​Workshop Adventures

Seeking adventurous, creative, and enthusiastic volunteers to teach St. Paul’s 4th through 6th-grade church school class, Workshop Adventures!

The ideal volunteers are:

• Experienced in working with older elementary school children.
• Interested in assisting with big creative projects like murals, skits, building models, etc.
• Committed to fun and comfortable with a little chaos; able to manage a classroom of high-energy students while maintaining a playful environment.
• Innovative thinkers who enjoy helping children solve problems.
• Adaptable to new ideas offered by the children.
• Very familiar with and/or willing to learn Bible stories.

Description

In Workshop Adventures, students use a project-based learning curriculum to wrestle with important Bible stories. The students are gifted their own Bible, which they use weekly to read the scripture covered in each unit. The scripture inspires a multiweek group project that lasts for an entire unit. Whether they build a model of Jerusalem, create a board game, or film an eyewitness news report, these projects give older children a chance to be creative agents in their faith lives, bond with a cohort of peers, and dive deeply into the world of the Bible.

Each week the 4th, 5th, and 6th graders begin their session by joining their teachers in the O’Hear Room for a snack, small talk, and a prayer. Next, the teachers guide the students through the unit’s assigned Bible passage(s). The teachers help students understand the meaning of unfamiliar words, the context of the story, and most importantly- our beliefs about what God is saying to us in the text. Afterward, the teachers invite the children to spend the remainder of the session working on their projects as a group. Teachers mindfully allow the students to work with some independence but stay close by to answer questions, offer suggestions, and manage behavior. During this time, the room can become loud and chaotic. It's important that Workshop Adventures teachers are comfortable enough with the chaos that the children feel like they have ownership over their project. The goal should always be that the children have a deeper understanding of the story and not a perfect orderly project.

Requests

• Volunteers are asked to dedicate 5 hours a month for the church school year, September 11, 2022, through May 22, 2023. (Each volunteer is asked to teach two times a month. Every lesson takes about an hour to learn/prepare. Each class period is an hour long and requires approximately 15 minutes of setup and/or 15 minutes of clean-up.)
• Volunteers are asked to learn the lesson plan and set up the materials before class on Sunday morning.
• Volunteers are required to take Safeguarding God’s Children, an Episcopal Church training course that teaches church policies and best practices to ensure the children’s safety.
• Volunteers are asked to find their own replacements if they have a scheduling conflict.
• Volunteers are asked to serve with enthusiasm and joy.