REFLECTIONS AND NOTES SUMMER 2005

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Teacher notes page 2-3

Back to school blues
Gone fishing & finding family
Passing on values

Principal reflections
Prepared by Fr Christopher Gleeson SJ

For the school assembly
For the newsletter
Teaching our children values
Prayer

Chris Gatt of Caroline Chisholm College, Braybrook.

RE and Visual Arts class a winner with students

RE at Caroline Chisholm College encourages students to live out and experience faith through social justice, community service and liturgy. In 2004 teacher Mary Udovicic introduced a new element: the arts. Mary’s pioneer class, RE and Visual Arts, allowed students to try different visual mediums to explore their spirituality. Their final assignment was to paint their own representations of Christ, which encouraged students to reflect on the meaning Jesus held for them.

The resulting images varied from devout to political, and the classroom became a temporary art gallery featuring images of Christ as a healer, revolutionary, teacher and saviour.

Many students felt that even though they didn’t consider themselves ‘religious’ they enjoyed the opportunities presented by the class. Chris Gatt (17) created an uplifting image of Jesus on the cross. ‘I like the traditional pictures of Jesus, I like the story of Good Friday and of Jesus dying for us’.

Like many of the students, Chris enjoyed the opportunity to be in Mary’s class. ‘She makes the class more fun, she brings something more to the class than art.’

Mary hopes that by participating in her class these students found a brief encounter with Jesus, and an opportunity to express their faith through art.

Do you have a story that you think other teachers would like to hear about? Email us at auscaths@jespub.jesuit.org.au

Teacher notes page 2-3

BACK TO SCHOOL BLUES
page 12 of Australian Catholics

This article focuses on those moments of doubt that tend to precede any new enterprise; nervous anticipation, a glimpse of the possibilities that the next momentous step is likely to have, or even a reluctance to leave behind the delights that have gone before. Perhaps, finally, the difficulties of reconciling the different demands of parents and peer group, mercifully suspended during the vacation, but now springing up to daunt them in this time of transition from holidays to school.

What thoughts fill our minds as we approach a new school year? Surely they should include moments of joyful anticipation. So many new things and people to meet: books, classroom, teachers, new friends in some cases, a new school. All the mistakes of the past can be swept away, everything is fresh and new. Yet we have this contradictory feeling that is so human: a fear of the unknown, a reluctance to change.

That comfortable old rut that we wallowed in, often so miserably last year, now starts to look like a shining pathway.

Students might like to read the article Back to school blues and then reflect together on how they feel about the beginning a new school year.

What are the good things about starting a new school year?

What is special about this year for you?

Is there anything you are not looking forward to this year?

What is new about this year?

Are there any valuable and rewarding things you must leave behind as you begin the new year?

Students might write a more personal account of their feelings about the new school year in their journals.

They might then be allowed to go outside in search of a symbol for what the year 2005 might be for them.

After ten minutes they could return to the classroom and share with the class the symbol they have chosen and the reasons for their choice.

GONE FISHING & FINDING FAMILY
pages 21 & 14 of Australian Catholics

These two articles speak of encounters with God in prayer in which God seems to have been the initiator.

The writer of Gone fishing is a devoted but not very successful recreational fisherwoman who is overcome with awe at the magnificence and beauty of her surroundings as she sits waiting for a fish to bite. ‘In these moments I am not so much thinking, as listening. Some of these thoughts disappear without a trace, the ones that got away, but I am sure most come home with me at the end of the day, and in one way or another change the course of the next day.’

In Finding family, we meet the Breheney family (pictured), who are overwhelmed by the tragedy first of the father’s brain tumour and then by the cancer of the kidneys contracted by the daughter, Carlie. The enormity of the blow and its effect on John’s life drive him to prayer in an effort to fathom the meaning of he convulsive changes his illness has imposed upon him and his family. Finally, Anna Breheney, previously untouched by God or religion, is drawn in by a chance remark in a Sunday homily.

These stories bring to mind the following passage from Meister Eckhart in a collection of the Master’s works compiled by Matthew Fox:

God is like a person who clears his throat while hiding and so gives Himself away.
God lies in wait for us with nothing so much as love.
Now love is like a fishhook.
A fisher cannot catch a fish unless the fish first picks up the hook. If the fish picks up the hook, no matter how much the fish may turn and squirm the Fisher is certain of the fish. Love is the same way. Whoever is captured by love takes up this hook in such a fashion that foot and hand, mouth and eyes, heart and all that is in that person must always belong to God. Therefore, Look only for this fishhook, and you will be happily caught. The more you are caught, the more you will be liberated.

Students might like to read both articles Gone fishing and Finding family and then answer the following questions:

What was the last experience you had of absolute silence?

Why do we like to fill up the silent spaces in our lives with noise? (We hate the silent moment in a conversation. We play music in shops, in elevators, when we are studying).

Do you find yourself praying when trouble starts in your life?

Do you pray for success in exams, in a sports match, in a job interview?

Do you ever feel the need to thank God for a good thing that has happened to you?

Do you pray regularly for the poor, the unfortunate, the troubled, the refugees, enemies? Do you pray for your loved ones? Do you pray for enlightenment and understanding?

The class might undertake a project of preparing a small book of prayers for all occasions.

PASSING ON VALUES
page 17 of Australian Catholics

Andrew Hamilton SJ writes in his article Passing on values about the concern of Cambodian parents in refugee camps; about whether their traditional values could be handed on to their children after the devastation caused by Pol Pot to the moral and social fabric of their country. This is a concern shared by parents all over the world. In the article, we are told of the many agencies that contribute to the teaching of values in our society, parents, church, schools, friends etc. He reminds us that the place to find the heart of Christian values is in the stories told in the Gospel and that, although the Ten Commandments offer a useful summary of rules, we should look to the Beatitudes for inspiration in the conduct of our daily lives.

We live in difficult times. Although people of different racial, religious and cultural backgrounds have always lived together, this mixing of peoples has intensified in recent years and already we feel the strains imposed on the peace and order of society. How can we live in peace and harmony? This is a question we ask ourselves as we hear echoes of conflict throughout the world, in Kosovo, Rwanda, Spain and even in our own comparatively stable society, murmurs of racial conflict. Values education has become even more vital than before. As the writer says: ‘Whatever our beliefs, if we are to treat all people as of equal value to ourselves, we need to believe in something beyond ourselves.’

Students should read the article carefully in preparation for the lesson and answer the questions that follow. The lesson could begin with a discussion of the answers written for homework.

In Passing on values the writer mentions Gospel stories as a rich source of values education. We are reminded of The Good Samaritan, The Prodigal Son and The Agony in the Garden.

What values do these stories demonstrate?

Can you think of any other Gospel stories that demonstrate values in action?

The values listed in the article should then be read aloud (decency, sociability courage, reflectiveness, compassion, respect for life and honesty).

Taking each value separately, discuss the following:

What does e.g. ‘decency’ mean?

Find an example of how this value works in everyday life or the media, or literature, or the Gospels, or you can make one up.

One source where the values of our society are shown is in popular TV shows.

What values are presented to us in the makeover shows? (Consider the personal and the property examples of this genre).

Reality TV is another popular genre. Would you say that these are value free?

At this point, you might like to consider other popular forms of entertainment such as pop songs and movies.

In what ways do these shows mirror and shape the values of our society?

In groups of two or three the students might be asked to choose one of the values mentioned in Passing on values. Using the value chosen as a theme, compose a story, a fable or a parable to illustrate their choice, to be delivered at a later date as an oral presentation to the whole class.

Principal reflections
Prepared by Fr Christopher Gleeson SJ

FOR THE SCHOOL ASSEMBLY

Ascending to heaven

There was once a rabbi in a small Jewish village in Russia who vanished every Friday morning for several hours. The devoted villagers boasted that during these hours their rabbi ascended to heaven to talk to God. A sceptical newcomer arrived in town determined to discover where the rabbi really was.

One Friday morning the newcomer hid near the rabbi’s house, watched him rise, say his prayers and put on the clothes of a peasant. He saw him take an axe and go into the forest, chop down a tree and gather a large bundle of wood. Next the rabbi proceeded to a shack in the poorest section of the village in which lived an old woman and her sick son. He left them the wood, which was enough for a week. The rabbi then quietly returned to his own house. The story concludes that the newcomer stayed on in the village and became a disciple of the rabbi. And whenever he hears one of his fellow villagers say, ‘On Friday morning our Rabbi ascends all the way to heaven’, the newcomer quietly adds, ‘If not higher’.

Christina Hoff Sommers, Teaching the Virtues, pp 20-21

FOR THE NEWSLETTER

Dear Teacher,

I am the victim of a concentration camp. My eyes saw what no man should witness: gas chambers built by learned engineers; children poisoned by educated physicians; infants killed by trained nurses; women and babies shot and burned by high school and college graduates.

So I am suspicious of education. My request is: help your students become human. Your efforts must never produce learned monsters, skilled psychopaths, educated Eichmanns.

Reading, writing and arithmetic are important only if they serve to make our children more human.

From a letter written by a Boston High School Principal to her new teaching staff each year, quoted in The Tablet, 10 October, 1992.

TEACHING OUR CHILDREN VALUES

Richard and Linda Eyre

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