baha’i children’s class ideas.

So far during the month of January, our Chinatown class has gone through four lessons on the themes of truthfulness, steadfastness, humility, and preferring others before oneself. We started off at the beginning of January (the 2nd) with a special three-hour class, which we hoped would be attended by a large number of families so that we could start off with a bang—of course, things don’t always go the way we would hope. Class size has fluctuated between three to five children each week, and due to how busy some of the families are, we’ve also run into some punctuality problems. So far, though, we’ve managed to get most of the children to memorize at least one prayer—”O God, Guide Me”—and are working on having them memorize the second one suggested in Book 3—the one that goes “I am earthly, make me heavenly”. We got together as a teaching team and discussed curriculum; the plan is to finish the lessons from Book 3, and then continue by introducing the lessons of the Furutan curriculum, given in the books Baha’i Education for Children.

The three-hour class went remarkably well; I haven’t tried to go that long with a class in a while, and was pleasantly refreshed to see that we had enough material to keep the children engaged, having fun and learning through the whole time. After praying and singing a few of our favourite songs, we plunged straight into memorizing the well-known Baha’i quote, “Truthfulness is the foundation of all human virtues”. We tried explaining it in terms of the foundation of a building; I’m not sure whether the analogy helped them or confused them. I keep wondering about how good their command of English is, since most of them have only lived in Canada for a year, and I seem to end up explaining a lot of the words. Perhaps that’s actually normal for kids of their age (~6-7 years), and I’ve been coddled by only having gifted children to teach in the past. Well, whatever. This makes for great teaching experience.  The second half of the class, after a healthy snack, consisted of putting together a house out of wooden stir-sticks—illustrating how virtues can be a “foundation” for human spiritual life—and a dramatic presentation of the day’s story, which was a retelling of the Boy Who Cried Wolf. It was actually my first time successfully “doing” drama with the kids in a children’s class; we did it by eschewing a script and instead giving the children their roles and lines verbally, with extensive narration by one of the teachers. We had two children playing the mother and father, and one playing the titular character. The children took their cues from the narrator, acting out whatever the story said. The whole thing worked out well, I had my directorial debut, and they got a real kick from acting out the story.

The next two classes dealt with slightly more abstract themes, and I noticed that we had a tougher time getting the message across to all of the kids. During both the lesson on steadfastness and the lesson on humility, they seemed to have trouble understanding the theme, and I had to explain it a few times, leaving me wondering what they had come away with. I found that the description of Book 3 seemed to go a little over their heads, so I tried to explain humility to the children the following way: God is big and powerful, and we, on the other hand, are so small and weak by comparison. Humility is just remembering how big and powerful God is, and how small and weak we are. When we remember that we depend on God for everything, we stop thinking that we’re better than anyone else around us. It took us most of the class time to get to that point of understanding, though. I think we got it by the end, but of course, as suggested in Book 3 itself, we’ll have to repeat it later on to be sure.

Regarding steadfastness, I was pleased to see that nobody came away with nightmares from the story of Ruhu’llah and his father, which I decided to tell in its entirety, though as non-graphically as I could. I’ve heard Baha’is express misgivings about telling a story in which the main character, a young boy dedicated to teaching and spreading God’s message, watches his father die before him only to die himself after refusing to recant his faith—but, besides having to make certain disclaimers, I’ve never heard either parents or children object to the story. On one occasion, a child reacted with anxiety to think that children could be killed in such a way, at which point the parent on hand explained that, while such things may have happened in that place at that time (19th-century Persia), we don’t have to worry about it happening to us here in Canada, which seemed to bring the anxiety level down. I made sure to give the same disclaimer this time, and nobody even made a peep—which, again, made me wonder whether they had understood what I was saying… oh well.

Several members of our teaching team just spent part of the afternoon on the ice at Ottawa’s Dow’s Lake, where many people, both locals and visitors from far and near, spend the winter months skating around on the world’s longest skating rink. no skates for us, though—we were accompanying two families from our Chinatown children’s classes who had never been out on the ice before. boots for all, and at least one young child snoozing comfortably in a stroller. the kids were full of energy, and dashed up and down the frozen surface of the lake at least twice, hooting and hollering, falling over and getting back up again, bumping into each other and flourishing into big hold-on-for-dear-life hugs. despite the chaos of little feet scrambling around on the ice, we managed to reinforce some of the lessons from the children’s class, such as showing kindness by helping our siblings and friends up when they fall. one of the children, a six-year-old girl, was asking lots of questions about all the big buildings she saw around us, which i attempted to answer, explaining the long words in their names. Perhaps thinking of other big complicated words, she asked me, “What about that ‘Thou art’… you know?” “You mean, ‘Thou art the Mighty and the Powerful’?” I replied, citing the prayer we had been memorizing together. “Yeah, that one. How does it go again?” she advanced. I repeated the prayer for her (making sure to be reverent and respectful), and she repeated it afterwards. We talked about what “mighty” and “powerful” meant, and discussed what it means that God is Almighty and All-powerful.  Really nice. I felt like it was a great bonding experience between us and the families; sort of like friends getting to know each other better. We walked them home feeling lots of joy at being together, knowing that we would meet again soon for another class.

if you so happen to be subscribed to doberman pizza, my personal baha’i blog, you probably know that I’ve been busy over the past few months planning a voyage to Vietnam. I just so happen to be blogging from a Hanoi café (wireless internet café) at this very moment. With my usual children’s class safely in the hands of Baha’i friends back in Ottawa, I’ve turned my attention to such exotic projects as developing a national Baha’i website in Vietnamese for the community here. as well, seeing as I have a fair bit of experience holding children’s classes, I’ve been asked to put together a skills training workshop for prospective teachers of children’s classes, to be held in Ho Chi Minh City in July. A number of youth have eagerly signed up for the training, which will happen as part of a week-long intensive training session aimed at mobilizing Vietnamese youth into service, especially to support the growing intensive program of growth (IPG) in Ho Chi Minh City (previously known as Saigon) and two burgeoning IPGs in Da Nang and Hanoi, both to be launched soon.  I imagine that if the training session in HCMC is successful, it’ll be replicated in the other two places.

I’ll probably blog more about what the training workshop will look like, but just to give you a quick idea, I’m planning four days’ worth of sessions, with each day focusing on a particular aspect of children’s classes: arts and crafts, songs and memorization, storytelling, and games/drama. Each day will consist of an introduction / theoretical portion in the morning, followed by practical advice on how to plan for the day’s activity, and, after a lunch break, an afternoon of group work and presentations in which participants practice planning the different activities: telling stories, memorizing songs, and so on.

Has anyone had experience offering these kinds of workshops or training sessions? How about Book 3 refreshers in which lesson planning played a part? I’d love to hear from Baha’is who have tried this out before.

many thanks to those of you who’ve left comments in the past few weeks and months with so many encouraging words. it really makes a difference! just about to head off to bed right now, with a children’s class tomorrow morning, about how "God knows the secrets of our hearts". I’ll have to blog this lesson since I don’t think I’ve added it yet. We were slated to do that one on the first weekend of January, but nobody showed up that week. the next weekend (last weekend), everyone was off to Toronto for the regional conference (which was amazing). So the lesson’s left over for this week.  Later in the day, I’ll be helping run the children’s program for our local reflection meeting. I have an idea of what I’m going to do for that one; since our city’s World Religion Day celebration is the next day, we’ll be doing a related art project from our oneness of religion lesson to decorate the Baha’i Centre. busy day huh? I’ll let you all know how it goes.

today was supposed to be yet another day of class, but all our usual participants had to cancel—other commitments, car trouble, or whatever—so the day just turned into a break for me instead, which is actually quite welcome.  I was scrambling this morning, rushing out of the house after sleeping in a bit—it’s been a long week, what with a public transit strike in Ottawa with a snowstorm on top. I managed to put together the bare minimum for today’s intended lesson on consulting experienced physicians when ill, and then forgot it at home when the taxi came to pick me up. :P oh well. so finally, I guess I became the recipient of God’s mercy—or maybe just the victim of circumstance? anyway, I figured I’d jot down a few notes while I had some time to do so. overall, the situation in the class isn’t all that different from the last time I updated—still without a co-teacher, although one of the parents has been attending the class with her children. I am beginning to wonder whether it will be realistic for the class to continue past the early spring, seeing as I will be taking time off for pioneering/travel teaching beginning in March, as I mentioned earlier. well, that’s just one of the things I have to think about, anyway. and again, like I wrote before, there’s no sense in worrying too much about it—if God wills, others will step up and take my place.  lots of things are starting to happen at the Baha’i Centre—monthly firesides being a prime example, ones that are advertised in the local papers. There’s a nice new sign for the outside, too, for people who are out walking in the street (although there are fewer of them now that the weather’s so cold).

I read up on memorization games over lunch, since that’s one thing we always seem to struggle with; apart from the usual repetition games, I found a few new ideas, including a kid-friendly version of Charades—kids are split up in teams and given a quote to act out that the others have to guess. Dialogue is permitted, but they’re not permitted to use any of the words in the quote.  Seems like it might be difficult for the younger children, but the older children should enjoy a game like that.

OK, post over for now as I catch up on more emails.  Class is still on for next week, and then another, real break (I’ll be away during the Christmas vacation period).

 we just had another class this morning, on cleanliness this time. I still haven’t explained the project that we’ve been working on over the past few days, so I figured I’d spend a little time doing a regular blog post to keep everybody up to date (I have another lesson plan to post as well, but I haven’t got all the references I need for it).  the week before last was Unity in Diversity week, and I thought it might be appropriate if we put together something special to commemorate it, so we’ve been working on masks that we made using papier-mâché on balloons. it’s been a great activity so far; the kids love using paint and decorating their masks in fun ways that show off the diversity of the human family. I’ll post photos of the masks along with the lesson plan (once it’s ready to post!)

I had a conversation with a friend the other night about how I felt like the class hasn’t really been going anywhere, mainly because of my lack of energy. the fact is, right now, I’m pretty much teaching this class solo, and have been since… well, basically the past year.  Maybe that’s been what’s made me feel a little down and discouraged lately; despite Baha’u'llah’s reassurance that we should not get discouraged even if we perform a certain service alone, I feel like it would be so much easier, and the class would be so much better, if I had a committed co-teacher. right now, I’ve got some of the parents sitting through the class with the children, and a few other people (including family members) on standby.  But I don’t really feel comfortable yet asking any of them to step up and take a stronger role in the class.  This is going to be more and more important for this class in the near future, mainly because I’m making plans to do some service overseas in the spring of 2009, which means either someone else steps up to the plate or the class is no more.  I suppose I’m blowing things up a little too much; if God wills it, brave souls will arise to help if the situation becomes too dire. We are, after all, committed to the core activities as a community, and the sudden unavailability of one teacher should be easily remedied by bringing in new people as teaching resources.  We’re fortunate in Ottawa, too; there are lots of people who are trained as teachers.  It doesn’t always feel that way—because there are so many classes to teach that we get spread pretty thinly—but really, we are blessed to have a strong, growing Baha’i community where people are becoming involved more and more.  So basically, I shouldn’t worry, or as Baha’u'llah says, "be not grieved if thou performest it thyself alone."

just a little note to let you all know that the new year of children’s classes has begun here, so I’ll be posting reflections again after an unjustly long hiatus. as always, go nuts with leaving comments! I’d really love to see as many people posting their thoughts as possible, so that we can all learn from each other. one interesting feature this year will be that I’ll be going over the curriculum we used a few years ago—so you’ll see a lot of old lessons popping up with new reflections added to them. hopefully this will help me (and you) better reflect on how children’s classes change as the children get older.  Since most of the lessons are already somewhere on this blog, I’ll be bumping them up in advance so that people can have a chance to look at them and leave comments—for instance, this week’s class was on obedience to parents (I’ve added some wrap-up comments to it already), and next week’s class is on kindness to animals, which you’ll find below. if you’re up to follow the whole curriculum as it happens, you may also want to check the class calendar in the sidebar, which will give you a glimpse of what’s coming for us in the next few weeks—surprise me by looking ahead and leaving comments on upcoming lessons!

the past week, I’ve been involved with a neighbourhood teaching/outreach project that’s endeavouring to offer all of the core activities in tandem to the local community. some of us are looking after junior youth activities, home visits with local residents, and study circles; I’m helping to look after a children’s class. After teaching a couple of classes to an enormous ring of kids the first few days, we split the class into a younger (5-9) and an older (10-11) class, with the younger children studying lessons from Book 3 of the Ruhi curriculum and the older children studying lessons from Book 3A (aka the old Book 5). As reported tonight, we’ve had an average of 8 children in both children’s classes together, and an average of 5 junior youth—and that’s only in one part of the neighbourhood.

these are informal notes from Counsellor Scott’s talk and should not be construed as being 100% accurate by anybody—especially given the way I take notes! take ‘em with a few grains of salt.

so Counsellor Scott graciously took time out of his busy schedule to visit with us in Ottawa tonight, and share with us progress happening in the Baha’i community. He started out by reminding us that “being” and “doing” are inseparable—you cannot change your own self or change your community in a vacuum; both will always change in tandem, and in order for our own hearts to change, we must teach and serve humanity. The image reminded me of the “two movements” we sometimes hear about: the movement of people from one course in the institute process to the next, and the movement of communities (“clusters” maybe—or even neighbourhoods?) from one stage of development to the next. The two must happen simultaneously, no?

He peppered his talk with colourful stories of amazing strides that have come about in places like Toronto, with its “Pebbles to Pearls” program, in which individuals arose to offer junior youth groups (studying books like Breezes of Confirmation, which is Bahá’í-inspired and seeks to build capacity and raise consciousness in 12-year-olds); how a children’s class grew naturally out of the first junior youth group; how a prayer meeting with the parents soon followed; and how more and more of the participants, as their capacity increased, became trained to offer these kinds of service to others. We’re talking about people who met their first Baha’is maybe a few months ago, and are now being trained to help teach Baha’i children’s classes. Uhhhh cool?

He stressed the notion that these “core activities”—be they children’s classes, junior youth groups, study circles, and prayer meetings—are not just fun little activities or “get-togethers” or “events” as we may think of them. They’re civilization-building activities, activities that create communities. He emphasized the fact that every human being has the inalienable right to participate in the process of building civilization. (consider how many people waive that right throughout the world every day.) that being said, he challenged us to involve more and more people in that process by committing to long-term action with receptive communities—committing to offering these “core activities” to people around us who might really need them. With respect to children’s classes, he cited the cases of families throughout the country who’ve been left behind by an educational system that fails to respond to their needs—who’s going to offer spiritual education to a child whose parents work 12 hours a day and barely make enough to make ends meet? Whose teachers can’t use the word “God” because it’s been legislated out of existence?

So much meat in that short span of time—so exciting to feel that we’re able to contribute to the building of a new civilization! I only hope that we can rise to the occasion and be fully ready for our talk. Please feel free to share thoughts as comments to this post—there’s far more to tell, but it’s late and I need sleep.

This post was also blogged at doberman pizza.

well it’s been an intense week for sure. the Ottawa Baha’i community held another reflection meeting last Saturday, launching the eighth cycle of its intensive program of growth.

JARGON WATCH: basically what this means is that a bunch of people got together to reflect on and discuss the growth, vitality and vision of the Baha’i community, to share their best practices and to set goals. An "intensive program of growth", which is composed of many "cycles" marked by these "reflection meetings", is basically a way for Baha’is (and those who throw their lot in with them) to manage the growth of the Baha’i community and channel their efforts to bring the Message of Bahá’u'lláh to those who are out there waiting for it.

it was a blast, as usual; there were lots of young people there, junior youth (12-14 yrs) and youth (15+ yrs) alike. That was awesome and really encouraging. we put someone on a table and lifted them up with only our fingers. apart from that, of course, we had time to knock heads together and make plans for the next few months: how we would help the core activities grow and evolve, etc.

MORE JARGON WATCH: there are four generally recognized "core activities" of Baha’i community life, all of which are, in essence, open to all people no matter what their faith: (1) "devotional meetings", which consist of shared prayer and readings that bring a group closer to God / a Higher Power; (2) "study circles", in which groups use the study of principles found in the Baha’i Writings to understand how they apply in real-world situations of service; (3) "children’s classes", which are classes for the moral and spiritual education of children; (4) "junior youth groups", in which 12- to 14-year-old youth use spiritual principles to understand the world around them and to bridge the gap between childhood and adolescence.

I spent a bit of time sharing the plan for our children’s class… it’s a complicated animal. So far it looks like we will be moving towards splitting the class into two groups: one for older children (say, 9-11) and one for younger children (~5-8). We’ve also discussed holding a devotional meeting open to parents, family and friends – we’re looking for ways that parents and family can naturally become more involved in the children’s spiritual education, and sharing prayer time with them in the format of a devotional meeting may just be the thing. also on the map are home visits with parents and family to follow up on the parents’ meeting we had last October – they haven’t had much regular communication from us and it’d be about time to bring them each up to speed no?