. Here's Alexis.
SPEAKER 3: So I let my oldest girls, who are admittedly the only eight to 10 [INAUDIBLE] children's chapel about love. And so essentially the assignment was come back next week with a story-- any story that inspires love for you-- to share during children's chapel. And that worked really well.
PAT KAHN: Great. Other thoughts and ideas? We know that this is probably just planting the seeds-- if you forgive the little pun-- looking at the clip art there of ways that this might be used in your religious education settings.
While you guys think a little bit, let me share one that came up in the Tuesday version of this webinar. Eric Bliss, out in Denver, Colorado, said that he actually used to be a science teacher in the public schools. And he had a very clear understanding of how flipped learning could be used there. But he said he was really wondering, well, how would we do this? How would this work in RE? And then he said, oh, wait a minute. Maybe we're already doing that.
Because in his middle school class, they do something called video days. And so they use smart technology to explore the monthly themes in the congregations. So there's prompts and questions to promote curiosity. And that's what gets explored on Sundays.
And so he said flipping could allow for more exploration throughout the week with the youth sharing their videos and images on Sunday. OK. Sharing that on Sunday for more reflection and a conversation among the youth.
So he was very excited about that-- as were we-- because we thought, yes, see, you're already doing it. We're just putting a different frame to it now and looking at it with a different pair of glasses to see that.
Other ideas?
GAIL FORSYTH-VAIL: I think Jennifer wrote one in the chat box.
PAT KAHN: OK. Creating sacred space together. Decorating an altar in chapel with students who bring things from home. Yes. And then making meaning of it when you're together in the chapel service.
GAIL FORSYTH-VAIL: I think one of the interesting things about this is that the vision of who the person that we call teacher, facilitator, guide, advisor, whatever that person's role, in a flipped situation, it comes a lot closer to, I think, what Fahs and MacLean had in mind-- the idea of guide and mentor rather than conveyor of content.
And so I like to toy with the idea of, how is it different for someone as a volunteer if they understand their role to be guide, mentor. I used to tell them they were actually the front lines of the pastoral care team as well, that they would be the first ones to learn about the sick kitty cat and grandma in the hospital. But how does that change their role if they are not so much conveyors of content as they are guide mentor-- somebody that helps create meaning from life? OK.
PAT KAHN: So Lane has posted in the chat box. Thinking about youth group and youth empowerment, she said, what's often missing is the apprenticeship stage. And she can see flipped learning fitting very well there. Yeah. Definitely.
I'm sitting here looking at the chat box printout that we did from Tuesday's webinar. And I can't find the one piece that I was looking for. But one of the participants said that she had been sending home information to parents, using the Tapestry of Faith, taking it home, sheet and sending that out to parents after the class so they could see what had been going on. And the thought occurred to her that maybe she should flip that and send it out in advance of the class so that then parents are getting a sense of here is what we're going to be talking about next Sunday.
Oh, good. Thank you, Alicia. Alicia just cut and pasted from the other day. It was Maria O'Conner out in Wisconsin. She said, but it might be valuable to send these links in advance so parents know what's coming up. One of the things I wonder is, would that motivate them more to come to RE and bring their kids to RE on Sunday?
And that there are a lot more opportunities, then, for maybe parents to read the story ahead of time or have a conversation over dinner with all of the kids. So I think it will be fun to see-- if people start experimenting with that kind of thing-- what happens. Great.
And Teresa [INAUDIBLE] says that she wonders if some volunteers would find this a natural fit and others may feel anxious at first without a script or a set of goals and objectives. Well, yeah, I think just the same way that you have some RE teachers who really need the structure of the lesson. But then you've got the other who ca can just take the theme and run with it. So I think being sensitive to that or letting people maybe experience that of how to do something like this in a teacher training might provide some more comfort.
GAIL FORSYTH-VAIL: I also think that if you're doing things that are simple-- so, for example, if you have a group of children or youth or even adults who, for example, name their favorite place in nature or some experience that they will have had outside-- and so to just move from that rather than have-- I think one of the things that came up in the webinar yesterday was, well, they don't want to do homework. But I think it's not so much homework as living your life. And so I think simple things like inviting people to name their favorite place in nature or some other theme where people are going to feel like they have something to contribute might be a way to get going.
PAT KAHN: Mm-hm.
GAIL FORSYTH-VAIL: So I'd love to hear from some of the people who are typing too.
PAT KAHN: Yes. Well, Lane just wrote that comfort as well as stretching and deepening for the teachers, thinking of that as a new spiritual practice. And Katie wrote, anticipation and connection. Yeah. What other ideas do you have? Or what has popped up as we've been going through the webinar tonight?
All right. I'll share another one that came up since we've been talking about RE teachers. After the webinar was over and Eric Bliss was-- as I said-- so excited that he realized he was already doing some flipped learning with the middle school class, then he emailed me afterwards and said, O-M-G teacher training. We could flip teacher training and have x amount of the nuts and bolts and that sort of thing on videos or with readings that people would do ahead of time and then come together in smaller groups and talk that through. So I asked him to please keep us posted on how that goes. Great.
GAIL FORSYTH-VAIL: That would be a project for an RE committee, wouldn't it?
PAT KAHN: Yes, it would. It would.
GAIL FORSYTH-VAIL: Oh my gosh.
PAT KAHN: That would be great. Katie said, this is really about the alchemy of-- whoops-- of relationship. Yes. Definitely. Jennifer wrote that Montessori approach coupled with small group ministry for kids, giving them options for how they convey discussions and ideas. And Alexis writes, there was an advent calendar that went around in the fall with suggested donations for every day of the month, like $0.05 for every movie your family owns, et cetera.
And any of you who have typed in, if you would like to add some more comments, just let me know and we can unmute you and listen to you talk.
So Lane has posted that Spirit Play could be easily adapted to the flip method. And Alex asked, how would you adapt that? So is there anybody using Spirit Play that could maybe address that?
Well, while we think about that, Katie's writing, this is also really helpful for people who need time to process before they can engage out loud. Yes. Yes, Katie. Ah. OK. Teresa said, have kids select and tell the stories that they know that have been told before, including leading the group through questions. And I missed one other one.
Wait one second. Lane said, thinking of sending the wondering questions home prior to the Sunday the story is presented. That's a way of adapting, then, Spirit Play to flip it. As Katie Cartman says, oh, man, especially with Bible stories that are already on animated video online. Yes. Definitely. Definitely.
GAIL FORSYTH-VAIL: That's great.
PAT KAHN: Great. So I think-- OK. Michael and Morgan ask, what are some strategies for accommodating new visiting children who weren't a participant in the outside activities?
GAIL FORSYTH-VAIL: Well, I think often what you would do in terms of processing what people are experiencing in life doesn't require any special preparation other than perhaps having had a conversation with families. But I would think that a new or a guest participant, depending on whether they're shy or not, might, after listening to three or four people, have a story of their own.
I think if you were having people do videos and things like that and bring them, that somebody who's a guest might need to simply enjoy the video and maybe have verbal ideas. But clearly they wouldn't have a video done when they got there. But they might have a photo on their smartphone or something that could contribute.
PAT KAHN: So I'm going to flip to the next slide because we figured once we started talking about this, people would piggyback on other people's ideas. And so Sarah said that she does a monthly event called Super Sunday where all ages-- K through 12-- come together and do a social justice project mixed with other types of worship, fun games and activities, and other ways to engage in the theme that we've chosen. And she said she sends the information--
Whoops. I just lost my chat box. Just a second.
She sends home information to the parents in advance that leads up to the event. And she writes, I didn't realize in doing this it was flipped, but can see now how I can augment the at-home portion in advance to ensure better engagement and participation each month. And I laughed because Katie Cartman said, is anyone else dying to click "like"? So, yes, I think a lot of people are.
GAIL FORSYTH-VAIL: Mm-hm.
PAT KAHN: Great, Katie. Katie also said, for churches where children start in the service and then head to class, it would be awesome if the story for all ages and the start of the service could be part of the flip. Yeah, that's another way of thinking about it. Absolutely.
GAIL FORSYTH-VAIL: Right. Right.
PAT KAHN: And Sarah writes, for instance, we did UNICEF for Halloween. And I sent home some info about it, but can see that we could do more with that. Well, let's just say-- Alexis said, or shout out an amen for a number of portions of this webinar, in response to Katie's wanting to click the "like" button.
GAIL FORSYTH-VAIL: Oh, I love that. I love that. There are a couple of congregations where the-- often the person who's preparing to preach is wrestling with some question in the week before they put together a sermon. And there are a couple of congregations where the minister is willing to share the question with which they're wrestling along about Tuesday of the week so that people at home can wrestle with the question ahead of Sunday morning as well. And perhaps if you can't make it to Sunday morning, perhaps if you've been wrestling with the question of the week, you might even be inclined to go listen to the podcast or something. So it can be done with adults-- absolutely-- as well. Wow. Amen.
PAT KAHN: Alexis writes, there are congregations who-- every time somebody adds something my chat box goes up. There are congregations who have used the Time For All Ages story as the basis for each class that week. Small group ministry style. And Katie says, they put a question in the OSV, order of service, two weeks before the service. That's a great way to do it.
GAIL FORSYTH-VAIL: Uh-huh.
PAT KAHN: And I'm going to pronounce Thea's name Tay-a, and I hope I pronounced that correctly. Or it could be Thea.
GAIL FORSYTH-VAIL: It's Thea.
PAT KAHN: It's Thea. OK. Full Week Faith is a kind of flip. Yes. She often sends home things to do during the week and the kids share about it on Sundays. For example, what your family is grateful for. Yeah, definitely.
GAIL FORSYTH-VAIL: Wow.
PAT KAHN: Alexis says she could see adding earlier emails to flip that. Yup. And Katie posts that ministers use the answers from the congregation in order to prepare the sermon.
GAIL FORSYTH-VAIL: Susan asked a very good question yesterday. Susan Lawrence. Hi, Susan-- that we should probably put on the table here too. And her question was about content. If doing something like this has folks concerned about content or covering enough content or if it would cause concern and consternation in the congregation you serve. So I'm throwing that out there and seeing what you think about that.
PAT KAHN: And don't forget if you want to hear your-- oh. Yay. I was just going to say. You can raise your red flag and talk. Barb.
SPEAKER 2: So my concern is not so much about running out of content, but if we're providing materials for the kids and theoretically their families to engage with during the week that they'll then engage with again in the classroom-- my concern is that the teachers will default to just having a discussion with their class and not do any interactive activities, which in the best of circumstances, in my experience, often happens anyway. So I'm game for suggestions on how we might empower, encourage, et cetera, our volunteer teachers to not just default to, OK, now that you've read the story, let's talk about it for an hour and 10 minutes.
GAIL FORSYTH-VAIL: Right.
PAT KAHN: Mm-hm. Mm-hm.
GAIL FORSYTH-VAIL: Right. Because meaning-making is not just verbal. And I think that's a place where Tapestry of Faith and other kinds of curricula have a lot of processing kinds of activities.
You're right. I think some explicit conversation with teachers about many ways in which people make meaning, not all of them having to do with discussion. And that is definitely something to be thinking about.
PAT KAHN: So in response to that question, Gail, Lane wrote, as a dyed-in-the-wool process person, I love this idea and have occasionally come across parents who essentially wish for an RE proficiency testing of sort of content. Yes. I have met some of those very same parents.
GAIL FORSYTH-VAIL: Oh, yeah, me too. I had one give the seventh graders a test once upon a time on Unitarian and Universalist history. And they failed.
PAT KAHN: And I would venture a guess that if that same test had been given to the adults in the congregation, they might not have done much better.
Katie Cartman wrote, why doesn't my six-year-old know the life story of Buddha? Yeah. Great. Any other ideas to piggyback on what we've been talking about tonight? Ah. Alexis said, and then there are also the parents who just want childcare every Sunday morning and won't engage outside of Sunday morning. Those are the upsides and downsides to any approach. Yes.
And Jennifer said that's what she was thinking as well. She has a small congregation and it's difficult sometimes to get parents involved.
And Teresa says, maybe a good reason to do adult and child flipping simultaneously, so parents can see the good effects of collaborative learning. Question mark. Yes.
GAIL FORSYTH-VAIL: Mm-hm.
PAT KAHN: And Lane said, this raises some of the concepts from the LREDA fall conference-- ways to do RE with decreasing attendance. Yes.
GAIL FORSYTH-VAIL: Mm-hm. Well, I think one of the qualities that we want to help build in our folks is resilience-- the ability to make meaning out of life, which gives people a resilience and an ability to deal with some of the ups and downs of life. And I think that that's the conversation to have with families. It's not about knowing the life story of the Buddha. It's really about what kind of moral and emotional and spiritual resilience are the kids building. Yeah.
PAT KAHN: You got an amen, Gail. Katie had said, at least it will get the kids dragging parents to church from the other thing. And Jennifer said, that should be a webinar. Yeah, we'll get your ideas for future webinars. We'll talk about that in a minute.
All right. We are just about to the end of our time. So we will finish up with some closing thoughts about how to continue to share these ideas. But Gail and I have-- in the spirit of calling on the ancestors-- a closing reading from William Ellery Channing.
GAIL FORSYTH-VAIL: Yes. And probably familiar.
PAT KAHN: Yes.
GAIL FORSYTH-VAIL: "The great end in religious instruction is not to stamp our minds upon the young, but to stir up their own."
PAT KAHN: "Not to make them see with our eyes, but to look inquiringly and steadily with their own."
GAIL FORSYTH-VAIL: "Not to give them a definite amount of knowledge, but to inspire a fervent love of truth."
PAT KAHN: "Not to form an outward regularity, but to touch inward springs."
GAIL FORSYTH-VAIL: "Not to bind them by ineradicable prejudices to our particular sect or peculiar notions--"
PAT KAHN: "But to prepare them for impartial conscientious judging of whatever subjects may be offered to their decision."
GAIL FORSYTH-VAIL: "Not to burden the memory, but to quicken and strengthen the power of thought."
PAT KAHN: "Not to impose religion upon them in the form of arbitrary rules, but to awaken the conscience, the moral discernment."
GAIL FORSYTH-VAIL: "In a word, the great end is to awaken the soul, to excite and cherish spiritual life." Thank you.
PAT KAHN: Great. And now we'll hear from Susan.
SUSAN LAWERENCE: Hello. This has been a very exciting discussion. And you can watch it again when you go to this link here. On our webinar's index page, you'll see descriptions of all the upcoming and the webinars we've had so far in 2014. We have a whole calendar year planned and hope to continue indefinitely as long as there's interest in the topics that we're doing.
Next month's webinar is with Monica Cummings, and it's about supporting youth with eating disorders. So, again, we're going to offer two times. There's a Tuesday at 1:00 and a Wednesday at 9:00. And those are eastern time. So hopefully people in the West Coast will be able to join us in the evening. If the day doesn't work for them, we've got one at the end of the day.
We are still interested in people's ideas for topics. And some actually came up tonight. And I actually appreciate the blog suggestion. So some people lining up to blog with us on Call and Response. Thank you very much. These are some great ideas.
But if you've got a comment or a question or a topic idea, please send it on to religiouseducation@uua.org. That's also the same address you'll use to register for the future webinars, which will be listed as we get the descriptions written and posted online. And you're also obviously welcome to write to any of us individually and keep talking because we love that.
PAT KAHN: Right. Yeah, one of the people said, you've planted seeds and now I know other ideas are going to pop up. How do we share those? And what we said was, fine, use this religiouseducation@uua.org. And we can gather them and then figure out ways to share them with everybody.
GAIL FORSYTH-VAIL: So I think in many ways by looking at this flipped model we are actually going back to what matches best with us theologically and in terms of educational philosophy. I actually think our ancestors had this flip thing down before it became au courant, if you will.
PAT KAHN: Great. Well, thank you to everyone. I see a lot of people are saying thank you for doing the webinars. We have learned a tremendous amount doing them so far, not the least of which is just the technology of doing them. And look forward to doing lots more.
GAIL FORSYTH-VAIL: All right.
PAT KAHN: Great.
GAIL FORSYTH-VAIL: Thanks, everybody.
PAT KAHN: Thank you all for being with us.
GAIL FORSYTH-VAIL: Sleep well.
SUSAN LAWERENCE: Good night.
GAIL FORSYTH-VAIL: Good night.