It’s hard to believe the campus has been closed for nearly two years. Please join me during the first couple weeks in January by helping prep the supply closets and classrooms for the incoming classes. Please plan for a one to four hour time slot. Sorting, purging, trash, recycle, lists, labels, and to purchase needs…we’ll do it all with your help! If there is interest, a work party can be organized. Otherwise, you will work with myself or LeAnne to help get this job done. Kids and youth are welcome to join.
by amanda alice uluhan, Director of Religious Education
On Sunday December 5, RE staff, volunteers, and members welcomed 40 outside families onto campus for a Community Service project with local non-profit organization, Camp Kindness Counts. Families prepared snack and meal bags, which were also decorated onsite, and then distributed those bags to local day shelters and people experiencing homelessness. Camp Kindness Counts is an program of the Greater Good Science Center out of UC Berkeley. We’re excited to be growing our relationship with their values-based, community-centered, kids and youth org. We look forward to hosting them again January and February for two more projects!
by amanda alice uluhan, Director of Religious Education
Did you know that data is showing that it’s typically unvaccinated adults that are spreading COVID-19 to kids? That makes me really like vaccines! And still, I’m super thankful that children 5+ now eligible. That’s why a new qualification for volunteering in RE is to be vaccinated. Volunteer teams of about four adults per group, with additional volunteers to serve as RE hosts are running our RE Outdoors programs, a small group with biweekly offerings from 12-1:30pm. We continue to use the old playground, garden, and North Room Patio for fun and are looking for folx interested in helping out with this program. If you love our campus, then this is for you!
We are actively seeking qualified volunteers for our elementary and youth OWL programs. We are also seeking three volunteers to serve the older elementary age class.
We’ve got the Winter Pageant coming up quickly on December 12. The kids will **fingers crossed** perform live from the Sanctuary chancel that Sunday morning (signups available: [email protected]). We’ve checked in with retired family medical physician, congregant Paul Buehrens, and will follow his guidelines for safety. We’ve let the Lay Pastoral Ministry folx know that we’ll be in there as well (they’re hosting some live for worship inside the Sanctuary…what a creative way to include this small group!). So, stay tuned for the show. We hope it’s a good one.
And, after one year of work, the Children and Youth RE Core Team is being reformulated. This team helps connect with volunteers, visitors, and families in service of the congregations’ mission. I have two awesome volunteers lined up, and I have a two spaces available that I am actively seeking to fill.
Our Religious Education (RE) students and volunteers have been meeting in person this fall and have been having a great time.
Our Elementary students are using Legos to learn about our UU sources and principles and to imagine what they would like East Shore to be. They would like everyone to be able to come to East Shore and so one of their goals is to get a bus for East Shore that can pick people up on Sunday mornings. They are also exploring the wonder that is around the East Shore campus by harvesting marigold seeds from the garden beds (and planting them everywhere), watch for the results of this in the spring.
Our Middle School students are on a quest this year. Their first action quest was to find a way they could help East Shore. The middle school students and their outstanding adult volunteers got together and made breakfast burritos for our Congregation for the Homeless guests. The breakfast burritos were accompanied by notes and drawings from all the students to make the men feel they were cared for.
Our Middle and High School students have also had some outdoor activity field trips. The latest was a bike ride! We donned our headlamps and bicycle lights and pedaled our way through the darkness. Our intrepid bicyclists all returned with smiles on our faces. After four miles (round-trip) of riding through the Snoqualmie tunnel, over 1,000 feet below the Snoqualmie Ski Area, we emerged to vibrant Fall colors.
Yes, the darkness was a little spooky, but nothing we couldn’t handle. We rewarded ourselves with some yummy pizza and drinks at the Snoqualmie Summit and headed home. A great way to welcome the beauty of the changing of the seasons.
There will be more outdoor field trips planned and we are always open to adults from East Shore joining us on our outdoor adventures.
The RE team is always looking for more volunteers and more ways to be together. If you would like to be part of this wonderful East Shore group contact LeAnne Struble.
Religious education is a rather amorphous term – a catch all for Sunday school, daycare, rites of passage, and faith building throughout the lifespan. Those that are called to become religious professionals often end up working as a religious educator, and sometimes through a circuitous route. You can read about Amanda Alice’s route to serving East Shore as a religious educator here. And then, once landing in the world of religious education, you encounter the UUA Credentialing Program which serves to promote professional development, standards, mentoring, accountability, and recognition in the field. The program encourages in-depth study and requires demonstrated competency in the many facets of lifespan religious education, primarily through the development of a portfolio.
The credentialing program helps to provide stronger, more vital religious education programs as religious educators integrate their professional learnings into their congregations. There’s also the assurance that a religious educator has met professional development standards in religious education and is held accountable to professional ethics guidelines by the UUA. We’re confident that a well-trained religious educator is more equipped with the proper tools to serve as a resource to congregation (parents, families, children, youth, lay leadership, ministerial colleague) in the many areas of religious education leadership.
The following was submitted by amanda alice’s Credentialing Mentor, Sara D. Cloe, CRE (retired)
I’m a retired religious educator who is serving as a volunteer mentor for my colleagues in the UUA Credentialing program. I served three UU congregations during my 20-year career. I began in 1998 at the UU Community Church of Washington County in Hillsboro, OR. I served the UU Church of Vancouver, WA. next and finished my tenure as a religious educator at West Hills UU Fellowship in Portland, OR as interim Director of Religious Education. I earned my Credential in 2011 and served as mentor before retirement in late 2018. I resumed my mentorship in 2020. I’m so pleased to be mentoring Amanda Alice Uluhan of East Shore!
Amanda and I have met for at least one hour each month via Zoom since May 2020 to discuss her credentialing work and set goals for next steps on her journey. Her goal is to complete her portfolio and appear before the Religious Education Credentialing Committee for an interview in April 2022. Amanda has been reading books, attending Renaissance modules, and conferring with other colleagues about the process. She has been doing most of this behind the scenes, while working full-time and taking care of her young family!
I hope that you will envision with me a time when East Shore will be inundated by young families! Amanda is seen by them as a wise and skilled leader and her family as an example of the way diverse families are accepted by East Shore. These families bring the children to your congregation to reflect on our highest hopes for the future. We side with love! Families feel that they will be served by the congregation as they serve their communities, striving to be a positive force for good in our world.
Starting September 12, 2021 and running through May 22, 2022 we plan to gather on campus for our lower and upper elementary classes, as well as for our middle and high school youth programs. But, they can’t happen without your love and support! Please consider signing up to volunteer on a weekly, biweekly, or ad hoc basis. We have opportunities for folks to help with the following: the Spring Hall worship space for families with kids 12 and under; the outdoor coffee hour for kids and youth; an awesome user-friendly digital check-in; the health screenings; or one of our several age-based cohort classes! There’s room for everyone in caring for our children and we’d love to have you join our team and share your gifts and time. https://bit.ly/esucrevolunteer
We have been working to establish several outdoor gathering spaces and to use these as long as we need to for the benefit of our community health. Being outside helps not only to minimize transmission of COVID-19, it’s also a whole lot of fun! In fact, enjoying and using our campus for teaching, learning, and play is a huge priority for so many of our families and congregants and now we have the opportunity to experiment with more outdoor classes! We’re selecting curriculum that is suited for and easily used outdoors. Please read through the article “From the Minister” in this issue of the Beacon to learn more about some of the details for Sunday morning.
