
Youth Group for Middle & High School
Our Youth Group the Middle & High School Class is held almost every Sunday morning (exceptions would be when we have a Worship For All Ages service, or an online-ONLY service, or no service at all); youth begin in the Sanctuary for our Sunday Worship Service and then are dismissed to their classroom (#108/parlor) after Singing The Children Out.
The curriculum as of JAN, 2025 has changed! This is a brand-new curriculum from Ember Kellie who works as Youth and Emerging Young Adult staff at the UUA. It is such a unique and creative curriculum, and everyone is so excited to dive into it. I’d like to share Ember Kellie’s description of the curriculum with you.
Welcome Lorekeepers, or as they say in your distant land- “Teachers”.
“Journeys of Deeper Joy” Curriculum- a curriculum from the Lifespan Faith Engagement team at the Unitarian Universalist Association. This curriculum is deeply rooted in and inspired by the “Deeper Joy” work led by Jennica Davis-Hockett. (Head to https://www.uua.org/lifespan/
Much of our traditional understandings of Religious Education, Curriculum, and Youth Leadership Development have been drastically shaken and changed during the last decade, and particularly since 2020. With this lens, I offer this curriculum with it built from a focus on Community Building. While our traditional understanding of Youth Leadership was focused on developing a pipeline to official leadership roles, in this curriculum, I hope to provide a chance to consider that individualistic understanding of leadership is not that model that will bring us into the future. Instead, I hope we can all come to believe that true “Youth Leadership” is about youth being able to build a sense of belonging, community, and ownership of their own Unitarian Universalist journeys.
So, why offer a curriculum designed around “Table-Top Roleplaying Games”? Besides their growing popularity, I think that role-playing games offer us a special opportunity for learning. In being able to play as a different character, our young people can explore actions, ideas, and roles that they might not consider in their regular life. So in combining Roleplaying with the Community Building Focus of Deeper Joy, this curriculum seeks to offer our young people an opportunity to creatively develop their own sense of community, in a safe and nurturing space.
If you are nervous about leading a Roleplaying Game- I hope you are able to nudge out of your comfort zone, and in the coming pages you will learn how to operate this simple roleplaying system, how our lessons work and how the world works. In addition, I will be including a page of resources designed to help you get more familiar with leading a Roleplaying Game.
-Ember Kelley (she/her) , Youth and Emerging Adult Ministry Staff
Parents should pick up their children at 2:30 PM, in classroom #108/parlor.
