Religious Education
Julia Cullen, PCL Pastoral Coordinator for Faith Formation/Religious Education
This year has brought beautiful moments of true faith and hope as we navigated through a global pandemic, while doing our best to provide our young parishioners with their religious education. As in all challenges, there is only one way to get to the other side, and that is through. So we carried on with our program and made adjustments as needed to make it work in this new world of virtual learning and adapted to new way of connecting to one another. The Summer Intensive Program ran two weeks in July and two weeks in August and looked very different this year. We engaged the children in a live Google Classroom setting. We had 196 students in grades 1 through 6 participate in this new program from the comfort and safety of their homes. Professional Catholic school teachers successfully taught and guided the children through their faith journey. We surveyed the parents at the end of the program, and to our surprise, both the children and parents got so much out of the program, that we will be continuing this new tradition going forward. We adapted, we adjusted, and in the end, it was a great success that will now add to our RE program in the future. Our online fall program ran as planned through a curriculum titled My Catholic Faith Delivered. 83 students in grades 3 through 6 needed to successfully complete each lesson at their own pace. With all the challenges we were faced with this year, this part of the program was able to run exactly as it had in the past. However, in the midst of revamping the rest of our program, it became clear that this program could use a reboot of sorts as well. In the world of live virtual learning, we know that the students need to be engaged to really learn properly. So at the conclusion of this program, we have decided that going forward, we will change to this new virtual live model that worked so well in our summer intensive session. Sometimes, in difficult moments, it is easier to make changes. Especially when our goal is to catechize these young children so they are ready to go out into the world with faith as their guide. Our fall on campus RE program for grades 1 and 2 was a great success this year. 29 first and second graders came to the church Tuesday afternoons for in person RE classes. All protocols were followed and strictly implemented all year. We took temperatures of the children upon arrival, we were socially distanced and masks were worn. The parents and catechists felt safe and the children were able to get the benefits of in person learning. We celebrated First Communion for our previous year of second graders, as we had to re-schedule our April and May 2020 dates. We had 62 children receive their First Holy Communion. We were sure to have two rehearsals to ensure everyone knew what to do and how to make this a wonderful experience for them and their families. We did not have any First Communions this spring, as it was decided to stick with the October schedule like last year. So this year’s second graders, will make their sacrament of First Communion in October of 2021. In December 2020, we had 61 second graders attend their very first Sacrament of Penance and Reconciliation. We were blessed with 10 priests to administer the Sacrament. Adhering to all protocols, even
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