12 October 2013

a foray into CGS

Tomorrow I'm off to the Netherlands for an intensive week of training in Catechesis of the Good Shepherd (in English). I had meant to blog about this already back when I registered, but I got stuck when I failed to figure out how to put a pdf of the course leaflet up here. (Now I've copied what the training center have done, which is to link to it from an image - see below.)

Instead I'll just give you a few highlights: "The course will cover the first year program of level 1 of the method." Our trainer will be Linda Kaeil, from Portland, Oregon. She "is a long time experienced catechist and trainer of catechists in the United States, Germany, England, Poland, Australia, Canada and Africa. She trains the Missionaries of Charity (sisters of Mother Theresa) ... and teaches catechesis to children of 3 to 12 years at the Franciscan Montessori Earth School." Wow!



I think of Catechesis of the Good Shepherd as the mother of Godly Play. Certainly, Jerome Berryman drew heavily upon CGS in creating Godly Play. Although I've read a fair bit about CGS (for example, on Leslie's blog), this will be my first experience of it. I've read some comparisons which are so obviously skewed in favor of one or the other that they don't strike me as fair. But it does seem true that "Godly Play is more easily modified for nonliturgical churches" (to quote the book Children Matter), and that the training for Catechesis of the Good Shepherd is much more intense (see this post by Cindy Coe).

I'll let you know how I get on!

5 comments:

  1. Can't wait to hear about what you learn! Godly Play Germany is doing a joint conference with the CoGS catechists in March 2014, so we can learn from one another and build some bridges.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Also, thanks for sharing the article by Cindy Coe. It is so fair and honoring to both traditions and very informative.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Hurray! I'm just reading this and can't wait to read on to hear how your training went!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I'm so pleased you came to read them! Thank you!

      Delete

Thanks for conversing with me about Godly Play®! I do moderate some comments for the sake of the children I write about. Please be polite: to quote the Velveteen Rabbi, Whatever you're going to say in response to my posts, consider whether it's the sort of thing you would say to your host or their children if you'd been invited to someone's home for tea. If it isn't, then please don't say it here.

If you're new to commenting on blogs, I recommend that you "Comment as" Name/URL. You can use your real first name or a nickname. URL is the address of a website that you want to be linked with your name - feel free to leave it blank. Before your comment is accepted, you have to pass a spam filter. After clicking on 'post comment' or 'preview', just type in the sequence of letters you will then see (or click on the wheelchair for a recording of characters to type). Thanks for reading and commenting!