Report of the Minister for Lifespan
Learning
September 2005
from Lynn Ungar, minister for lifespan learning
Things continue to shake, rattle and roll in the world of religious education—some days more rattling, some days more rolling.
Covenant Groups are now well established, and running smoothly. There are no longer people on the waiting list. My largest disappointment is that we have not been able to recruit more leaders from group participants, and so we remain with six groups (one with a different leader than originally).
Special Interest Groups (SIGs) continue to expand. We have added in groups for UU pagans and UU Christians, as well as for people dealing with mental illness, for free world prison pen pals and for people living outside the US . The Eclectic group has disbanded.
We are in the process of changing the “Community” menu on the CLF homepage to make the various groups easier to find.
RE on the Web Site continues to evolve. The home page has been restructured to include a mission statement and categories of material for adults, children and teens, parents and small groups. A FAQ page has been added.
KidTalk continues to expand and evolve. In addition to the categories mentioned in my last report, I have added a section entitled “Practicing the Principles” which gives suggestions for how younger and older kids might explore a particular one of our seven principles. While the blog did not attract enough interest to merit leaving it up, I do get periodic questions from the Ask CLiF section, which I answer personally if I get an e-mail address, as well as responding in the following month's KidTalk.
On-Line Courses are a developing area. We have a number of upcoming courses, including Children's Literature, “This I Believe,” Meditation, “Our Way of the Spirit” and Reading the Bible Through UU Eyes. We will charge $40 per class for courses that are taught be people other than CLF staff and member volunteers. By the time you read this people should be able to pay for courses via Paypal when they sign up.
Communications with members continue to cover a wide range of topics. I help however I can.
Curriculum is becoming an increasing part of my work as my hours have expanded (as of 9-1-05). I used an advance on those hours to create what I am, for the moment, calling CLiF Notes: A Monthly Curriculum for Families and Small Groups. The first CLiF Notes went out Sept. 1 to members of the CLF-RE list. We are looking at ways to expand distribution.
In June (I think) I created a Coming of Age program designed for families or small groups, which is available on our web site. Helen Zidowecki provided many resources for this project.
What else might come from my increased hours remains to be seen, but I have agreed to take on writing/reporting on small RE grants. As always, suggestions are welcome.
Respectfully submitted,
Lynn Ungar
RE Statistics as of August 30, 2005:
Covenant Groups:
Currently 58 participants in six groups. Six of these participants are facilitators.
SIGs:
The Retirees SIG has 14 members
The Healing SIG has 18 members
The SIG for free-world Prison Pen Pals has 32 members
Since my last report we have added
The UU pagan SIG with 41 members
The UU Christian SIG with 15 members
The Mental Illness SIG with 13 members
The International SIG with 21 members
for a total of 154 SIG members (some belong to more than one group, so it's not quite as many people). This is an increase of 85, or 123% since my last report.
The Eclectic SIG has been retired.
The RE list has 145 members.
On-Line Courses:
653 people have ever done anything with the A Chosen Faith study guide. I have started clearing out people who have not participated in months, so this statistic will no longer be available. 59 people have accessed the course in the last 31 days, and 96 in the last 60 days.
12 people have taken the New UU course since May. This course is now being taught as on-going, rather than with a group of people going through on a set schedule.
Email Volume:
Just to give a sense of how much communication is going on, for the month of August (a fairly light month as many people are traveling), messages for the SIGs and the CLF-RE list totaled 182. I don't have passwords to check archives on CLF-L and CLF-A – obviously those totals are much higher. For the month of August I have a total of 226 messages for the covenant groups, but for some reason one of the groups is missing archives since April, so the number should be higher.
Last updated November 21, 2005
|
