I have been a catechist at 2 parishes, and cannot even remotely imagine how absurd it would have been to have a parent in the classroom. It’s hard enough to establish honest involvement and hear questions from students in front of one another, let alone asking them to ask and answer questions in front of another adult they do or do not know. If you can’t feel comfortable with your child being in the available catechist’s classes, AFTER you have honestly made an attempt to speak with him/her, you need to speak directly with the pastor to consider any other possible arrangement.
Students also are of different backgrounds and have varying knowledge bases. Some of their parents instill the faith in them and some don’t; some have been in class every year, and some haven’t been since First Communion. Some of them care about what is taught, and some don’t. It is not easy to teach to a group of students with such differing needs. A parent would bring yet another element to the mix…Parents were always welcome to discuss any concerns with me, but at 1 parish students or their parents usually bypassed me altogether if they had any concern at all and went directly to the DRE to switch to another teacher. This only made it MORE difficult to figure out what my students’ needs were - most of their concerns were that they didn’t understand something I was discussing! (Well, ask me to explain what you don’t understand! That’s what students are supposed to do in classes!)
I’ve always welcomed parents in my RE classroom and usually have had several at any one time. I’ve encouraged parents to come to me with any questions they have about what we’re covering, whether the parents are there for the lesson or not. After all, in the long run it doesn’t matter what I actually said. It matters what the child* thinks* I said when relating the lesson the next day. If one child misunderstood, others might have done so, too.
In fact, I make it very clear at the start that not only what their child learns but whether their child takes it to heart depends far more on them than on me. There is only so much I can do; without their active involvement in their child’s faith, what I can do is very little, indeed. It is my privelege to help them out on a journey that they started when they had their little one baptized, and that will go on long after our class is over. As far as I’m concerned, if they’re exerting themselves enough to get their child to RE, they’re doing better than a lot, and they deserve credit for that. We can go from there. So I guess I see myself more of a midwife than as the primary teacher. The Church sets the facts, the diocese sets the curriculum, the parish chooses the teaching materials, but the parents are the primary teachers.
The students aren’t over 5th grade, but they haven’t had any trouble discussing things in front of their parents. In fact, I’d say that the students stay on topic and behave better with three other adults sitting in the back of the classroom than they do when it is just the two official catechists.
Maybe it seems easy because in my last job I taught chemistry to students who were mainly in the class because a good grade in chemistry is required to get into the medical field…that is, everybody needed the grade, nobody wanted to major in chemistry. It makes sense that RE would seem fairly tame by comparison.
Besides, it was being in my children’s RE classroom that convinced me, “Hey, I can do this.” Sometimes, the only thing a parent needs to get involved is some encouragement, and the presumption of competence.
My son was confirmed in 8th grade, so was I, so was my husband, so will my daughter be, next spring. *
