Author: JenniferFitz

More about our ADVENTure Day

This is for Dorian, who asked very nicely in the combox.

Here’s the story on ADVENTure day:  Two years ago, our then-new DRE went with a new VBS program. (Pre-packaged.)  Instead of dividing the kids into grade-level classrooms, the kids were grouped into mixed-age crews that traveled from station to station through the morning. Crafts, snacks, games, music, Bible story room (that was me), all that.   It worked very well.   We volunteers didn’t have to be jacks of all trades (an actual music teacher teaching music!), and there was more intensity and liveliness to each room.

So she finished VBS #1 resolved to do more of the same during the year.

There was a living rosary in October (on the playground, visited by a pack of stray dogs, oops), but the real big invention was ADVENTure.  Instead of running K-5 classes on Wednesday evenings in December, we would host one school-day-long VBS-type Advent program on the first Saturday of Advent.  Parents could have free babysitting from 9-3, and catechists would have off the rest of the month. [6th grade and up have regular classes all month.]

Here’s what we do, and I’ll describe this year’s program, since she made a few tweaks that helped it run more smoothly.

Students are sorted into mixed-age crews of 15-20 kids.  Not random: 5th graders with K5, 4th with 1st, and 2nd & 3rd.  I noticed this year the 2nd/3rd groups were boys in one crew, girls in the other.  (Oh my. Those boys.  Had to take the markers away.  Fast.)  Youth from grades 6 & up volunteered to lead the crews from class to class.  2-4 youth per team.  They helped with the kids, and also managed potty breaks and other crises.

Catechists paired up and we manned several lesson rooms.  This year it was St. Francis & the Nativity, Our Lady of Guadalupe, St. Nicholas, and Church Year Calendar.  In each room we were issued a story book or similar educational prop, and then a craft to go with.  Our DRE gives us a fairly free hand to adapt the lessons to our teaching strengths.  I ended up subbing out the story book with a different St. Nicholas book from the library, and running more a discussion-style lesson with tidbits from the book, rather than just reading the story.  It worked well.

(Last year in the St. Nick room my co-teacher and I alternated teaching at each class period.  This year, different co-teacher, I taught the first class, and she never let me quit.  She did all the support work with getting supplies queued up and helping manage kids.)

Our DRE conscripted her grown daughter as slave labor to get all the craft supplies organized and do necessary prep-work so that everything was ready to go and in the classrooms Saturday morning.  I brought along my own sets of coloring sheets, wordsearch and crossword puzzles just in case I needed to fill time, and I ended up using them a bunch.  (For those 2nd/3rd grade boys, I fully subbed out the worksheets and sent home the craft, because the craft was.not.happening.  Just not.)  Some of the classes that finished early just sent the kids out to the playground with their crew leaders.  That was good.

Kids were each issued a bag with name-tag and grade affixed in which to collect all their papers and artwork.  [But, this year’s crisis: a bunch of the bags split open.  Note for next year: sturdier bags.]

Class periods lasted aproximately 30 minutes.  Additionally there were two movie rooms running double-period movie viewings.  The Knights of Columbus served lunch (hot dogs or bring your own) in two or three lunch periods, plus our resident snack lady (the one whose kids have the very worst food allergies — she is a master at making sure no one dies of peanut exposure) oversaw a snack period in the afternoon.  Students brought juice boxes (boys) or cookies (girls) to provide for the snack.  There was a nicer snack cart in the catechist supply room for grown-ups.

Having the movie, lunch and snack periods meant that each teaching pair got three break periods through the day.  This is essential.

At 2:45 we brought the kids out to the car line per our usual dismissal process, and parents picked up kids between 2:45 and 3:00.

***

So there you go, Dorian.  Ask away if you have any questions.

And FYI last year our DRE also put together an Eggstravaganza on the morning of Holy Saturday — so fleshing out the long-established egg hunt with on-topic crafts and lessons.  Unfortunately I was out sick (it was either rest up or skip the Easter Vigil — pretty obvious choice), so I can’t report.   This year I firmly resolve not to catch any ailments.  Ha.

PS to Dorian: See how I am making a category name that is a tribute to your Catechist Chat series?  So that everyone will know I am truly your disciple?

’tis the season to be cranky

Simcha says what needs to be said. (Again. It needs be said every year.)

And so I leave off my rant about a certain otherwise excellent homeschooling magazine that devoted a disproportionate number of pages to Advent Crafts.  No.  No.  Just say no.  Advent is for catching up on your math and maybe chopping up a lot of firewood.  My goodness are families really sitting around trying to think up one.more.thing. that must be done in order to properly mark the season??

I think not.

Then again, if you have a lot of nervous energy you need to work off, crocheting O-antiphon doilies and making a special set of Jesse Tree shaped cookies is no doubt better than chain-smoking and raiding the eggnog ahead of schedule.  So I condemn you not, Craft People.

You are crazy, yes.  But then again I’ve got Bethlehem built in my living room (getting crowded now that the seven dwarves have rented out rooms — you begin to see why Joseph should have hit the road sooner), and no doubt some poor reader will feel inadequate for want of their very own pseudo-medieval Playmobil version of Herod’s fortress.  With kangaroos.

I suppose we chalk it up to man’s need for penance?  For lack of a strict orthodox-style fast, we punish ourselves with craft guilt?  One more week of Advent, and then we can all switch gears and complain about people who celebrate Christmas for the wrong number of days.

Happy Holidays.

Usury – Intro

Note: I expect maybe a little series is brewing here.  I thought this was going to be The Post, and instead it’s just an introduction.  Oh dear.  Well, it should be fun, anyway.  Talking about usury is always fun.  We’ll sidetrack into the family jewels and the waging of wars next post, as all good usury discussion must.  Then it’ll be back on topic in post #3.

***

So back to usury. Dante complains, as Mark Shea explains:

Well, for Dante, since fruitfullness can only proceed from Nature or Art (or, as we would say today, “raw natural resources and manufacture of goods and services”), it follows that mere chicanery by which dead gold or silver are made to “breed” by manipulation of interest rates by those who lend at interest is another form of perversion.

The argument is that money-lenders aren’t producing anything.  But somehow they’re getting rich anyway.  Suspicious.  Very suspicious.

Now we can take the classical view of the situation, and argue that bankers are “renting out” their money.  Same as you might rent an apartment, or a car, or a tuxedo.  The banker owns something you need to use for a while.  You get the use of the item, and in exchange you pay a fee, in addition to returning the item when you are done with it.    All very above-board, frankly.

As with housing, the renting of money only comes under fire when there’s a perceived abuse.   We want there to be a certain amount of real estate and money available for rent.  (And tuxedos.  But no one gets too excited about tuxedo-sharks.) What we do not want is for one lucky super rich guy to lord it over us, and the rest of us have to live in his tenements or his mill village and pay ridiculous fees just to cash our paycheck, with us constantly in crisis and owing money we can never pay back.

–> The ‘rental’ model of banking works pretty well until you attempt a moral analysis.  Suddenly you’re stuck: The difference between a modest mortgage and a horrendous title loan is only one of degree, not of kind.  Surely there should be no objection when both parties engage willingly?

If you are happy with loan sharking, it’s not a problem.  But suppose you have this nagging feeling that all is not right?  And suppose you are comfortable with a certain amount borrowing and lending — perhaps there’s even a favorite financial instrument you have rather come to know and love?  Then you’re super-stuck, because you can’t just outlaw all lending at interest, because there goes your baby out with all the rest of the wash.  Trouble trouble.

What I’d propose is that we take apart the types of loans and financial investments that are out there, and see what makes them work.  Is it all just an indistinguishable mass of “money for rent”?  Or is there something qualitatively different going on?  And if different (as I will argue), what kinds of transactions are good, and which kind are that financial chicanery that Dante would have been right to detest?

***

Next up: Disclaimer about kings and their wars.  Then back to answering the question.

 

 

happy the man who takes no interest on a loan

Mark Shea’s got a little mini-column up at the Register about Dante’s connection between sodomy and usury.  I don’t do sodomy blogging.  But usury?  Irresistable.  I’m coming  back later — maybe in the morning if I don’t mis-sleep again — to toss out some thoughts.

Here’s where I’ll be going:  Lending money at interest can be part of a wholesome act of wealth-creation.

(Hint there: what economic activities create wealth?  Lots of them.  Trouble being that these days our heads are so deeply sucked into the money economy that we easily lose track of wealth vs. money.  But then again, in Dante’s day there were a few factors confusing the topic.)

Plus maybe some comments on my first real-live run-in with a Repo Man.  Friendly guy, once he quit banging on my door.  Choice words were said.  Okay, that’s really the whole story.  So probably no additional repo-man tales in the official comments.  But hey, if you want to hear me say bad words, it can be done.  [Note to repo men: You are more likely to get me to open if you don’t look like a hoodlum and act like one too.]  And no, not my vehicle they wanted.

holy catechesis, batman

So the truth is, the number 1 thing I’m going to steal from Christian LeBlanc’s religious-ed snapshots is the line “Stop guessing like monkeys and think!” But there’s good info, too, about you know, the bible and saints and religion and stuff.  Plus how to use the gross-out factor to keep your 6th graders captivated.  Did I say that out loud?  What I meant was, how to use Q&A within a lecture format, to help the kids pay attention and think through the material, and cover lots of details without everyone getting lost.

(I would never, ever, pick a saint to cover in class just because she was depicted with her eyeballs on a platter.  That would only be a coincidence.  Since her feast day came round.  Then, you know, it would be practically an obligation.  If I were teaching a room full of 12-year-old boys.)

PSA: Sunday Obligation

One more, and then goofing off must cease and I go off to work.  (Yes, I have been on vacation this morning.  Thank you Super-In-Laws.)

Recap for the spectators: Catholics are required to attend Mass on Sundays and Holy Days of Obligation. (The HDO’s are a handful of major feast days throughout the year.)  But you are excused from this requirement if you have a serious reason you cannot attend.  It’s a prescription, not a sentence.

So . . . on an internet forum, a catholic mom writes along the lines of:

I think I might have to miss Mass this Sunday because of <<insert serious reason that undoubtedly excuses her, not subject to debate>> but I’m not sure it’s okay, because I missed mass last week, too <<insert more serious reasons>> and plus I hate to miss so much church this time of year. What do I do?

The answer is:  The Precepts of the Church are unchanged by what month it is and what happened last week.

It is of course a good sign if you regret having to miss Mass so much.  It is is likewise good to recognize that Advent is a special time of year in the life of the Church.  But that doesn’t change the Sunday Obligation.  There isn’t a secret calendar showing weeks when you can skip based on a flimsy excuse, and other weeks when you have to show no matter what.  Likewise, there isn’t a cosmic attendance policy giving you so many unexcused absences and then you fail the course.

You either can come, and therefore you  must.  Or you cannot come, and therefore, well, you cannot.

Much simpler than people fear.  The Church is not out to get you.  Well, okay, she is out to get you.  But in a good way: She is out to get your soul into Heaven.  And she knows that under ordinary circumstances, attending Mass on Sundays and Holy Days is what your soul needs.  So go if you possibly can.

a submission submission, submitted to you

Bearing posts a really good response from Willa at Quotidian Moments on the whole Ephesians 5 discussion started by Darwin.  Rather than just write “wow, good post” in B’s combox (which will only get stuck in her spambox anyway — that’s what happens), I send you there directly.  Because wow.  Good post.