A Look at Youth Education Activities
Children's Ministries
Our school-year Young Emerging Spirits (YES) program, as you likely know, consists of Unity-based lessons
taught by grade level in an age-appropriate way by adult volunteer team-teachers. In July,
which begins our volunteer-teacher recruiting period, our YES volunteers sign up
to participate. As part of that sign up process, they meet with the Youth Ed Director and
choose the age group they feel the most affinity for - young children, elementary children,
Uniteens, etc. In August we do background checks, training, and match candidates up with a
teaching partner who will (ideally) teach together for the nine-month school year. Our
teaching year runs from the Sunday after Labor Day until the end of May.Teaching YES is structured, productive, rewarding, and a big commitment, for which we properly adore and consistently thank our dedicated teachers! Judging from the number of teachers who return year after year to play a role in making Unity's YES program the high-quality and growing endeavor that it is, we appear to have developed a system of year-round YES that works well.
Our success rests on the shoulders of all whose hard work and vision came before, and we appreciate the legacy of love and effort that is entrusted to us now. We have built a great program which will be even better in the coming year, with full-time youth leadership to move us forward.
As a well-rounded program, while we don't stop for the summer, we do shift gears. We move away from a structured lesson-based curriculum to something more casual, but equally important. Why do we change? And what do we do instead of classroom-based lessons separated by age group and taught by the same people each week?
We change rhythms so we can play. That may sound odd, but the "work" of children is play. Children learn in lots of ways, and learning how to play with and get along with others is a critically important part of learning. In the summer we deliberately design our format to include a lot more social time, by choosing games and activities that mix ages, genders and abilities that may not be familiar to a child. This helps children build the friendships upon which a strong community is based, and introduces another place for them to practice building the deep level of tolerance and consideration for diversity that Unity embraces.
What's new this season?
Pre-K through first graders will be working their way through the "What a Wonderful World" curriculum developed by the Association of Unity Churches. This was the precursor to the "Celebrating My God-Self" curriculum, which the first through fifth graders are using. The topics for the balance of the year are caring, diversity and sacredness. This series of lessons will run through the May 18th, the last day of regular YES.
This year we're also test-driving a community-building activity for all kids from preschool through Uniteens. We gather at 11:05 AM in the Fillmore room for a song, a story and a short visualization. The Uniteens take a leadership role, calling everyone to the gathering, holding it in prayer, lighting a candle and incense, and taking the offering. Sharing these experiences fosters spiritual community among the children, who then adjourn to their classrooms to spend 45 minutes with their own grade for the rest of their lesson.