A Catechist’s checklist

Have I diligently prepared my lesson using the authorised Diocesan CCD curriculum: Walking with Jesus Pathways of Discipleship?

Am I aware of teaching materials and resources available to support my lessons? (eg Powerpoints)

Are my additional resources age-appropriate?

Do I teach with sensitivity, conscious of the learning ability of the children?

Am I aware of the diverse range of students in my class?

Do I value the dignity of each child?

Do I understand the developmental stages of children?

Do I respect the students’ personal space?

Do I use the students’ names when speaking to them?

As you bring this message of joy to the children, always remember to “practice what you preach”. Proclamation of the Gospel loses its impact if we are not a witness to what we are preaching. When you greet the children – smile! Model the joy that faith can bring into their lives through your example in the classroom. Even when disciplining children, do so in a spirit of Christian love.

Term 2 is a good time to check that we are on task in our ministry and to revisit the reason we became a catechist in the first place. The Catechist checklist on this page might help.

Wishing you every blessing in term 2!

Alison Newell

Always remember to

Check that your ongoing training is up to date each year

Sign the attendance book for visiting SRE teachers when you arrive at the school.

Wear your authorisation card in the lanyard provided which displays your name

Greet the classroom teacher and use their name.

Discover and follow the school rules concerning discipline, toilets, use of equipment and technology and be familiar with the school procedures

Never leave the class unattended

Leave the classroom tidy

Keep a record of the number of students in the class – this will assist your Parish Coordinator when we do our annual census of student numbers yourstudents!

Notify the appropriate person if unable to attend due to illness or an emergency.

I’m still coming down from my Easter high as I write this. I’m sure you are too. I love the Triduum Masses – even joined the Easter combined choir this year. Special times with family and memories created.

After the big Easter lunch preparation, it’s also a time for a break, a time to take a breath, which you, Catechists really deserve. Thank you for being the face of God to our children.

First term was a busy term, negotiating getting back into schools and fitting in teaching the Easter curriculum into a short term (PS we can still teach Easter Curriculum until Pentecost, if you’ve not finished the Unit). This past term is a huge term for training – Welcome to all our newly signed up Catechists and we trust you feel ready to be in classrooms after attending the CCDMI and are enjoying meeting fellow Catechists in your Parish. Remember, there is always support for you if you have a difficult class. Call on your Co-ordinator for intervention or mentoring, ask the class teacher for advice or call on your Regional Co-ordinator to come work through strategies in the classroom with you.

Although Zoom training is convenient and time efficient, especially for working people, it has also been a pleasure presenting the Ongoing Classroom Management face to face. We love to meet with you on Zoom and in the flesh, but training becomes even more relatable and engaging when face to face especially when you’re doing ongoing training that is more hands-on and practical. Please remember that when registering for the Ongoing Teaching the Authorised Curriculum in July.

Enjoy teaching in Term 2!

As Catechists, we all have our own story of how we come to this ministry and why we stay year after year. For me, I was a young mum, my youngest child was finally in preschool and I finally had time to turn outside the home and do something meaningful with my time. My older children had benefited from SRE and I thought, "Hey, I could do that."

After a couple of years and through the busyness of life, I thought about giving up. I was involved in the music ministry at my church and I found myself volunteering heavily at my children's school. Sometimes the thought of facing my classes, with their cheekiness and distractedness felt like an uphill battle that I didn't want to face any more.

If Jesus has taught us anything by his death and resurrection, it's that being his follower isn't meant to be easy. We are all called to "go and make disciples", just as the early Christians were, filled with the Holy Spirit.

You'll be pleased to know that I stayed and I'm still here! As the years roll on, being a Catechist becomes easier as you grow more comfortable in your skin, as you teach the same lessons again and again. Your confidence grows and you begin to try new ways to make your lessons engaging and meaningful.

I am reminded of this when I have the privilege of presenting ongoing training to experienced Catechists. There is always a fresh approach or something new to apply to teaching SRE.

May you be filled with the Holy Spirit this term and bring a new vigour to your classes!

Here at CCD we are working together achieving greater things. As one of the admin team, I love to look at statistics.

In Term 1, there were 41 new catechists to whom we issued a yellow provisional card when they completed the initial training of Safeguarding. There were 30 catechists who received their green full authorisation card upon completion of the CCD Ministry Induction Training. As they say, once a catechist, always a catechist--- there were 7 Catechists who decided to return to the ministry and 2 have been re-authorised in another parish. This authorisation process continues to inspire us to do our very best work and even though the admin seems never ending at times, we keep persevering to get more new and returning Catechists into classrooms. We are also very lucky to have issued 48 Clergy Cards to priests around the diocese and hopefully this means that there will be many visits by them to our SRE lessons this year.

We are also seeing a marked increase in attendees at training sessions across the board, indicating to me that there is a culture change for the better amongst catechists who recognise the importance of ongoing training The mandatory training report given to each parish coordinator at the beginning of the year was useful in determining who needs updating.

We anticipate receiving more Service Award Applications as Term 2 recommences. Please complete the application form and return it to CCD before the deadline - Friday 2 June. We would be delighted to process your application to honour that wonderful work you do.

What does it mean to be Easter People? We know that His rising is not a ‘once and for all’ event or is it? As Catholic Christians we believe that God raised Jesus from the tomb three days after his death on the cross. We know this because the women and the apostles witnessed not only the death, but the tomb and also the risen Lord. The Gospels beautifully convey their accounts of these miraculous events. Our task as catechists is to tell these stories and to bear witness to them.

Throughout the Walking with Jesus program there are units and lessons which present the central belief of a resurrected Jesus to students in age appropriate ways. This belief is the foundation of our faith and it imbues believers with a tremendous sense of hope. We are privileged to share this message with students in our Catholic SRE classes.

The liturgical season of Easter extends well into Term 2, so there will be plenty of time to present the resurrection and post resurrection gospel stories to our students. Lessons from the Emmaus journey to the BBQ breakfast by the sea right up to Pentecost give us opportunities to witness to our faith. My personal favourite is the story of Thomas in the Gospel according to John. Here is a person who refuses to believe without proof. Who after being challenged by the risen Jesus declares – My Lord and my God. This story speaks to our modern students who are well schooled in scientific method and heavily influenced by cynicism and scepticism.

Whatever lessons you are presenting and whenever you are presenting them be sure to do so with the joy and hope of Easter People who appreciate what the Resurrection means for everyone.

There are some new recruits joining this ministry here on the coast but at least 2 parishes are still in dire need for more recruits.

The high school students from St Joseph’s and St Edward's have been trained and are now assisting the teachers at East Gosford PS. Unfortunately, there has been no response from the Wyong Parish schools that were approached last year, as to their allowing St Peter’s secondary students to assist the catechists there. This is very disappointing.

Secondary SRE is continuing across the Central Coast, with Gosford parish beginning classes in 2 high schools after an absence of some years due to lack of catechists. Wyoming Secondary team is having trouble getting into 2 of the 3 high schools. Terrigal and Kincumber are working steadily with the students in their high schools. Unfortunately, the high school student numbers are low. Some catechists have had trouble with music on the PowerPoints but that was due to them playing then on the website before downloading the PowerPoint. They must be downloaded and saved on usb for the music and videos to work properly. It is great to see that catechists are beginning to request resources from the Resource Centre at The Entrance once more.

I have been able to catch up with some catechist teams at the parish meetings this term and would love to be able to attend more parish meetings in the coming terms. Please, let me know the dates of your catechist meetings.

The on-going training in Classroom Management in Flexible Learning Spaces at Terrigal was well attended and there was much lively discussion on this topic. It is great to be able to see the catechists face to face again in the training situation.

Easter Blessings!

Welcome back to Term 2! Wow, didn’t term 1 just whizz past?! The old saying “time flies when you’re having fun” really rings true for me at the moment. I’m really enjoying learning my role here at the CCD, every day is different and presents new challenges, which I love!

I spent much of term 1 getting to know many of our wonderful catechists who called or emailed me to ask a question or register for training. And didn’t we do a lot of training! Hats off to Alison, Sue-Anne, Kristy, John and Michael, who between them have presented over 30 training sessions already this year. And there’s more to come with our Level 1, Part B ‘Tools for the Classroom’ course starting early May, as well as ongoing ‘Authorised Curriculum’ training for experienced catechists being held in the next school holidays.

I’ve also helped some of our Parish Coordinators ‘top-up’ their orders of Walking With Jesus student workbooks and teachers manuals for the new school year. This is a great sign that student numbers are increasing and more teachers manuals mean we have more catechists to share their faith with the children of our parishes – so fantastic!

Lastly, we’ve added more Walking With Jesus Powerpoints to the CCD Website to complement your lessons in Term 2. Don’t forget to download the Powerpoint file before using it - don’t play it directly from the website as you might miss some of the functionality, such as the beautiful music! Instructions for how to download can be found on the website.

Wishing you all a very healthy and happy Term 2.

Let us take some time to consider the Easter events I have heard some of the catechists commenting on how difficult it has been to teach everything about Easter that is in our workbooks this year There just haven’t been enough lessons available

Well the celebration of Jesus’s resurrection on that first Easter Sunday is only the halfway mark of our Easter celebrations In our liturgy, we speak of the Weeks of Easter Easter is an eight-week celebration with The Ascension and Pentecost, being weeks 7 and 8 of Easter

So let us go back to the Scriptures and see what is happening to make Easter a fifty-day celebration

We are very familiar with the events of Jesus’ Passion, Death and His Resurrection Unfortunately, for some of us, Easter finishes on Easter Monday or when the Easter eggs have all been eaten But Jesus had some unfinished business to take care of before he returned to His Father For three years, he had been teaching his disciples and those who would listen to Him, about the love of His and our Father and He showed this love through the miracles He performed in the Father’s name.

He unrolled the scroll and found the passage where it was written:

“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring glad tidings to the poor He has sent me to proclaim liberty to captives, and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, and to proclaim a year acceptable to the Lord.”

Luke 4: 17 - 19

After Jesus rose from the dead, there were instances where Jesus appeared to the disciples and others He had to confirm His friends’ belief in him, convince them that He was well and truly alive and that they would not be left alone to fend for themselves

How did Jesus do this?

Put yourself in the place of Cephas and the other disciple as they slowly walked away from Jerusalem after the death and burial of Jesus (Luke 24:13 – 35) They were disappointed and saddened that Jesus was not the messiah they were expecting They were heading home to resume the way they lived before a new and vibrant hope had been planted in their hearts by the words and actions of Jesus.

As the two were walking along the road, they met a stranger and told Him all that had happened The stranger then explained those events in the light of the Old Testament Scriptures They still did not recognise Him It wasn’t until they sat down at table with the stranger and He gave thanks and broke the bread and gave it to them, that they realised the stranger was their dear friend Jesus