16 minute read
'I see God in you'
‘I SEE GOD IN YOU’
by Ann Gundlach • Photos by Steve Heglin
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This is not a phrase normally heard in the average Catholic grade school, but increasingly it is not unusual to hear it at St. Ignatius School in Cincinnati. And it’s the students who are saying it.
Teachers report hearing it in the classroom, in the hallway and even on the playground as children work out little squabbles.
A kindergarten teacher shared that they recently had a student teacher in the classroom who was “blown away” when a little one told her, “You’re a gift from God” after helping with an activity. She left work that day feeling pretty good about what she was learning to do.
Parents are even hearing it at home. Maria Boling says “each night before our first grader goes to bed, he has the habit of telling me that I am a gift before he dozes off to sleep. It melts my heart and even encourages me on tough days.”
There is a palpable sense of respect and love for the other in this school community. St. Ignatius School principal Kevin Vance acknowledges that he “can’t prove this is because of our theology of the body (TOB) program, but I know it definitely is part of the reason.”
THE MEDICINE THE WORLD CRAVES
It’s no exaggeration to say that our culture is sick. The symptoms are clear: the breakdown of the family, the ridicule of virtue, the widespread embrace of relativism, and more. God knew we would need a renewed vision of His plan for humanity, and He provided it through one simple yet profound Polish priest, Karol Wojtyla. His life experiences—from the deaths of his parents and siblings by the time he was 20 years old to living through the soul-crushing experience of communism—convicted him that we were losing sight of the dignity of the human person.
The result was a body of work that has come to be known as the theology of the body, which is a series of Wednesday audiences given in Rome from 1979 to 1984, now published in a book entitled, “Man and Woman He Created Them.” The TOB is based in Scripture and focuses on a view of the human person as made in God’s image and likeness. It looks to both Christ and the Trinity as the models for knowing what that means. Christ took on human form in the Incarnation to show us the Father and to send the Holy Spirit: “Jesus said to him...’If you know me, then you will also know my Father. From now on you do know him and have seen him’” (John 14:6–7) and “I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Counselor, to be with you forever, even the Spirit of truth…” (John 14:16–17).
Because of Christ’s Incarnation, there is a profound emphasis on the importance of our bodies in the TOB. In fact, St. John Paul II’s thesis statement—the pivotal summary—of his entire TOB is:
Very simply put, it is in and through our bodies that we choose to love or not to love, which actually means we choose to show God to the world—or not—by how we live in our bodies.
There are several other main themes in the St. John Paul II’s work, including love, sexual difference, self-gift, sacramentality, vocation, creation, redemption, purity, the marital “language of the body” and marital chastity. Many mistakenly think the TOB is mainly a treatise on sexual morality, but it goes far beyond that through his effort to craft a broad vision of the human person, one takes into account both the material and spiritual dimensions of our bodies and how every person images God by being a gift.
In the nearly 40 years since Pope John Paul II gave us his catechesis on the human person, several ministries have been launched to teach and spread its profound messages for the world. One of them is Ruah Woods Press in Cincinnati.
START OF A MOVEMENT
St. Ignatius School was one of the early adopters of the Ruah Woods’ theology of the body curriculum that is spreading like wildfire. According to Ruah Woods Press, over the last five years their curriculum has reached over 160,000 students in all 50 states and more than 680 K–12 schools. Interestingly, Ruah Woods did not see this coming. “Curriculum development was not part of the original vision of Ruah Woods, but docility to the Holy Spirit was!” says Michael Grasinski, president of Ruah Woods Press. The organization began by hosting adult and teen education programs on TOB and going into schools to give TOB presentations, but soon realized the need to reach people at a younger age.
“In an attitude of prayer and discernment, it became clear that schools needed more tools to speak to the truth of the human person, made in the image and likeness of God,” Grasinski explains. “The TOB curriculum came about as an answer to a great need. In taking on the huge task of writing curricula, Ruah Woods was hoping to change the culture and get ahead of the many problems that today’s children are facing regarding their identity and purpose.”
The program uses a narrative theology approach that is largely story-based. Ruah Woods understood that children make connections through stories, that they place themselves in the story and identify with the characters as they choose between right and wrong. This awakens their own moral imagination and gives them a guiding light that helps them to choose between right and wrong, virtue and vice, all within the context of self-gift.
EARLY ADOPTER
About 10 years ago, St. Ignatius became one of a handful of schools that were invited to pilot the new supplemental religious education material developed by Ruah Woods that grew to become the K–12 Rooted curriculum. Tim Reilly, the principal at the time, admits that when Ruah Woods first asked him to become a pilot school he was pretty unfamiliar with the TOB, but was definitely intrigued by what he heard. He gave his blessing, and the draft curriculum was first introduced in the seventh and eighth grades, then gradually added to more classrooms as each grade was rolled out.
As a result of their experience and the feedback from schools and teachers using the program, Ruah Woods has since updated the Rooted curriculum. Likewise, how the curriculum is presented at St. Ignatius has evolved since it was introduced.
“At one point it was being taught in the library by the youth minister; it was also given to the religion teachers to add in to their regular program,” says Vickie Geckle, who was teaching second grade at St. Ignatius when the TOB program was introduced in the upper grades. “At the time I was pursuing my master’s degree in theology. The focus of my thesis was Christian Anthropology and connecting it with some of Dr. Seuss’s work. The Holy Spirit nudged me to approach Mr. Reilly and ask if I could teach TOB to grades K–5 as a stand-alone class.” Permission was granted, and while the TOB class at St. Ignatius was always one of the “specials” classes—similiar to art, music, physical education and technology—at the start of the 2018 school year there were now two designated TOB teachers: Geckle for grades K–5 and middle school teacher Valerie Bender for grades 6–8.
“I love how much the curriculum has grown and changed since I’ve used it,” Bender says. “And I personally love how we present it through two dedicated teachers, which is quite the commitment for a school to make. I have the kids for three years and so there is consistency. They can easily talk about things we learned in prior years because we all experienced it together.”
Bender also highlights the benefit of developing trust with her students through those three years as they tackle some of the weightier issues in middle school.
“We have some amazing conversations about marriage, being made male and female,” Bender says. “These kids can really go deep into some of these topics, and I think some people would be surprised that middle school kids can be thinking along those lines. Once they become comfortable in the classroom with sharing things, it can be very fruitful to go into why the Church teaches what it does about different things and giving them something of substance to think about.”
Bender and Geckle acknowledge that different schools use the Ruah Woods curriculum in a variety of ways. But they like that it is taught all through the year at St. Ignatius and that it has been elevated to a dedicated class.
“When I first started teaching this, students did not receive a grade. While this subject truly can’t be assessed in a traditional way, I do think it’s important for students to take the class seriously and to require them to put effort into learning the concepts. So while I don’t give tests in our TOB classes, the students do have to answer questions about what they read and participate in class discussions. They have assignments to do at home, and as long as they turn things in and are on the right track, they get full credit. Using the Ruah Woods curriculum has changed the way students approach the class; now, rather than being passive listeners, they are encouraged to actively engage with the teaching.”
A CONTRADICTION TO THE WORLD TODAY
In February of 2018 Cincinnati’s Archbishop Dennis Schnurr promulgated that Ruah Wood’s Rooted curriculum be taught in all archdiocesan schools in grades K–8, becoming the first U.S. bishop to place such importance on introducing TOB to our children.
The curriculum “presents a Catholic view of human dignity, freedom and truth, and the meaning of life that stands as a sign of contradiction to the dominant view in the world today,” he said.
That sign of contradiction is not hard to find today at St. Ignatius School. Teachers Geckle and Bender agree that the children soak the TOB concepts in.
Geckle shares that a big focus in kindergarten is on being created as a gift, that you are a gift and a child of God. “We learn that we are created on purpose with a purpose, that God loves us, that the two great Commandments are that God loves us and we are to love others,” she says. “Last week I shared a story about a character, a little animal, who doesn’t like the way God made him. He thinks he would be much happier if he was a different animal, and he is always looking in the mirror at himself.”
She then asked the kids what they think about themselves when they see their “cute little face in the mirror?”
“This precious little guy looks right at me and says, ‘I think God is in love with me,’” she says. “I was blown away. We were only weeks into this, and he was already grasping how much God loves him.”
Both TOB teachers readily admit that kindergartners are very much like sponges, absorbing whatever you are telling them. But Bender sees the TOB concepts sinking in and sticking over the years.
“I see a lot of kids in the middle school grades who do understand the concepts of gift of self and treating each other with reverence. I see a lot of that,” she says. “I also have kids tell me, ‘I really love this class’ or ‘I just love getting to be here.’ I mean, those aren’t the kind of things kids usually say about sitting and learning about something, but they say it about this.”
Bender is quick to clarify that not every kid enjoys the class and that for some it may be uncomfortable. “It may have to do with maturity for some, and for others their own personal experiences—broken families, painful past encounters, etc. Some kids just don’t get it right away. But my husband always reminds me that I am planting seeds. So I hope that someday one of those kids is going to be in a relationship, or have a difficult situation come up, and they are going to remember that they learned in TOB class that God made them for a purpose, that they are loved simply for their mere existence, that they are good at their very heart.”
WHOLE SCHOOL EFFORT
While St. Ignatius School dedicates two teachers to its TOB curriculum, the entire campus is involved in living out TOB. Some of the other ways they highlight the truths of TOB:
• Good News Call of the Day: All staff are on the lookout for students making a gift of themselves and these kids are often given a shout out on the school’s Facebook page
• Virtue of the Month: Principal Kevin Vance has instituted the Virtues in Practice program, a three-year curriculum created by the Dominican Sisters of St. Cecilia in Nashville. Each month a virtue is focused on, complete with examples from the saints. Students are encouraged live out these virtues through their gifts of self.
• Eucharistic Adoration: Children in grades 2–8 are regularly given time with Jesus in his Eucharistic presence.
A GRADUAL UNFOLDING
Geckle and Bender are impressed by the comprehensive approach used in the Ruah Woods program. Each grade level has certain standards to present that match the children’s intellectual and emotional development, and the concepts are presented through a mix of Scripture, TOB content, discussion and then application through creativity and the arts.
For instance, Geckle delights in taking her students on nature walks outside when learning about creation in Genesis so they themselves can experience the presence of God in creation. “We talk about the senses we have been gifted with, and how we use them to see, know and love God in his true, good and beautiful gifts to us,” she says.
In the middle school grades, Bender usually spends three class periods on each unit with the first day being a Scripture study. “For instance, in eighth grade the first unit is Vocation and Gift so we read from the Gospel of Mark where Jesus calls his apostles and invites them to be fishers of men,” she says. “We use lectio divina, then they write or draw their reflections in their Common Place Book.”
Homework involves some reading selections from the Common Place Book, similar to a personalized workbook, and they have to answer five questions about the reading so that there will be fruitful discussion the next day in class.
“We start those discussions in small groups, which the kids like, and then with the whole class, which is the way the curriculum suggests doing it,” Bender says. “Then in the third class we do an activity or study artwork, music or something else that corresponds to what they learned.”
The format just works, Geckle said. “I think what is so beautiful is that in the younger grades we focus on Genesis and other Scripture. As they get a little older, it moves to connecting Scripture to stories. And then by the time they are in the middle school grades, we can see them connecting it all to themselves. ‘My gosh, I’m a part of this. I’m part of God’s story!’”
The students grow to realize that in today’s modern world they can relate to what is in Genesis and understand that they were created for a purpose.
“This curriculum is giving them a view of the big picture that truly is arming them against the culture,” Geckle says. “They are learning who they are, whose they are, and where they were created to live forever. They are learning to spot the good, the true and the beautiful in the world and to use that as their guide for choosing how to live. It’s really incredible to see it actually happening in them.”
Fellow teachers at St. Ignatius agree, including Innovation & Design teacher Megan Mears who herself was introduced to TOB by overhearing many of the early TOB lessons due to the teachers using a shared space.
“I fully believe this experience was the start of a deepening of my own spiritual life,” says Mears. “As I look back on my own early elementary school experience, I regret that the seeds of a loving, personal relationship with God were not sown, at least in such a way that TOB allows. I’m grateful for the gifts my teachers gave me, namely reverence for the Eucharist, the desire to attend daily Mass, and knowledge of the precepts of the Church. But had I been aware that our Lord knew me and loved me, I could have faced challenges later on with the knowledge that I was not alone.”
Mears now has a daughter of her own at St. Ignatius and is grateful to know she is at a school where her daughter is taught, affirmed and assured that she is known and loved by the Lord.
“St. Ignatius is nurturing a generation of children who will grow in confidence, knowing their true identity as sons and daughters of God. This is the foundation they need to be able to go forth and set the world on fire, approaching the world’s concerns in a rightly-ordered manner,” Mears says. “There is nothing of higher value if they don’t first understand they were created by God to love Him, to be in relationship with him, and to love themselves and others.”
“My daughter’s education is sending her down a path of joy, freedom and love. This is the best gift any parent could desire.”
