fdo-webinar-the-new-dre.mp4
PAT KAHN: There we go. There we go. Great. So in that case, we will go ahead and get started. And I think other people will join us as we go along. But welcome to all of you from North America, since we have Canadians joining us as well as coast to coast.
I'm Pat Kahn. I'm the Children and Family Programs Director for the Faith Development Office at the UUA. And I am very excited to be helping to host Pat Infante, who is the Faith Development Director for the CERG, Central East Regional Group.
And also on your screen, you will see Susan Lawrence who's the Managing Editor in the Faith Development Office and our webinar guru. So we're glad that you're here. And we will get started with some notes from Susan.
SUSAN LAWRENCE: OK. Here we are. OK, well, we've been working on this for you. It will be best if you can mute your microphone. And the way to do that depends on whether you're using the red kind of FUZE or the blue kind of FUZE. And I think you probably would get some help by typing in the chat box if you along the way would like to do it. But we are more than happy to do the muting for you so that the presenters can do what they're doing without a lot of noises from outside.
When it's time to ask questions, you or we can then unmute you so you won't lose the ability to participate if you mute during the presentation. We would like you to stop your cameras so there are few screens of people being looked at. So Stella, I can actually help you a little dialog typing if you're aren't sure how to turn off your camera.
Oh, thank you. That was good. Easy enough. OK.
So if you are unable to hear well or there's something going on with the muting that's annoying, you can call in. And that's the number we were discussing earlier. And this here is the correct call-in information. It's a New Jersey phone number. And put in the meeting code. And the only thing we ask is that you please turn off any audio going on on your computer before you call in so that we don't get double sounds from your house.
And if you want to catch this webinar after, there will be a recording posted at this website that is here. And I'll put that into the box when I'm done talking. And that's also where we list all the upcoming webinars. So we're doing the monthly for the foreseeable future. And we hope you'll join us for another one.
OK, the chat box. This is important. it looks like everyone's picking up on this already. There is a box either to your left that says meeting chat or to your right that says group chat. And in there, you can either write to everyone or you can write to an individual. But it's probably best if you just do the everyone so that you don't get-- I've had this happen. It can be very embarrassing when you make a mistake. So you want to put any questions there and we'll be watching them during the webinar, so that we can raise them as they are appropriate to what Trish is talking about. And you will also see some links there as we go through. And if resources are being talked about, we will try to type in the URL that you need to find them into the chat box as well.
And you can cut and paste from there to a Word document or an email or something on your own computer. And I think we've got all this stuff. And I'm going to give you to Pat Kahn.
PAT KAHN: OK. This beautiful chalice came to us via Karen Bellavance-Grace, who did last month's webinar. And you can just read along with me. "We light the flame of knowledge. May understanding be with us. We light the flame of love. May caring be among us. We light the flame of holiness. May the unifying spirit be within us."
And I'm going to turn it over to-- now, I was going to say Pat Infante. But since there's Pat Kahn and Pat Infante. And sometimes, there's a third Pat when we've had meetings. We have decided that I am Pat and Pat Infante is Trish. So take it away, Trish.
PATRICIA INFANTE: Whoops. Thank you. Hi, everybody. Good afternoon. I'm so glad that you're able to join us for the new DRE webinar.
Welcome to your new position. And I'm hopeful that you're finding your self-- that you're getting situated and getting yourself grounded in your work. It's a very exciting time of year. And I appreciate that you found time to spend an hour with us this afternoon.
What we're going to do is we're going to spend a little bit of time. We have about 40 to 45 minutes. And so we're just dipping our toe into these topics. We won't be able to cover them exhaustively in the time we have. But I hope that you'll use this opportunity to write down questions and make notes so that you have language and ideas about questions that you can ask when you have an opportunity.
We're going to just spend a few minutes talking about kind of what it means to be a leader in a congregation. The important work of building a network, building a professional network. We're going to go over some resources. And I'm going to offer up a brief plan for the first 90 days. So that's what we're about. And let us go.
So yay, congratulations. You are a religious educator in a congregation. What wonderful, beautiful, exciting work you are embarking upon.
And it's really important as you start the work to really think about what your expectations are. Your expectations for the program, your expectations of the lay leaders and the volunteers that you're working with. And just spend a little bit of time reflecting on, what are my expectations about the coming year? Or if this is a career choice for you, a career opportunity, what are my expectations for the coming days as I build my portfolio as a religious educator?
And if you are in a congregation where you have been a member, it's really important to keep in mind that things are changing. You have a different role. You have perhaps been a volunteer. I know I have been doing this work for almost 20 years. And I started out as a volunteer, and then an RE chair, and there it goes.
When you have been a member of the congregation or been in relationship with others in the congregation in one way, when you become paid staff the relationship changes. And we'll talk a little bit about that. The boundaries need to change for you.
The work of a religious educator is varied. And you may already be discovering that you're called upon to be many things. And sometimes, all at once. So it's important that you think about your own gifts and your own strengths.
And one of the ways that you can do that is using some kind of a personality test. And there are plenty that you can do. We often use the Keirsey-Bates Personality Test which is available for-- there's a free version. And it just kind of helps you to identify a couple of things-- your leadership style, your own kind of personality gifts. And that can help you as you go forward in the work to identify, well, gosh, where do I really need support? Where do I need to delegate? Where am I running into-- bumping up against different leadership styles or maybe different decision-making styles when I'm working with my congregation? So knowing yourself is a really important first step in this work.
Your responsibilities may or may not include all of these things on this list. I know that on the phone, we have folks who have very part-time positions, to folks who are in full-time positions, possibly even with additional staff. So not everybody is going to be doing all of these things, but this is just sort of the map, the landscape of what the work of a religious educator may include.
And again, this is a place where you need to think about, where are my passions? What work do I feel really called to do? What work is it possible for me to maybe seek-- to delegate or to work with a volunteer to develop their gifts?
It's important to remember in a congregation we often use this terminology. We say we're part of a congregational system. So you are in the RE department, but you are connected to other staff. You're connected to most often your minister. Perhaps your minister is your supervisor. You're connected to lay leaders. And you're connected to, of course, parents and youth. So what happens in one part of the system can impact another. So you need to just keep in mind that a system is an interconnected web.
And of course, sometimes a system is-- there's a balance that's required to keep the system running smoothly. And you'll need to learn what that balance is in your own organization. But it's great to be just sort of looking and listening and thinking about how the interactions happen. Where do I see folks with maybe informal power? What do I observe about this congregational system? It's really important when you're part of the system to figure out, how do I play my part most effectively in that interconnected group?
And one of the ways we do that is through an understanding of our relationships, our close relationships, within the congregation as being covenantal. That means that we have expectations of one another. We make promises to one another. And we have an understanding of our boundaries. So you might have a covenant within your staff. You might have a covenant with the RE committee if you're working with a committee or a council.
There might be a covenant between you and your minister specifically. And the covenant just helps to guide you in conversation. It helps to guide you when the inevitable conflict arises. Conflict is not all bad.
And it's important to understand kind of how we can be in healthy conversation. And when we are out of covenant, what's the process for getting back into covenant with one another?
It's important to understand what your authority is. And that can range from who gets to sign-off on the reimbursements to what my authority is in terms of supervising other staff or my authority when it comes to budget decisions or facility management decisions. So understanding what your authority is, what the expectations are, how you're accountable, knowing who your supervisor is. And I hope that those kinds of things are covered in your job description. Your job description should tell you who you work for. And it may also have some language around kind of what your authority is, what the limitations of your authority might be.
It's really important to-- and this is something, particularly if you have been hired from within the congregation, this idea of confidentiality. And how we handle information as congregational staff.
If you were a member of the congregation, certainly you have friends and you have relationships, perhaps of longstanding with folks in the congregation. And now that you're staff, that boundary has really shifted. So it's really important for you to understand what the expectations are.
And I would start with the minister, if there's a minister in your congregation. What are the expectations around confidentiality? And what things can I share?
In our work-- we're not going to touch on this today, but there's a great deal of pastoral care that happens in our work informally, incidentally as we're talking with people. And how do we hold that information in a way that's appropriate? So you'll need to understand what the expectations are around confidentiality.
And when working with committees, it's also important to know when to step up and really set a vision. Or when is it a good time to step back and maybe give others the opportunity to step forward and be leaders?
Another part of, really, I think an important part of this work and being successful in this work is taking care of ourselves. How do we find the right balance between work, between family life, between our work as a religious educator versus our work as a volunteer? Just always seeking to find balance.
It's important as a religious educator to take care of your own spiritual needs. And well, I'm in church four or five days a week. I'm in the congregation several days a week. So I should be getting my spiritual needs met. But the fact is when you are in the congregation and you're wearing that religious educator hat, you're definitely in a different space. Different space as a staff person. So it's great to develop some outside ways, whether it's in personal spiritual practice or whether it is membership in another congregation or membership in our online CLF. Church of the Larger Fellowship we'll introduce a little bit later.
So that's important to be intentional about finding ways to meet your own spiritual needs. And also, finding that family and work balance. And I know it's really hard at this time of year as we're all gearing up for that first week of classes and doing teacher training. And there's just so much that seems to need to get done right now. So this job sometimes is kind of-- it's a little bit like a roller coaster.
Sometimes, we feel like we're really putting in a lot of time. And you have to make sure that you are intentional about finding the downtime and balancing that. It's just one of those things we can't really change the fact that it's very cyclical, but we can be intentional about making sure that we care for ourselves and find those downtimes when we can open space for thinking and for creativity as opposed to always doing.
I hope that this is just some strategies for taking care of yourself. And one of the ways that I think it's really important is to really seek clarity about your role and what your responsibilities are. Again, that should be enumerated in your job description. But sometimes what is in the job description is perhaps the ideal. And then on this side, we have the reality. And so the clarifying work is shortening that distance between the reality of what you're actually doing and the ideal of what the job description might lay out. So you want to be as clear as you can.
It's also really important for your own self-care and for your own success to delegate. And sometimes, delegation is hard. Because boy, we know how we want it done and we don't want to give it up. And well, somebody else might not do it exactly the way we want. But it's a really important key to success in this work. And it's a way of giving people space and room to be creative and to fulfill some of their own spiritual needs by sharing the work with them.
Remember that if you are a director of religious education, the D is for Director and not Doer. And sometimes we get into that over-functioning mode. I've seen it happen with other folks who shall go unnamed. But we want to just try to manage that, to step away sometimes and get up on what we like to call balcony and sort of look down at the work. And am I doing things that a volunteer could do? Am I doing things that one of the RE committee folk should be doing? And make sure that you're stepping up and stepping back in ways that are appropriate for everybody.
The congregation has responsibilities too. And I'll let you just sort of read down this list. I think the ones, of course, that are most important are that they're taking care of you administratively. That you have a job description, that you're fairly compensated. That they allow you opportunities for professional development and for attending meetings. And we'll talk a little bit about that shortly.
And also, shared leadership is a really important way the congregation helps to nurture you and helps you to be successful in your position. By understanding that this is a shared ministry, that we're partners in this work. And even though we've hired somebody, the congregation really owns the program. And they need to be invested and they need to be active partners.
So finding balance is really important to success in this work. And Ralph Waldo Emerson says people with great gifts are easy to find, but symmetrical and balanced ones, never. So let us strive to be balanced.
So now I want to just share with you some thoughts on the key relationships. It's really important if you do nothing else in the early days of your work, I strongly recommend that you reach out and build relationships. Build as many relationships as you can, because those people will be resources to you and will help you be more effective in your work, and will help you answer questions. And they may even help you when you're in a moment of struggle or a moment of challenge. So it's really important to build those relationships as early as possible.
Key relationships. Of course, the minister. The minister is a key ally, a key colleague. The minister is often your partner if you have worship responsibilities. The minister may be your partner in that work. The minister and other staff-- music director, administrator. You want to build relationship because you're all in it together. And remember I said, you're part of a system.
So what happens in one part of a system is kind of like the rubber band. If I pull on this rubber band over here, you're going to feel it on the other side. And so everybody in the system is connected. So as many positive working relationships as you can build early on, that will be helpful for you.
It's wonderful if you can reach out and build relationship with colleagues outside of your own congregation. Of course, there's important relationships inside-- parents and children and youth. But also going beyond-- colleagues. Folks may be at a local RE cluster or a local chapter meeting of our religious professionals organization, LREDA.
Maybe RE folk that you hook up with via some event through your district or your region. But it's really important to find colleagues. It may even be that you pick up the phone. Use the old-fashioned way and just call a neighboring congregation and strike up a conversation and try to build relationship with a neighboring religious educator.
It's useful for many things. You can borrow curriculum. You can drive together to a district event. You can go take a training together. Building relationship is really important because this work can be isolating.
When we're sitting in the congregational office like me or many of us, if you're sitting in a home office, there aren't two other DREs on the other side of a cubicle. So it can be very isolating work. So it's really important to build those relationships.
I'm sure that I'm guilty. I've been around a while, so I'm guilty sometimes of falling back on insider language. So another really important thing to do is try to learn as many of these acronyms and ask questions. And if you're at a cluster meeting or even in a staff meeting with your minister and they use an acronym or a term that you don't understand, say, excuse me. What is that? I'm not sure what that means. So be curious and ask questions.
Some of the ones that you will often hear, UUA is our Unitarian Universalist Association. LREDA is the Liberal Religious Educators Association, which is a partner organization. It is the professional organization for religious educators across the country and up into Canada.
You may hear the term GA. That's our annual associational meeting. This coming year it's happening in Portland, Oregon. You may hear the term district and region. And those are geographic governance organizations.
I'm part of the Central East Region. There's a Southern Region. There are 5 regions and 19 districts across this country. So again, ask questions. Learn what those terms mean.
In terms of professional connection, it's really, really wonderful to get connected with the Liberal Religious Educators Association. If you are lucky enough to be in an area, perhaps that has a cluster meeting nearby, I strongly recommend that you try to find out when the next cluster meeting is. You can go onto lreda.org, and that will tell you where all the different chapters are. And it has a directory of the chapter presidents and email addresses. So you can directly contact the chapter president and say, hey, I'm a new DRE and I'm interested in connecting. And are there any meetings coming up? And hopefully, they can give you that information.
LREDA provides a really important service for us in a couple of ways. One is there's a published Code of Professional Practices. And if you are a member of LREDA-- and by the way, it is a membership organization, but they have a discount if you're a new DRE. So be sure and look for that. So they have a Code of Professional Practice. And they also have guidelines. So the guidelines are a little bit more administrative and the code is a little bit more covenantal. It's about, what are the expectations and promises that we hold for this work?
So I strongly recommend that you take a moment to print those out and stick them-- stick them in a folder and keep them nearby. And spend some time looking at them and thinking about them. And thinking about this work that you're embarking on.
They also have something called the Good Offices Program, which provides sort of a collegial ombudsmen. Someone that you can contact if you're having a challenge in your work. Generally, things like conflict, compensation concerns. They can provide some advocacy and just kind of give you a little bit of guidance and advice. And it never hurts to just find out who the good officer near you is and contact them and say, hi, I'm a new DRE. I'm not having any issues, but I wanted to know you. I wanted to just introduce myself. And that's a great person to just sort of touch base with.
There are some other wonderful ways to connect, and perhaps some of you have already connected with the REACH list. This is an amazing clearinghouse of information that's open to religious educators, religious education volunteers, ministers, anybody who's interested in gathering and sharing information about religious education ideas, curriculum, program practices.
I need a book for Sunday. So REACH is a great resource.
There's also a Listserve for LREDA. And that's membership-driven. So if you are a member of the Liberal Religious Educators Association, you can join that listserve.
And there are also other lists depending on what kind of programming you may be offering. So this slide's a little small, but hopefully you can see. This is why we can't have too many video screens up, because the slides get smaller and smaller as there are more photos.
So there's lots of folks that are doing this work around the country in different areas, different organizational places. Of course, there are district staff, one of those 19 geographical districts. There are regional staff. We have five regions. And generally speaking, we have folks who have a portfolio or who have some specific expertise or experience with religious education and faith development. And so that person may be a resource to you. That person may also be helping to plan trainings or working with a local LREDA chapter to schedule different kinds of learning events.
There's also UUA staff, denominational staff. Pat and Susan are part of the denominational staff. And they do amazing work with curriculum and some other resource development stuff. And Pat will share a little bit shortly on that.
There also can be cluster meetings and different ways of connecting. We have a General Assembly every year. Of course, it's in Portland. Most of us can only get there kind of if it's relatively close because there's a little bit of a cost associated with it. But if you have an opportunity to get to General Assembly or to get to your district assembly, I highly recommend it.
They're great opportunities for networking. And not just with other religious educators, but with ministers and with lay leaders and folks who are really passionate and committed to the work of growing Unitarian Universalism.
There is also a training program for religious educators. We call it the Renaissance Program. And Pat Kahn is a big part of the Renaissance Program. And you will find these trainings sprinkled around the country. They are not available on a particular scheme or schedule. Individual districts or regions will decide what trainings they want to offer. But they're wonderful foundational trainings. And again, they're amazing professional networking opportunities.
So many times when you go to this, you come away and you have this great binder and this great information. But the most important thing about it was the friends that you made and the connections that you made.
And I know that for myself being in this work 18 years, I can still remember I still have friendships with people I met at my very first Renaissance Module. So they're really wonderful bonding experiences as well as being really filled with great information.
I'm in the Central East Regional group, and we have a great on-demand learning center. We have been doing webinars for-- I've been doing webinars for a long time, six or more years. And we video record many of these. And they are open. They are available. Anywhere in the country, you can go in, whatever time zone you're in. You can go in. We have hour and 90-minute webinars that are broken up into 15-minute pieces so that you don't have to watch the whole thing.
There are webinars on an effective RE committee. Webinars on working with volunteers. Webinars on safety, basic safety in the congregation. So lots of good topics if you're looking to just sort of get yourself sort of grounded in a particular topic. There may be one that is useful to you. So that's CERG, cerguua.org. And that is open to anyone.
And of course, back to building relationship. Volunteers are just a really important part of your success. And there's an on-demand webinar that I recommend that you take a look at if you have time. We talk about recruitment. We talk about some of the important strategies for caring for-- for recruiting, for nurturing, and supporting and keeping volunteers. And I recommend that you take a look at that.
Another really important relationship, of course, is the parents. They are the primary religious educators of their children. And you need to think of yourself as a partner with them. And I hope that some of you-- last month, the Karen Bellavance-Grace talked about Full Faith Week. And if you didn't see that one, check that one out in the archive. Because that's really what we are about.
We focus a lot on Sunday. It's a very important gathering time for the community. But this work of growing young Unitarian Universalists is a seven day a week proposition. And so we need to be educating parents as much as we're educating our children. And so we need to develop relationship with parents.
And we also need to be supportive of parents whose children maybe have some learning differences or some special needs. We need to be in conversation with them.
There's an on-demand webinar about RE with special needs on the CERG on-demand center. But it's just we need to be in conversation. And sometimes we can't meet all of the needs, but it's wonderful when we can.
Another important thing to keep in mind is the need for confidentiality. Again, this is pastoral care. Sometimes we have this incidental pastoral care. Somebody just comes and starts talking to you and tells you all about grandma's who has just passed away. And these are all moments for pastoral care. But they are also moments where we have to be clear about our responsibility about confidentiality. So when we're talking with parents about what's going on in their families in the home or with their children, always have to keep in mind that confidentiality piece.
Another piece of confidentiality is online, things like online photos. Safety of our children. So you want to have some-- do some thinking about that. Is there a policy in my congregation? If I'm taking pictures of kids, can I put it up on the website?
And we actually have a form that we recommend that you use if you are doing that. But that's part of protecting our families and honoring that confidentiality.
So important part of your success can also be engaging in healthy communication. And I'm not going to spend a lot of time on this, but just know that staying connected with folks in difficult conversations is a learned skill. And it is something that can be a really important part of the work that you do as a religious educator. Because a lot of times people are bringing concerns or they're coming to the Sunday meeting with issues or brokenness or things happening in their life. And so we always have to be aware of how we're behaving and the boundaries that we're keeping when we're in conversation with people.
So as much as you can learn about healthy communication practices-- and this actually comes up again in an on-demand webinar, the one on effective RE committee. So if you're interested in learning more about that, that's another possible place for you to learn more.
Communication strategies. It's really important not only to communicate in healthy ways, but to communicate effectively. And one of the things that we recommend is figure out what the primary communication mode is in your congregation, or the primary communication mode that you're comfortable with.
It may be that you want to send out an email newsletter, but you're also tweeting or you also have a Facebook. So if email is your primary mode, then tweet, hey, the email newsletter just came out. Or post on Facebook, here's a link to the email newsletter. Keep pointing people back to the place where you want to put the most information.
Communication in congregations is always hard. It's so funny when you work with congregations and you ask them what the biggest challenge is, communication comes up every time. So you'll have experience with that.
Another great way of communicating is a Facebook page. Some folks are doing that. Some folks are tweeting. And if you're not familiar with this, I bet you we've got an on-demand webinar for this very thing.
I love this, a DRE in Toledo. She created a wonderful Pinterest board. And it's a great way of just sharing links and sharing craft ideas. And it kind of, I think, is connected with the Full Faith Week. Finding that bulletin board where you can put up ideas for families to just continue to connect with Unitarian Universalism every day. So a Pinterest board is another fun thing to do. But we're going to talk about some other useful resources. Pat Kahn.
Great. And I am going to go through these fairly quickly because we have a lot of people on the call. And we know that there will probably also be a lot of questions, which we'll have time for.
And just a reminder. I put in the chat box earlier that we will, in fact, post these slides. And I'm trying to figure out why all of a sudden-- there we go. I'm not able to advance the slides now, pat.
Oh, wait a minute. Yes, I am.
PATRICIA INFANTE: I think I did that.
PAT KAHN: OK, there we go. So at any rate, you will get the PowerPoint slides. So a lot of the URLs, et cetera, that are on here, don't worry. You'll get those.
Probably the biggest resource for curriculum, if you're not already familiar with it, is the collection of curricula for children, youth, adults, and multi-generational groups called Tapestry of Faith. And we're going to see a couple of slides in a second, but that is the comprehensive free online curricula that you can then download and adjust for your congregation. Lots of different ways to use it.
There are also curricula available still from the UUA Bookstore or independent curriculum developers. UUCARDS, CARDS stands for Curriculum and Resource Developers.
There is a Renaissance Module specifically on curriculum planning. And not all but many districts or regions have libraries in terms of you can borrow things from.
This is just the screen print of what's available in terms of Tapestry of Faith. There are programs. There are resources. You can search Tapestry of Faith if you're looking to find a story or an activity. And actually, we're also in the process of tagging all of the Tapestry of Faith programs with themes so that those of you who may do theme-based ministry will be able to look up for resources by theme.
There are activities, stey-by-step instructions. And there's a story in practically every single program, whether it's children, youth, or adults. And that are easily, again, searchable. And you can use them for time for all ages or all different kinds of things.
And this is one of the key pieces, the taking it home, for every program. You can email this to parents. You can print it out. Parents can access it themselves. You could just give them a link. But it covers what went on in that particular session that day so that it's also customizable. You can customize it for your own congregation.
Handouts, stories, all of those things are all available right there at your fingertips online. And there are additional leader resources. And there's also a piece for the volunteers called Spiritual Preparation at the start each lesson that is helpful in reminding volunteers that some of their spiritual growth comes from teaching. It's just another great resource.
These are just a couple of worship resources. These are available through the UUA Bookstore. And I keep losing my little thing here. There we go.
Another online resource is WorshipWeb. And that, again, you can search this for chalice lightings, for benedictions. There are some stories in here as well. There are opening words. In some cases, there are complete services or sermons, lots of different things. And there's different ways to search it. You can either do a keyword search and ultimately a theme search, or there is a whole calendar listing. So you can look through the year.
And for example, if you start off the year with a water communion, there's a whole section on water communion. And we always encourage people to submit to WorshipWeb. So if you've done something that is particularly wonderful, by all means please do submit it
And Pat mentioned the Church of the Larger Fellowship before. Quest for Meaning is the new website for Church of the Larger Fellowship. So there are great RE resources on there and resources for families. But the other piece is that they do several different online worship services.
So for religious educators, and especially if you don't have another congregation close by that you could attend, you can attend online. And they are wonderful, wonderful worship services.
UU World Family Pages. Hopefully you know about the UU World Magazine, which gets sent to-- the print magazine gets sent to anyone who is a member of a congregation.
And just recently, they started a digital edition. So you can now sign up for it to read it on your iPad, or Kindle, or whatever. And in each one, four times a year, is the Family Pages.
And if you look at the UU world as just coming out now, the Family Pages are all about rocks. And it's wonderful. So I highly recommend that as a resource.
And the Faith Development Office has a blog called "Call and Response." And we post usually about three times a month during September through, let's say, May. And then twice a month during the summer.
This was a recent posting, a guest posting by Karen Bellavance-Grace, talking about Full Week Faith, which Pat had mentioned a couple of times. And the most recent one that was just up is all about theme-based ministry. So definitely suggest that you go take a look at that.
And there is also a UU parenting blog that Michelle Richards does. She's the author of several curricula and is also the author of the book Tending the Flame about being a UU parent, as well as Come into the Circle--
SUSAN LAWRENCE: Pat, we cannot hear you. Can't hear you. Can you hear us? This is a problem.
PATRICIA INFANTE: OK. Well, Pat was just about done, so I can pick up. Yeah, I'll just pick up. There's only two more slides left in this section. So there are a number of different Facebook groups. I think LREDA has a Facebook group as well. This is Liberal Educators. So you can just search in the search box on Facebook for a variety of different kinds of UU associated groups. Or you can ask in the Liberal Educators Group what other groups folks are in.
And finally, there's a wonderful media collaborative group on Facebook. And what's fun about this is these are visual images. You can use them for your newsletter. You can use them. You can make posters out of them. Many of them have Unitarian Universalist quotes. So quotes from either historic figures or contemporary ministers. And all kinds of contemporary UUs paired with some really beautiful and compelling images that you can use. So you can see there are a lot of resources out there.
Sometimes, it's almost too much. But it's wonderful to know that these resources are available to you. And I hope you will use them. So we're going to close now.
Creating kind of a plan. Think really intentionally about the early days of your work as religious educator in the congregation. Whether you're an experienced religious educator in a new settlement or whether you're a brand new religious educator just starting out in the field. It's great to just be intentional about saying, what am I going to do with this first few months of my time in this congregation?
One of the things I strongly recommend is listening. Listening and observing and just figuring out, who's got some power and who's got some history? And figuring out what people's strengths and gifts are. Who your allies are and just how things work around here. Figuring out how the organization operates can be a really important piece for you.
Building relationship is important. And connecting collegially is really a key strategy, getting connected with colleagues around. And also, figuring out where your expectations line up with what the expectations of the folks that you're working with.
So when we start, we start with a job description. And sometimes, the job description is kind of an ideal. And then we begin to do the work and there's a reality. And we try to bring those two into alignment as much as possible. So I think we're moving on to questions and answers.
Questions and answers. Susan, are you still with us?
SUSAN LAWRENCE: I am. Why don't I-- I'll be the voice and Pat will be the brain and the lovely picture.
PATRICIA INFANTE: Yes.
SUSAN LAWRENCE: Pat could answer us actually by typing. She's an incredibly fast typist. And that's not going to be a problem. So I'm looking back to see if we missed a question earlier on. And I did notice that someone wanted us to back up a few slides because the audio was kicking out. And that is Kate. Kate, if you can type a-- well, you know what?
It's so inelegant, but-- OK, never mind. Let's answer Austin's question. It's much classier to answer Austin's question, which is, "Have you used beeswax as a fidget item for kids? Or have you found something else that works well?
PATRICIA INFANTE: Beeswax? Wow, we love fidget items. And if you just got-- if you're on the Liberal Educators List, one of our religious educators in Ashville, Joy Berry, just posted a great thing about these soul work little sewing things that she does. And that's a great thing. It's just great to have something for kids and adults to have in their hand during the worship experience. It helps for some folks who are kinesthetic learners. It really helps them to focus and to be able to listen in a different way.
Beeswax. There are the sticks. I haven't used blobs of beeswax, but I've seen-- is it Wikki Stix? Or there are some things. I don't know if anybody else is using them. But chenille stems, the Wikki Stix, soul work.
SUSAN LAWRENCE: Things that are quiet.
PATRICIA INFANTE: Things that are quiet and occupy the hands.
SUSAN LAWRENCE: I have a question from Deb, which is only to me. So I'm going to repeat it. And it has to do with the thinking around whether fees may be charged for families enrolling children in youth and RE. And what's the thinking about parents nowadays, about requiring parents to participate in RE teaching as part of their arrangement for enrollment?
PATRICIA INFANTE: So this is a challenging one. And this is one that really depends a lot on understanding the culture in your congregation. I think that many of the longtime professional religious educators I know would lean towards it being part of the foundational ministry of the congregation. What we do is we provide worship experience for children and adults. And we provide learning opportunities for children and adults. And if adults aren't paying, then the children aren't going to pay. But every congregation has their own history and their own understanding of that value. There's a value there. So it's hard to give a general answer to that.
I'd say many congregations will move towards maybe a supply fee because there are often supplies for the crafts and things like that. Some will move towards a cooperative program where there are expectations for folks to volunteer. But that's something that-- again, this is a place to listen and learn in your early days. Because if you have a program that is based on the co-op model, one of the things you may observe is, oh my god, why is that person in a classroom? That person should not be teaching children of this age. And so having sort of general rules about everybody having to do something, to do their part in a certain way, may not be in the best interest of the children. So that's a place to listen and learn.
SUSAN LAWRENCE: Deb, I don't know if your question has been answered about requiring parents to teach or mentor as being a condition of enrollment. Is that ever done?
PATRICIA INFANTE: Yeah, same thing as like a co-op, cooperative program.
SUSAN LAWRENCE: Yeah, OK. Thank you. Up higher here we see that Jen was asking about workshop rotation model. And what's the experience like? What are the challenges?
PATRICIA INFANTE: Wow. Workshop rotation has been around for some time. And just about everybody I know that has done it really has a lot of success with it. There's a lot of preparation required. And depending on how you implement it, there can be-- it can be a little bit more administrative management because you may have more volunteers. You're having a variety of different volunteers rather than one teaching team for a longer period of time. But it holds the interest of kids. And it's connected in some ways to Spirit Play, which many of our congregations are using Spirit Play for the younger children.
And if you don't know about Spirit Play, Pat is going to post info about workshop rotation. And there is also some information I think on the Spirit Play website if you don't know about that. But that's a Montessori story-based curriculum for the younger ages.
SUSAN LAWRENCE: Pat, let me direct you to a question from Rowan, which is about confidentiality in the context of a staff team.
PATRICIA INFANTE: OK. Let's see if I can find that question.
SUSAN LAWRENCE: Oh, I'm sorry. I thought you had read it. I apologize. I got it. "When do folks tend to share things with ministers? How does that fit in within the boundaries of confidentiality?"
PATRICIA INFANTE: So this is a place where you want to have a conversation as soon as possible with your minister and create a covenant between you about what kinds of things that you will share. I can't say that there is a blanket answer, but I would say in many situations that I have personally been involved in or that I have had some part in, there is a pretty transparent relationship between the minister and the religious educator. And there's a lot of sharing that happens because there's deep caring on both parts for the pastoral care of the congregation.
And for a religious educator, again, understanding what my boundary is and knowing when something that starts out as a conversation with somebody really moves into something that requires a more practice or a more experienced kind of pastoral care. I need to be in conversation with the minister around where that boundary is. And it's going to be different for all of us because we all bring different experience. So I'd say as much transparency between the staff and the minister as is practicable, possible.
SUSAN LAWRENCE: I notice there's interest in more about the rotation model. And someone has said, can we get a webinar? Which reminds me to ask this group, are there other webinar topics that are of interest to you that we ought to know about?
PATRICIA INFANTE: Which is probably a great cue to move to the next slide. Do we want to move forward to the next month?
SUSAN LAWRENCE: Absolutely. Oh, no. We must stop here because-- Pat, would you take this, please? Trish, I mean.
PATRICIA INFANTE: So obviously, we're just dipping our toe in. This is a big topic. And we hope that you will take advantage of the other resources. But we want to just bless you in this work. Start as you mean to continue. And we wish you a great deal of success in your religious education ministry.
SUSAN LAWRENCE: Pat, are you mute? You can't talk. I'm going to talk.
I'm sorry. OK, I'm going to do it.
This is what we've got coming up. In September, we are introducing our second edition of the OWL program, which is the UUA sexuality education program. And it's a lifespan program. And the book for grades seven through nine has a new edition. So that webinar is for people in positions like yours who are possibly going to bring OWL in, even if you aren't necessarily the person teaching it. As well as people in the congregation who have been trained to facilitate OWL or any lay leaders that you suspect are interested in bringing the program into your congregation.
And October-- I don't know what that's going to be. We have some met some folks by doing other webinars who have been invited to present. And the topic is body/spirit family spiritual practices. And I know it's going to be great. And I don't know what it's going to be like. So please join for that as well.
In November, we are going to do something about military ministry in congregations. We have a new tool kit, which is basically a program for adults to study and practice welcoming of military families. And it opens some authentic dialog, which is something that has maybe not happened enough in our congregations. And that's November.
And from there, I'm not quite sure. But you can get the exact times and increasingly better detailed descriptions on the web link you see below, which is the UUA website, re/teachers/webinars. Which is also where you'll find a recording of this webinar and slides within a few days.
PATRICIA INFANTE: Yay. Cool. I think we're done. Thank you all.
SUSAN LAWRENCE: Great. Thank you all very much. And welcome to the club.
PATRICIA INFANTE: Yes, indeed.