Faith Development

At Second Unitarian, we foster the spiritual growth of our children and youth by engaging them in meaningful religious education lessons, and by inviting them to join the congregation in worship. We encourage children and youth to approach their spiritual learning with awe and wonder; to consider their beliefs and values with curiosity and reflection; and to connect with the people, creatures, and environment around them with empathy and care.

We invite you to join our Faith Development community! If you are interested in registering your child(ren) for Religious Education (RE) classes, teaching RE, providing childcare during services, or coordinating events, please contact Brittany Morse, Director of Faith Development, at dfd@secondunitarian.org.

Religious Education Curricula

Spirit Play, for Pre-K through Kindergarten, by Rev. Ralph Roberts, Beverly Leute Bruce, and Rev. Dr. Nita Penfold
We see the purpose of religious education as helping children in living into their own answers to the existential questions, as: Where did we come from? What are we doing here? What is our purpose? How do we choose to live our lives? What are our gifts? How do we use them? What happens when we die? Why do we die? Why are we lonely and sad sometimes?
We use the Montessori approach and Berryman’s morning-as-worship approach for the structure of the morning. As in Montessori, the key elements are the classroom environment and the teachers. These elements free the children to work at their own pace on their own issues. In a typical Spirit Play morning:
• The Doorkeeper helps the children get ready to enter the classroom.
• The Storyteller leads the circle in the story of the day, followed by wondering.
• Children choose an art response or to use a story previously heard, helped by the Doorkeeper.
• Children clean-up, followed by a feast (snack) with the Storyteller and Doorkeeper.
• Leave-taking is a formal process of saying goodbye to the Storyteller and Doorkeeper.

Windows and Mirrors, for 1st through 5th graders, by Gabrielle Farrell, Jenice View, and Natalie Maxwell Fenimore
In spirit, we embrace the contribution of diversity to our collective ability to pursue truth, fairness, justice and love. In practice, however, we often fail to embrace all the experiences and viewpoints in our communities as respectfully or as wholly as we might. Sometimes, we fail to even see differences among us. We seem most prone to gloss over differences when to acknowledge them requires acute self-examination and may lead to pain, shame, discomfort or guilt.
Windows and Mirrors nurtures children’s ability to identify their own experiences and perspectives and to seek out, care about, and respect those of others. The sessions unpack topics that lend themselves to diverse experiences and perspectives—for example, faith heritage, public service, anti-racism and prayer. The program teaches that there are always multiple viewpoints and everyone’s viewpoint matters.

Heeding the Call, for 6th through 8th graders, by Jodi Tharan and Nicole Bowmer
Heeding the Call is a social justice curriculum that not only explores linked oppressions in our society, but also encourages participants towards personal growth in values that counteract the marginalization of others. Workshops on empathy, courage, abundance, joy, and other qualities ask participants to recognize how these standards can be tools for justice. Additionally, the program includes more concrete tools, such as suggestions on how to be a good ally and tips on the language of conflict resolution. True stories of courage, sacrifice and collaboration, role-plays, games, and a program-long justice project will feed youth’s rising realization that as people of faith we are all called to love justice—not just with our words, but also with our deeds.