A new Curriculum idea

I've been wrestling with curriculum for a while now. We've got one at my church that is essentially a systematic theology treatise aimed at students "knowing" stuff. I shared with someone recently that I think the curriculum is very good but it's just not the way I think about things. As someone who regularly teaches in the High School group I struggle to figure out ways of making words that end in "ology" interesting to students.

The last several weeks I have been thinking about a new way of teaching that focuses upon three different things. The categories are best summed up as "Knowing", "Being", "Doing". The way I describe these in my head is that "knowing" is simply being aware of information, "being" is when that information becomes part of who you are and "doing" is what happens when who you are beings to impact the world you live in.

I'm not sure yet how to utilize these new ideas but maybe a 3 week teaching rotation would work. What if one week I presented the info, the second week I talked about how that information should transform then and then the last week we did an activity that directly used the info.

Still wrestling through this. Feel free to comment with any ideas. I'll use them.

Comments

[jeremy z]

I love the three series approach. In the BEING section what exactly would you do? Would you do some ancient spiritual exercises? Like lectio divina, listening prayer, be still activity?

I do a four week rotation. The first week I present the theological content followed with a experiential activity. Second week we break up into discussion groups and rehash the content more at a personal level. The third week is the experience week that is directly focused on the theological content. We will do a number things. For example, worship, art, listening prayer, journaling, communion, prayer stations, write God a letter, ect.... But the mood of this night is really mellow. The four week we simply just do something fun. Go to a restaurant and eat together. Go bowling, etc..

If you decide to implement this idea, you will have to let me know how it lands. It sounds great!

[Don]

Lars - I like the idea. The only question it raises in me is how it effects those kids who come 1 out of 2 or 1 out of 3 weeks. I ran into that a lot. If you don't have a ton of those kids, that sounds great. If you do, I'd think of building some kind of redundancy into the system so that you could still get by if you missed the knowing or being when you're there for the doing, or you provide them with ideas for doing if they're going to miss that one.

[jake]

lars. i like your thought process, but i would start out thinking bigger than just a 3 pronged or 3 week approach to each topic.

when i ran student ministries in the bay area, i took my team away for a week & we came up with something pretty similar. it was either know, think, do, or know, feel, do.

we zoomed out beyond a 3 pronged approach & asked ourselves: if a student has been involved in our ministry for 3 years - what are the core things we would expect them to know, feel & do. coming up with these clarified essentials take a lot of brainstorming as you really need to unearth what makes a mature believer know, feel & do the things that glorify God. it's amazing how difficult a process this is.

then we slotted those into a very loose 3 year curriculum. (we chose 3 years so that students could hypothetically experience a rotation with a middle school worldview & another one with a HS worldview). we left a lot of flex time in there because there's always times when you just sense your kids need something else & you need to derail off the grand plan for a while. at the end of each topic or subject matter, we'd refocus on the know, feel, do - so we could remember why we were doing it.

so thats just a different angle on a pretty similar thought process i had a few years back. whether you benefit from these thoughts or not, i love the way you're thinking & would encourage you to keep developing that. i can dig for the material we came up with if it would help you, too. i think we settled on know, feel, do.

later.

jake

ps - we're moving back to the bay area. i'll explain next time we chat.