Home-based faith formation is based on the church teaching that "parents are, in fact, the first and foremost educators of their children..." (Vatican II: Declaration on Christian Education). Or, as the Catechism of the Catholic Church puts it, "Family catechesis precedes, accompanies, and enriches other forms of instruction in the faith." Sounds impressive. But beyond the fru-fru language, common sense and our own childhood memories inform us that our parents and our home life - what we heard, how we were disciplined, and how we lived day to day - had much more to do with who we became than any CCD class we ever took. How exactly to incorporate this truth into programming can take many forms. Here's how we're doing it at our parish:
Grades 1-4 do the G.I.F.T. program (the one I coordinate). They get a book and a schedule of lessons to complete at home. They also come with parents once each month to a "class" taught by me. We do activities, discussions, and arts and crafts. We have fun, but this post is about what they're doing at home, so we'll get to that other stuff later.
Grades 5-8 do a more "traditional" program of classrooms led by volunteer catechists. This caters to their more social nature at this age. But they don't meet every week. This is mostly due to space issues: we can't have them all here at once! But the coordinator of those programs has taken those weeks off from coming to the church to continue cultivating faith at home (translation: she gives homework).
But do they actually DO the homework?
Actually, many of them do. The keys to this, I believe, are moderation, bribery, and consistency.
Moderation: In my first year as the GIFT coordinator, I felt as though it was my job to get those kids through that whole book in the 7-8 months that I had with them. My homework schedule was long, complicated, and involved at least 2 chapters per week. I had my own second grade daughter in the program at the time, and even we had given it up by month three. I learned quickly that if you give families too much to do, they won't do any of it at all. I now try to keep it down to 1 chapter per week. If they're preparing for Sacraments as well (also family-based), we incorporate much of the homework for that prep into the GIFT homework plan rather than piling it on here and there.
Bribery: Yes, I cop to it and I am not ashamed. It works. Our kids use materials from RCL's Faith First program. One nice feature of this program is the website, where kids can play games and access chapter reviews. Our reward system (the nicer word for bribery) is based on those online reviews. As GIFT kids do the chapters in their books, they follow up with the online review. For every review completed, they get a raffle ticket at the next at-church session. I have some small prize to offer, usually around $5 in value, and I pull a name at the end of the session. We also have a "Treat Tray" filled with little goodies around 10 cents in value; any child who completes all of their homework in a given month gets to choose 1 treat. The parents are in charge of keeping their kids honest. The 5-8 grade system is similar, except the parents aren't there. Those students are required to use the built-in feature from the website to email their review results to the coordinator, who then makes sure they get their tickets. They also sometimes have written work to show for tickets. Rather than having a prize at each class session, they have 2 big "Game Show" nights. Kids can add tickets to the mix by answering game-show style questions about what they've been learning, and then there is a drawing for multiple "fabulous prizes." Of course, the kids who have done their homework all along are the ones most likely to answer the questions correctly!
Consistency: This element needs to be covered by the parents. Having a consistent time and/or place to do the homework makes a big difference. Last year I I had one child in each program: my first-grade boy in GIFT and my 5th-grade girl in 5th grade. We declared Wednesdays "God and Pizza" nights. Sometimes the "God" part was actually attending their programs at the church. When their were no programs, we did church homework. And we ate pizza. Every Wednesday. Now that's a plan we all embraced! And we got our homework all done, every month, with no last-minute cramming.
Of course, there will always be families that blow off the homework. These are probably the same families that would blow off a number of classes if we had them every week. But as a certain Fr. Tom once said to me, "We don't count the empty pews. We focus on the ones who show up."
Amen!
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