Visitors with children are always welcome. We hope you’ll decide to stick around! When you’re ready, please register your children here.
PARENT/Guardian & TEACHER RESPONSIBILITY FOR CHILDREN ON SUNDAY MORNING
Most weeks, Sunday morning religious education (RE) classes are in session during the worship service. During class time the RE teacher and teacher’s assistant are responsible and accountable for the whereabouts and safety of children and youth.
Following the end of the service, a parent/guardian or older sibling is responsible for coming immediately to the McGiffert Wing to meet their child who is participating in a preschool, lower or upper elementary class. Middle school and high school youth may leave RE classes on their own.
In addition to ensuring children’s safety, your courteous compliance with this procedure will afford volunteer teachers and teaching assistants an opportunity to leave their classroom in good order as well as free them to join the rest of the congregation for coffee and conversation in the gathering hall.
RE TEACHERS’ ASSISTANT PARENT/Guardian CO-OP
At least two adult volunteers lead each RE class. Each class is organized and directed by an RE teacher, with an assistant. (RE teachers are WUUs who may or may not have children or youth participating in the RE program.) RE teachers are volunteers with skills and interest in teaching who are willing to serve our children and youth. Teachers receive orientation and training and collaborate with the Director of Religious Education (DRE) to plan the curriculum and prepare for individual lessons.
To ensure the presence of two adults in each class, and to minimize the strain on our slender volunteer teacher corps, one parent/guardian from each family whose child (or children) is registered for RE, and who is not serving as an RE teacher, is expected to volunteer as a teacher’s assistant for preschool, lower and upper elementary classes, at least twice each year, between September and May.
Teachers’ Assistants will schedule their service with the DRE and will receive orientation to the plan for the class on the day they serve by the teacher they are helping. (Ideally, a parent/guardian will not assist in a class that his or her child attends.)
Parents/guardians serving as teachers’ assistants will likely find their experience within a WUU RE classroom to be rewarding in a number of ways. In addition to providing the RE program with much needed – and much appreciated – support, parents will benefit from seeing, first hand, the RE environment in which their child learns. Further, parents/guardians serving as teachers’ assistants also have the opportunity to learn something along with, and potentially even from, the children participating in the RE classes.
Please view this volunteer opportunity as having the potential to be a very rewarding experience, not merely as a small commitment of time required as part of a child’s enrollment in the RE program.