Children, Youth, and Families Advisory Team September Update

By Annie Holtzclaw, Advisory Team member, on behalf of the Advisory Team: Samantha White (co-chair), Kirk Cozine (co-chair), Troi Ferguson, Dylan Flunker, and Sarah Heuser, supported by Allison Connelly-Vetter

Do you all remember Tiger King? The first few weeks of the pandemic, if you had a Netflix account, you probably watched Tiger King (the sourdough starter trend was a few weeks later). Once you started watching, you couldn’t look away. Someone lost an arm to a hungry tiger, the local grocery store donated barrels of expired meat to feed the big cats, and surprisingly, the people who worked at the zoo ate that meat too. 

I’m happy to report there are zero connections between Tiger King and the beginning of religious education this year! We are not feeding children expired meat, no youth lost limbs in our inaugural religious education classes on September 14th, and there are no big cats roaming the building!

I want to thank you all for your feedback and the input we continue to receive from YOU. It has been a lovely experience to take your feedback and be able to make changes to our programming to better fit the needs of our community.

Our goal this year is to be a low stakes, values based, third space for our youth. We want children and youth to show up and find grounded, relaxed spaces where they feel valued, loved, and accepted, surrounded by people who are holding space for them to show up as they are, all while exploring the seven Shared Values of our Unitarian Universalist faith: Justice, Pluralism, Interdependence, Generosity, Equity, and Transformation, with Love at the center.

We have adjusted the configuration of volunteer teams this year. Now, there are seasonal commitments for volunteering with our Kindergarten-5th graders instead of a full year commitment. The seasons are September-November, December-February, and March-May. Each of these seasons have approximately eight Sundays of Religious Education. These volunteers are organized in teams of four, with a pool of substitutes to draw from as needed. We also have two amazing support volunteers for our volunteers, Tami Eshult and Katherine Harrell, who are spending their Sunday mornings setting the tone and keeping things running smoothly.

I’m sharing these details with you because I hope that if you’ve had even an inkling of thinking about having conversations about faith (or Tiger King) with teenagers, or exploring UU history with 7th graders, or enjoy reading stories out loud to our K-2 learners or playing games with 3rd-5th graders, please think about spending a season this year volunteering with our kids or youth. We are always in need of more adults modeling their spiritual practice in real time. Because of this seasonal time frame, you will hear us asking for adult volunteers throughout the year. 

Amazingly, we are doing more with less. Most of our 9 am Religious Education (RE) groups are full, while our 11 a.m. groups still have space. If you have not signed up for RE and are thinking of participating, please do so here as some of our groups are not able to accept new participants after the first few weeks of RE. Our 11 a.m. RE classes have space for more to join. If arriving to church later hasn’t been part of your routine, I encourage you to consider how late you can let everyone sleep in. And truthfully, nothing really happens in the first quarter of the football game and Taylor Swift hasn’t made an appearance at any games this year! Plus the social hall is about 20% less intimidating after the 11 a.m. service.

Briefly:  

• K-2nd grade kids are learning the 7 principles of UU around the theme of the UU superhero mascot Jetpig, named after the acronym of our UU shared values. 
• 3rd-5th grade kids are learning the 7 principles of UU with the theme of everyday heroes and inspiring humans who effect change in our world. 
• 6th graders participate in OWL in the fall, then start tackling ‘the big questions’ in the spring. 
• 7th grade participants are moving through the three questions: “What does it mean to be Unitarian Universalist?” “What does it mean to be part of First Universalist Church of Minneapolis specifically?” and “What does it mean to be UU and part of First Universalist Church of Minneapolis if my friends are not UU or attend different congregations? How do I fit into a diverse faith landscape?” Youth also attend site visits to local UU congregations throughout the year.
• 8th (and some 9th) graders are participating in the OWL (Our Whole Lives) programming. We also offer adult OWL, which you may be interested in joining!
• 9th graders are moving through Coming of Age curriculum, building a religious community to hold their deep dive into core theological questions, exploring their beliefs about what gives life meaning, what they value and trust, what a “good” life looks like, and who they are called to be in the world. 
• 9-12th grades can join the High School Youth Group where gatherings are led by trained adults and include time for checking in, playing games, learning new skills, service projects, and exploring the big questions of life, all while deepening relationships with peers.

There are a few things on the horizon we are anticipating with excitement:

• Coming soon: More detailed communication that tells you exactly what kids are doing in their RE classes for the day. For example, it might tell you K-5 will be talking about love, while 7th graders will be discussing Unitarian Universalist history and values, and our OWL participants will be learning more about gender and identity.
• Working more mental health conversations and support into the curriculum in our preteen and teen ages as well as creating a sensory space for kids to visit. 
• Bringing all this information to you from one newsletter! Many of you may not realize there are two newsletters that go out weekly- the Liberal and the Children Youth and Family newsletter. To reduce duplicate announcements and make it easier for everyone to know all of the things, we will be weaving the Children Youth and Family news into the Liberal. Less emails to read! Everyone will be on the same page! Those who do not have children registered in programming will know what children are doing at church! And hopefully you might find some opportunities for volunteering you didn’t know existed to help build a safe space for our children, in a low stakes, values based, third space kind of way. 

If you haven’t picked up on our need for more adult volunteers yet, we need more volunteers! Specifically, in our 3-5th grade classroom at the 11 am service for the fall season. If volunteering with people is not your thing, we do have alternative activities that still support our Youth and Family programming and are immensely helpful to the program. Please reach out to Allison Connelly-Vetter or Hirut Hedge. You can also speak to the co-chairs of your Children Youth and Family Advisory Committee- Samatha White and Kirk Cozine. Dylan Flunker, Sarah Heuser, Troi Ferguson and I would also love to hear your feedback. We might be hard to find in the social hall because we tend to be in the classrooms with the youth on Sundays, but all of us are searchable in the Breeze directory. And if you do see us, please don’t hesitate to speak with us about your ideas for building grounded, loving spaces for our children, youth and families to explore more about themselves and their spiritual practice. 

I look forward to seeing you at church,

Annie Holtzclaw