I’ve grown a lot in my time as a church school teacher. I took over our church school program because someone simply had to do it. the wonderful couple who had run the program for many years moved away and unless I stepped in there would be no church school program for my own kids. As time progressed and the full scale of my own kids’ special needs became apparent, I began incorporating the pieces of their IEPs and regular school curriculums into our church school setting. Our program may be small, but gosh darn it, it would be accessible to a wide array of learning needs and levels. After using “set” curricula materials for the past 5 years that always needed to be adapted significantly, I started a conversation about what our kids were missing. What are the gaps in their church knowledge? The answer: the great feasts. To meet this gap, I developed a curriculum around the 12 Great Feasts (plus The Lenten Triodian) that will used for the 2020-2021 church school year. As part of their study each child will be putting together a resource binder containing a graphic organizer with information about each feast. Not only will this give us something to present to the parish as a portfolio, but it will also give our kids something to keep. Maybe it won’t work out as well as I hope it will, but at least we will have tried.