A good guide for Sunday school teachers filled with helpful advice and tips on what not to do within the first few pages, it helps you optimise your lessons for all ages - perfect if you teach either a wide age range or a small bracket.

I found Christ in the Classroom when perusing NetGalley one day and decided to give it a try. It is Jared Dees' thesis that unless our students develop a relationship with Christ, we are wasting our time. I tend to agree. While I understand why religion texts seem to have gotten longer and more complex over the years, it seems to me, especially when working with basically unchurched kids, that all we are doing is (attempting to)filling their heads with trivia. If you have no relationship with Jesus are you going to attend Mass? If you don't attend Mass, does it matter if you can define transubstantiation or epiclesis?

Dees advocates integrating real times of prayer into your class and the form of prayer he advocates is Lectio Divina, basically praying with scripture.

Regarding those overly wordy textbooks, Dees recommends picking a limited number of points to make and rather than trying to cover the whole chapter, make those points in a variety of ways--and then use them as a basis for prayer.

The book itself is easy to read and would be a good gift for any new catechist and well as for experienced ones who are open to trying something new.

Dees is the author of the website The Religion Teacher which has both free and paid resources.

I'd like to thank Dees and the publisher for making a review copy available via NetGalley. Grade: B+

An interesting book for Christian educators
Jared Dess is the creator of the website "The Religious Teacher" that offers free and paid resources. He is also engaged in a variety of Catholic ministries and author of books and articles. His book "Christ in the Classroom - Lesson Planning for the Heart and Mind" is primarily written for Catholic educators and catechists, some of the concepts can also be applied by educators from different Christian backgrounds (Evangelicals, Lutherans, ...). It is good fro people who have no background in pedagogy. Dees shows the mistakes that are made by educators: long lectures, limited class engagement, lack of relevance for students. Instead, in his opinion, there should be worksheets and resources that challenge the students and help them to make connections to their daily life. Dees encourages to guide the students and shows how to engage them by applying the four steps of the Lectio Divina: reading, meditating, praying, contemplating. As a final steps he adds the step of acting because he is convinced that the natural effect of an encounter with Christ is action and that the students "start to see how they are being called to think and act differently. They start to see how they must live their lives in new ways."
Not being Catholic, it was an interesting book to read and I recommend the book for Christian educators of various traditions who have an open mind and are looking for new ideas for their teaching (and some of the ideas can even be applied in other subjects where a Christian world view can also be applied).
The complimentary copy of this book was provided by the publisher through NetGalley free of charge. I was under no obligation to offer a positive review. Opinions expressed in this review are completely my own.
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