Sunday School Curriculum The Diocese of the Southern

Sunday School Curriculum The Diocese of the Southern United States H. G. Bishop. Youssef

Background: v Previous Sunday School Curricula available: v A translated curriculum from the Youth Service Committee of the Coptic Orthodox Patriarchate in Egypt v Curriculum written in Arabic v Translated into English in Australia v Canadian Curriculum from St. Mark Church in Toronto v Written in English

Choice: v The translated curriculum of the Youth Service Committee of the Coptic Orthodox Patriarchate v Complete curriculum for grades 1 to 12 v Used for many years in most of our Churches

Experience: ª The following observations were noted during the use of this curriculum: Differences in surrounding culture v Differences in surrounding beliefs v Differences in youth interests and social life v Differences in methods of education v Need to increase the knowledge of our youth with the Bible v Need for more focused lessons v

Action: v A group of faithful servants from St. Mark Coptic Orthodox Church in Houston felt the need for major modification of this curriculum to better suite our children v A committee of 7 servants was formed and started the work 5 years ago

Stages of Work: ' First Stage: Decisions on what and how to modify the curriculum v Design a new curriculum v 6 months v ' Second Stage: Implementations v 4. 5 years v

First Stage: v Repetitive lessons were removed v Unfocused lessons were removed v Lessons unsuitable to the western society were removed v. A complete new curriculum was created for Kindergarten children.

First Stage (cont. ): v The removed lessons were replaced with: v More Bible study lessons v Social lessons relevant to the society v Awareness lessons of other surrounding beliefs e. g. Mormons, Jehovah's Witness…etc. v Church awareness lessons v Stories of Saints

The Modified Curriculum Consists of:

First Stage (cont. ): v The following Criteria were followed in redesigning the curriculum: Concentrate most of the Bible stories between KG and grade 6 v Concentrate most of the saints stories between grade 4 -6 v Concentrate most of the Bible studies, social topics, dogma, church history and ritual topics between grade 7 -12 v No topic is to be repeated within two years period v Alternated the topics in each grade between Bible, social, dogma, rituals and church history topics instead of grouping them to avoid boredom. v

First Stage (cont. ): These criteria took into consideration: v The natural child and teenage psychological development v The nature of the society and education in the U. S. v The experience of the teachers teaching different classes

Examples of Topics Distribution: %

Second Stage (Implementation): Servants had to be recruited from all around the diocese to write ~240 new lessons and KG book (50 lessons) v The remaining old lessons had to be scanned to convert them into electronic copies v The new lessons were inserted in suitable church events order with the old lessons v The new books had to be reformatted for consistency of appearance v The new books were edited for content, language and consistency. v

Lesson Format: v All lessons followed the following format: v Objective v Memory verse v References v Introduction v Lesson Outlines v Conclusion v Applications

Trend: v We started with the high school books where the greatest need for a change was felt v Subsequently we moved to the younger grades v However, our experience with book production increased and improved as the number of books we produced increased.

Servants: v v v More than 40 servants contributed to this service Mostly from the diocese but some from outside the diocese and even from Canada Amazingly there was great consistency in the spirit despite differences in formatting the lessons: v v Some long and some short Some in paragraphs and some in point form

Half Way Through: ' God has led us to a servant that had already scanned the old lessons which helped expedite the production of the books v Initially 4 months/book for the first 4 -5 books v Decreased to 3 months/book for the remaining 8 -9 books

Half Way Through: ' God had led us to the idea of posting the completed books on the diocese web page. ' This helped: Widespread access to the books to all the servants from different churches all around the world v Faster feedback on the performance and adequacy of the produced books v Encouragement and demand for expedited production of the remaining books v Ability to improve the books according to the need in the future v

The Order of Lessons in Each Book v Each book is 50 lesson v The lesson are arranged similar to the church calendar v Each book starts after the Coptic New Year i. e second week of September v Filler lessons are available for the 5 th week of some months

The Order of Lessons in Each Book: v 3 lessons for the month of September v 4 lessons for each month from October through January Variable number of filler lessons for the period between the beginning of February and Jonah’s fast. 2 lessons, one before and one after Jonah’s fast 7 lessons during the Great Fast 7 lessons for the period between Resurrection and the Feast of the Pentecost Variable number of filler lessons between the Feast of the Pentecost and the Apostles’ Feast 3 lessons for the remainder of July after the Apostles’ Feast 4 lessons for August 1 lesson for the first week of September v v v v

God’s Blessing: v All through the years of this service we felt the hand of the Lord in the following: Whenever we became weak and discouraged God would send us complements of the curriculum and requests to complete the rest of the books v Whenever, we lost vital servants for different reasons, God would send better ones v Whenever we were overwhelmed with the magnitude of the work, God would send references and resources that would expedite the production of the lessons v God has used the old and the young, each one with his/her talent to the production of this curriculum v

Future Work: v To continue improving the curriculum according to feedback v E-mail address: SSC@SUSCOPTS. ORG v To do a second revision where we can further improve on the remaining old lessons v To continuously update the social topic to match with new hot issues in the society

Future Work (cont. ): v To develop a curriculum for College v To develop power point presentations for each lesson v To complement this curriculum with a student activity book.

Adjunctive Services: v The Pre-servants Curriculum v The Holy Bible Contest

Pre-Servants Curriculum: There was a need to develop a pre-servants curriculum to better prepare the servants for teaching Sunday School v Therefore, 6 year program was developed v The first 2 years prior to serving v The following 4 years to be completed during serving v v Presently, the material for the first 3 years is completed and available on the diocese web site

Holy Bible Contest: v 4 levels of 3 years intervals of Bible contest were developed: Beginner (grade 1 -3) v Intermediate (grade 4 -6) v Advanced (grade 7 -9) v Expert (grade 10 -12) v v Each level would encourage the students to read one chapter per day in the Bible and answer one question v Thus the Bible would be completed in 3 year intervals

Holy Bible Contest (cont. ): v The question of the Bible contest are available on the diocese web site v The answers are also available with a password provided only to the servants

Acknowledgment: The success of this service was due to the fact that we had a previous curriculum from the mother church as a base to build on v This was greatly appreciated when we wrote Kindergarten book from scratch. v We thought that KG book will be the easiest to write, till we discovered that it was the most difficult because we had to write all the 50 lessons v Then we realized that: “Others have labored, and we have entered into their labors” (John 4: 38) v

Thank You Have a Blessed St. Mary’s Feast