The Catholic School Leaders Podcast

[00:00:00] Welcome to the Catholic School Leaders Podcast. We discuss all things important to leadership and growth in Catholic education.

I'm your host, John Mahalio. So my guest today in this two part series is Greg Aitchinson, who not only brings his classroom to life when it comes to religion class, but he makes it something memorable for his students.

And what Greg does is incredible, and something any teacher can bring to their classrooms immediately. And when Greg and I sat down for this interview to record it, we had set up about a 40 minute time to discuss this important topic, but the conversation was so good and so deep that Discussion was so fantastic that this is going to turn into a two part series with Greg Let's begin our episode today with a quick prayer. In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Well, Heavenly Father, thank you for this opportunity to come together today as your children to talk about and discuss bringing the faith to life for our students.

[00:01:00] Please bless my guest today, Greg Aitchinson, in his work and his vocation, so that together we may give your name honor, praise, and glory through our discussion. We pray it will bring your light, love, and mission to our listeners and to the world. We ask this through your Son, Jesus Christ. Amen. In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Today my guest is Greg Achinson, religion teacher and founder of CatholicReligionTeacher. com, which contains many resources for Catholic educators. Greg is a husband of one, father of four, born and raised in Iowa.

He met Jesus in high school, questioned his faith in college, discerned the priesthood, and then taught religion for two years in Texas and 12 years in Minnesota. He describes himself as a lover of fitness, theology, sports, and desserts, trying his best to be happy, healthy, and a holy saint. .. So talk to me about, I know [00:02:00] we probably, we touched on this a little bit before, but in the actual, I know one of the things that, that you said to me was we want to raise the bar with expectations.

But I want to try to make the classes fun and utilize resources that are out there. And I think that's something that we're very blessed to have here in, in 2024, almost closing on 2025. Is there are things that we can do you can take a virtual field trip to St. Peter's, okay? And 20 years ago, that might have been grainy, it might have been that VHS video that we were talking about.

But, with all the technology we have now, You can stand in St. Peter's Square or even the, in, in the Vatican and just look around without even having to travel the 10 hour or 12 hour airline flight there, okay? How did you bring, how did you do all those things in terms of teaching the material itself, the content?

Because, hey, there's all these things, but there is still that curriculum and that content that we are required to get through as teachers. How did you bring that component of [00:03:00] things to those high expectations, to the, keeping it fun, keeping it relevant to them, but also covering the areas that you were asked to do.

As a classroom teacher,

Yeah. So one thing, again, for all those first and second and even third year teachers, like you just got to give yourself grace. And I forgot to mention this earlier, but you can go into class, not prepared. You can go into class over prepared. But we should never go into class without the Lord, and so just relying on the Holy Spirit, that's you have to do that every day of class, just, Lord you're the teacher, if we need to go off course during this lesson, or if this lesson is just flopping, like, all right I'm gonna learn a lesson from this lesson.

Not to do this lesson again, and I can help my game, but also maybe there's something else you want us to get to that just to have the flexibility built in Holy Spirit, you're the leader here. I want us to follow you, help me help the students follow me who are going to then follow you.

And so that's one thing I think for younger teachers is sometimes we get really hung up on, here's the lesson, it's gotta be just like this [00:04:00] or we get, too down on ourselves for not doing it. Fireworks score, but sometimes again, if you're bringing your authentic self and your faith, students will still walk away and you won't have damaged them, but Oh, you weren't the best, like lesson teacher, but you were the best Catholic teacher I ever had.

That will have way more impact on a kid's life down the road. And so give yourself grace. Just do the best you can let the Holy spirit move and allow room for the Holy spirit to move. So sometimes In the middle of a lesson, kids would just, a question would come up that is an awesome question.

And usually if one student has that question, many other kids do. Alright, let's roll with that, because I know that kid's glued, clued in on that. They might not be interested in their lesson right now, but they're interested in that faith question they have right now. So let's take a five minute, side road

explore that.

Yeah, let's explore that together. And sometimes, it'd be, one question, and then a question pops up, and then I'd say, Alright, you know what? It sounds like there's a lot of interest in this topic. Let me write this [00:05:00] down, we'll come back to this again. I promise you. Or maybe I'm not ready to like, I don't have the great resource in front of me I want to do a little more homework on this, just to say, hey, I want to make sure to give you the best answer for this.

Let me do a little research and I'll come back to this for you another day. Or we gotta finish up this part of the lesson. We'll get back to that tomorrow. But I'd say one thing with any lessons is to create that Google Doc right now. Of all the ideas that come up to you cause I've found over the years.

And now with iPhones, of course, you can just, Hey, Siri, remind me, blah, blah, blah, just lists and lists of ideas. And I always start

so easy to do

yeah, from all over the place. And it could be like, I saw this YouTube video. Sorry about that. That's my phone responding to

you've added this, so you've added it to your phone now. You know what I mean?

There we go. But just to create a whole vault of ideas as they come, because they will come throughout the school year, and [00:06:00] you might forget about that, but like you're going to teach that lesson three months from now, you'll forget about it unless you have written down. So I would look at my. And it's like, all right, here are the categories of topics I'm going to be teaching or hoping to get to.

And I would just start plugging in ideas as they would come. And that could be, like I mentioned, like a YouTube video that I came across Oh, that's a really good five minute clip that, really highlights, taking care of the poor or, how you should treat this kind of person or the Catholic idea of this, or just.

This is just a really awesome, profound, beautiful video. I can rope that in somehow, someway, at some point. I'm just gonna save this here. And so I would do that with articles, with videos, with Catholic artwork secular artwork that was still, there's Beauty within that we can pull from songs I would listen to Oh, this song is all about this.

And that could be like a song that's all about this in the good Catholic way, or it could be like, this is the exact opposite of this. So I'm thinking of a one example. [00:07:00] Lecrae is a Christian rapper. And he had a song at the exact same time that Lady Gaga had a song. Her song was called Applause, and the whole chorus was, I live for the applause.

I live for the applause. I live for the applause. It's all about her. I need your attention. I want your, I want everybody to think about me first. And Lecrae had a song at the exact same time that was called the background. And his song was, Lord, I want to play the background. Help you help me be the background vocals.

You be the lead every single day of my life. And so when we're talking about John 3, 30, He must increase, I must decrease, the call to gospel, to, humble yourselves, and so on. I would pull in those songs, and we would do a little song analysis during class. Let's listen to these two songs.

What's different here? What can we pull from this? And how can we apply this to our lives? And so on. Yeah, so again, just finding, just keeping your eyes and your ears open every day of the year, and adding those ideas to a Google Doc, sorting them out occasionally. Putting [00:08:00] folders on your desktop of all these topics because at some point you'll come back to that this is the perfect piece to this puzzle for this lesson this day.

And by keeping it relevant to the kids, because I'm going to guess probably with the Lady Gaga song, it was probably released when the kids were listening to it. It was a song they knew. Okay. And when you hear this, Oh, I know this song. Okay. Okay, great. How about this one? I don't know if I know this one too much.

And. Okay, now let's compare and contrast them a little bit, because, you know, if we pull a song out that was popular in 1972, it's kind of like, eh, I could take it or leave this song, I don't really care about this song. But, being able to pull something in that they know right now, that's relevant to their lives right now, and give a comparison to it they'll remember that.

And I think even furthermore, every time they hear that song, either way, applause or the background, Oh, I remember that. Especially our kids that, that have that learning style, you know what [00:09:00] I mean? Where they learn to, to music and things of that nature. They'll remember that for the rest of their lives.

Anytime they hear that song, they'll be like, Ah, I remember that class where we did, boom.

Yep, and a little secret here too as I got older in my teaching years and less cool as a young hip teacher Who was actually listening to their music and watching their stuff and whatever I realized I needed to still somehow plant myself in teenage culture But I didn't want to, like, I didn't want to spend time listening to their radio stations and so on and, and watching their movies.

So I had an assignment that was every other month for my eighth graders called examining pop culture. And it was pretty simple in the sense of like, I said, kids, like whatever, like you've been listening to, whatever you've been watching, whatever books you're reading just pick one of those things, pick your favorite song in the moment, put your Jesus goggles on and analyze it from a Catholic perspective.

And so they would pick these things that are popular with them in their age at the time, and they would do an assignment based off of it, and they [00:10:00] would analyze the messaging from that song, or from that artist, or from that TikTok account, or from that movie, from that book. So they would spell out a full summary of what the message was there, and then they would give a full summary of does this, you know, what does, what does Jesus think of this?

And what's the perspective from our faith in regards to this? Maybe, like, Oh, maybe that was an awesome, awesome song that was on the radio. Very great. Very pure. Wonderful. Maybe it was the exact opposite. Okay. So, but the short of it is I would use these assignments, A, because I wanted my students walking out into life.

Wearing their quote unquote, Jesus goggles and not just garbage in garbage out, taking in every single thing that's out there because that's just what's out there. But like recognizing, wait a minute, this song on the radio is really about garbage. I'm not going to put this into my soul. I'm going to make a better, just to have that pause moment to think like, what is this actually about?

Do I want to ingest this or not? So that was part of it just to kind [00:11:00] of give them a little radar for their own lives in their, in their day to day. But also it provided me with. 80, 80 different samples of what's popular today amongst my students. And then I would pull in references to all those things throughout my classes.

And students would be like, Oh yeah, okay, yeah, Mr. Aitchison knows that song, or like he's heard of that movie. And it's like, no, and the better part is not only to reference those things, But then to reference the student who wrote about those things in a really awesome way and even show their examples to the, to the class, be like, you know what, this is, this wasn't my analysis, this was Jimmy's analysis last month when he did the assignment, like he's the one who said, you know what, Lady Gaga's attitude is the exact opposite of the Christian faith.

And connecting with the kids and making it, wow, he recognized me. He actually did read these. He didn't just ask us to do it and then just gave a checkmark on it. He actually read these things and took what I had to say into account for it. And, and, [00:12:00] I'll tell you what, you boost the, do that, the kids self esteem will go up in a heartbeat on that one.

Because then they're going to feel more confident. And I think that's something that I, I think I want to point out too is that, A lot of the times when we, when we see our kids in school, when they're in first grade or kindergarten or whatever, and you think about it when they do calendar time, it is, you are the star of the day if you get to go put the number up on the calendar, right?

You are, you are the man if you get to go up and pull, put the, hey, it's raining outside, let's put the umbrella up on the weather chart today. I mean, like, kids live for that. But then all of a sudden, at some point, it's, you know, if we, if you had eighth graders, ninth graders, you go here, you're going to put the, the, the, the rain cloud thing on the, I'm not doing that, but you're doing it in a different way with things like the sword, with the prayer leader and, and things like that.

You're basically. Evolving the, the, the weather chart, the things like that for [00:13:00] older kids to keep it cool and to keep it relevant to them. And so I think that's something that is, and we were talking about before, just, just because kids get to be a certain age doesn't mean that they don't want to stop enjoying school. very much do. But I think sometimes we stop making it enjoyable for them and, and we, and we miss the mark on them. And just because they're getting older doesn't mean that they still don't love coming to school and seeing their friends and learning and growing. They very much want to do that.

And so there's ways that we can, Keep those things interesting for them by doing the kind of things that you're talking about right here right, right, irrelevant. And I guess the other thing too, I would say is, because you're talking about that first year teacher out there. If you are a first or second year teacher out there, and I think this is one of the things that gets people in trouble.

Don't compare yourself to that 25 year teacher. They, they have so many tools in their toolbox from lessons that they've done and they know what has worked for them and what hasn't worked for them. Be you. Find what works for you. Because if you try to be [00:14:00] that teacher down the hall who has it all together, you know, it might not work for you.

You've got to find your own path for those things. And so, don't compare yourself to that 25 year teacher because they've done this longer than you, but you have ideas that you're coming out with that are fresh and new that that 25 year teacher could learn from you on. And so that's just where it of learning from each other, I would say.

Yeah, in the first year, teachers not only thinking like of the lesson they're trying to deliver. They're also trying to figure out classroom management on the fly. You know, you're trying to do that exact same time. So one thing I, I failed to mention earlier, it's kind of one of the most important points I want to make for sure to all teachers is, is kind of this phrase of, and we've heard it before.

Nobody cares how much you know until they know how much you care. And that like to come into the school year and you might not have all the fancy lessons, you might not have the best classroom management, you might be kind of your own little wildfire. Dumpster fire is what I was trying to say. You might be your own little dumpster fire [00:15:00] each day.

And I just surviving day to day, which was. First, second, third year for me, for sure. But if the kids know that you care personally about each of them, that's a game changer and classroom management, you know, that's out the window. You don't have to worry about that. If the kids know, like you really care about them, then they want to, you know, they want to care for you too.

They're not going to keep cutting up in class or doing this and that. You have the one on one conversations with them if you need to about behavior. You talk to the parents if you need to about behavior, you shore some things up if you need to. But really. If you can just show them from day one that you love them and you care for them, you're here for them, you're going to keep working with them.

You're not going to give up on them, even when they're cutting up all day long. That's going to carry you through the year for sure.

it makes a huge impact and it's, you know, I always say it's like a bank account making deposits and withdrawals. If you make a lot of deposits in the bank account and the kids know you care about them, when you do have to make that withdrawal to bring them in [00:16:00] and kind of say, Hey, the behavior's got to stop here, things like that.

I know that you cared about me when I was doing well. So now I'm going to hear what you're saying about my behavior right now. And I know you're not just out to get me. I know it's not a revenge thing. I know it's not a, Hey, you know, we, we made a lot of deposits here in terms of things that you were doing very well.

And now I'm going to call your attention to something maybe that we could use some improvement on. I think that message is much better received when that investment has been made without question.

And one of the ways I got there, and I'm embarrassed to say my, my quote with this is it took me 13 years to figure this out. And that is like to develop that rapport with students, to, to make that connection and build that relationship. To let them know that you care about them, you love them, you're interested in them.

For years, I would, you know, try the discussion starters. I would like, oh, did you see the Chiefs game last night? To the boys, or to the girls, like, oh, have you listened to this song yet? Or, what'd you think of this? Or, like, I'd hear them talking about something, I'd [00:17:00] be the awkward teacher. Be like, oh, what about that?

And, you know, at some point as you get older and you're the older teacher, they're like yeah, we don't really want to chat with you about that. Right. That's where our friends were chatting about that. Like, do you really know anything about that? And so I, again, like coming up on year 14 of teaching.

So 13 years through the, through teaching and I was thinking like, you know what, I want to start the year off where I let these kids know my new students, like I'm here for you, I'm interested in you, like I care for you. But I don't want to be the awkward teacher who's like trying to like, Bring up discussion questions and make it a forced thing.

And so, or just like throwing things out there that they have no interest in whatsoever. And so the Holy Spirit kind of whispered in my ear one night when I was lesson planning, like. Why don't you just ask them what they're most interested in? Oh, yeah, that's a, that's a good idea. And so

tell you.

life, my 14th year of teaching, I created an assignment that they had on day one of school, which is called passions and prayers.

It was [00:18:00] really simple. It was a piece of paper. One side, there was three boxes. The other side, there were three boxes on page one. I wanted students, I said, Hey, I want to get to know you this year. And one of those things is like, I like to hear what you're most interested in. So I said, the prompt was, what are three things that you are so passionate about that you would be willing to talk to anybody about?

Stranger in the elevator, and the stranger brings this up, like, what is it that you'd be like, oh yeah, let me tell you about that. So I write three things down there, and then write three prayer intentions you have for the year. First of all, the prayer intentions are great, because then I can take those and I can pray for my students specifically all year long.

Secondly, the prayer intentions sometimes give you a little insights just in their life, and maybe, oh, like, I'm really struggling with anxiety. You have no idea as a teacher on a typical day that a student's struggling with that, so. It kind of gives you a little insights there, but then the passions question, it just like creates all the topics for you.

Like I'm thinking one student specifically, she wrote down that she was [00:19:00] really passionate about sharks. And I was like, I would have never brought up the topic of sharks with this person. I would have tried to bring up this topic or this topic and they would have all failed. But she wrote that down. And I told my students straight up was like, I don't want to have good conversations with you during the year.

But I don't want to talk about things that I want to talk about. I want to hear about things that you're interested in. So they knew that I would show up eventually and talk about these things. And so I just said, Hey tell me more about sharks and like your passion for them. And she went off for like 10 minutes and this is a quiet student went off for about 10 minutes and like, Oh, you know, shark week during the year, national geographic and this, and that, I think this is so cool.

And it's like, this is awesome. And that. You know, five, 10 minute conversation, even if it's shorter, that means the world to those students, and that means the world for your relationship with that student for the whole rest of the year and their behavior in class, how much they're going to listen to you, how hard they're going to work for you, you name it.

So to have just a whole supply of topics specifically to each student to already go off of, [00:20:00] like, again, the Holy spirit came up with the idea. I just kind of followed through.

you, you were the vessel.

exactly.

You Well, and, and, and I think too, as a, as a teacher and I had a friend of mine say this to me a few, a few months ago, and it's, and it has stuck with me. Okay. And, and he, he did a lot of traveling, but he said, whenever I would travel somewhere, he said, I already know my story.

I wanna hear your story. Okay. I want to know what you're interested in. I know what I'm interested in. Okay. And as teachers, we know what our interests are. We're adults. Okay. We, we, we know where we're at. We've, we've had more life experiences with a lot of things. We know where our interests lie. But for our kids, they're still finding those things out.

And when we can bring things to their level, to talk to them about something that they're passionate about it opens up a world of possibilities in terms of them growing in their faith, because it's like, wow, this guy really, he asked me, even a conversation about sharks can lead to so much more in terms of growth, in terms [00:21:00] of faith development that it's, that it's, it's amazing.

So. Let me ask this question to you because we've talked a lot about the kids, but oftentimes you know, kids come to Catholic school and, and there is the work that we are doing in the school, but such a big part of their faith journey happens outside of the school at home. And, and sometimes we, we, we have parents who say, Hey, listen, the most important topic, most important subject that my kids can get in school is going to be that Catholic faith.

But then there's others that are sending their kids to school because it's not a public school. And the faith component of things is, hey, it's just another class for them. It's the same thing as math and language arts and things like that. And sometimes it's, I hate to use the word, it's seen as a blow off class to some of our parents, but it's not something that's really important to them.

How do we change that? How did you as a teacher get those parents excited [00:22:00] about the faith? Because I think sometimes, even with our own kids, our kids are the ones evangelizing the parents. When the kids would come home from school and say, Hey, we went to confession today. I received the Sacrament of Reconciliation today.

Sometimes it gets the parents going, well, I haven't been in reconciliation in about four years, you know, or, or, you know, hey, Father said at, at school mass today about you know, this is happening on Sunday. How come we didn't go to that? And it forces those parents to have those kind of conversations themselves.

How do you partner with parents to bring the faith to life, both in and out of the classroom? Because otherwise you're fighting a battle for what they're getting outside. You, you get them for five hours a week, six hours a week, whatever it might be, and they go home and they're home for a whole lot more than that.

Yeah. So first of all, I'd say you can only do as much as you can do. And so there, I, I really try to focus on like, you know, I've got my students in my [00:23:00] classroom each week. They're their son, you know, their parents, sons and daughters, like I'm going to take care of them as best I can. Part of taking care of them is teach them the fullness of the faith and the joy of the faith and being a saint and all that kind of stuff.

And I pray to God that that's backed up at home. But I know it's not always backed up at home. So any like personal interactions I would have with parents, I would, I would want to share like what we're doing in school, how great their kids are doing invite them to any activities that are going on, like ask them point blank like, Hey, what have your kids shared about religion class lately?

And a lot of times being a middle school religion teacher, a lot of the parents like they haven't shared anything. Like, okay. And that's kind of, then I would offer the challenge like, Well, can you please, for me, Like, ask him, like, say that Mr. Aitchison gave me, the parent, the homework assignment to ask you about five things you've learned so far this year in religion class.

Five things you've done. And it's all kind of tying into Christian Smith. He's a Notre Dame sociologist, and I actually printed this out because I thought [00:24:00] you might ask this. But he did a big study on, like, why are all these kids who grow up Catholic, even in good Catholic homes, leaving the faith down the road?

And one of his answers for why so many American teens give up their faith as they get older was this. Here's his quote. One of the strongest factors associated with older teens keeping their faith as young adults was having parents who talked about religion and spirituality. And so I remember reading that and that hit me like a ton of bricks and just kind of thinking. Alright, I can talk to the parents myself, I can talk to the kids myself, but the magic is really going to happen when the parents and the kids talk together about the faith. It's like, how can I do that? And And so this is kind of old school, some of the things that I did, because you can send so many assignments and so many things digitally now, and parents can just get the email or get the message through the grading program, whatever.

But I did a lot of pen and paper things like, you've got to take this home, and part of the homework [00:25:00] is, You've got to discuss this with your parents, share, you know, share what you did here share, you know, your responses to these questions, or like a summary, or like, here's your test, like, here's your essay question that you did a great job on, for instance, like, I want your parents to see that and read it.

And not only that, but I'm going to write down on the form that says you need to sign here, parents, like, before you sign this, please have a three to five minute conversation with them about what they're learning in class and about what this is about. And I did a lot of that throughout the years more so later after I read this quote, but it was saying like, I want to get them talking.

That was easier when I taught confirmation for eighth grade, I can just plug in more things like direct parent interviews, I had them do sponsor interviews for sure, but it also was like, you know what? Their sponsor might be around a little bit of the time, but the parents, like you said, around all the time.

So I created parent interviews that the kids had to do as well. So I would tell them like parents and kids, like go out for coffee, go out to your kid's favorite restaurant, [00:26:00] go out for ice cream, take the interview questions with you and, and have fun with it. And so I did it in kind of layers I had just for fun questions.

So again, like just to kind of warm parents up and warm kids up, like what's your favorite animal, what's your favorite meal, favorite movie of all time. And sometimes, like, kids have no idea what their parents answers are to these. So that's kind of a fun thing to start with. But then it would, it would slowly get a little bit deeper to, like, describe a few little slice of heaven moments that you've experienced in your life.

Times when you were, like, the most at peace, or really truly happy and fully alive. And that could really open up doors for parents to share some pretty amazing moments that their kids might have never known about. And then I would have more direct faith questions like, who was your confirmation saint when you were my age?

Like, why'd you pick this person? Or what's your favorite prayer to pray? Or why? Or how do you pray today? Is that different than how you prayed when you were my age? What have been some of the most profound spiritual moments of your own life? Or like, I, my [00:27:00] favorite one is this one. God wants us all to be saints, To that end, mom and dad, what advice would you give me to be a saint, both now and as I get older, which is implying that the parents know, and I have some wisdom here to share.

So again, it was, it was just opportunities that I tried to create for kids to take their stuff home and have faith conversations with their parents. And I don't know how those conversations always went. I know some parents are probably like, I'm busy, just sign the paper. But I know for some of them, they would come back and they would talk to me and say, that was great.

So impactful in our relationship or that was such a great like I'm so glad we got to do that because I've never talked About these things with my kids. I didn't know they were learning about this in class. Da da da da da, it just opened up all kinds of kind of beautiful doors to, to a lot of grace, I think.

And sometimes I don't think they know how to have those conversations with the kids, okay? Because sometimes they're not comfortable outwardly expressing their faith or outwardly even leading prayer, okay? And so [00:28:00] I think that when you do that, you give them the opportunity to just be a little more comfortable.

In, in what it is that they're doing and you create those opportunities for those amazing, amazing conversations between a child and a parent or maybe a child and a grandparent or whatever the case might be. And boom, you have, you have opportunities for the faith to just come alive in our kids.

And I think that's, I think that's amazing. So I know one of the things that you have personally, you, you have, you know, we talked about the Catholic quotations before having 2000 quotes. I know you have assembled just a wealth of resources for Catholic school teachers everywhere. And I want to give you the opportunity just to kind of mention what that is and what teachers can find on, on that on that

yeah, thanks, John. Yeah, CatholicReligionTeacher. com. It was actually born from my students. They are the ones who had the idea. I had all my middle school students would go off to high school. They would come back and say, Mr. Aitchison, can you Switch schools and come teach [00:29:00] theology at our high school because we have the most boring teachers the most boring lessons Like we want we want to do the lessons that you taught us like as I know I can't I say, okay Can you at least like share your your lesson plans with the teachers?

I was like, yeah, that might be a little awkward just to email them. They said we'll make a website Just put it out there and they planted the seed and after student after student kind of mentioning this from different in high schools. I said, okay, I'll make the website. So I, I bought the domain, made the website.

One version 1. 0 is not the most beautiful, but I, I put my lesson plans out there. And I was getting emails from teachers literally all around the world, any English speaking country, Ghana, Australia, Ireland, Canada, you name it. Teachers are saying like, my students love this lesson that you had. They love this.

I love this. Can we get more? Thank you so much for this. This is so great. Oh, okay. Maybe we're onto something here. And so yeah, fast forward. It's now version 2. 0. But yeah, CatholicReligionTeacher. com [00:30:00] is a place for a number of resources that teachers can purchase. I make a living partially by selling these lesson plans now.

So I support my family of four and my wife. But also I have a ton of free resources for teachers too so teachers can go to the website, there's a sign up there, I don't email too many crazy emails and fill up inboxes, but I give you free access to my freebie vault it's full of, I think it's 25 resources right now that any teacher can download.

including a handful of those that I talked about today. I also offer kind of fun giveaways throughout the year. So we do a little March Madness contest for religion teachers. We do a Super Bowl pick em contest. I do an All Saints Day giveaway all kinds of little things throughout the year just to kind of cheer teachers up, get them together in a digital way, and support them as best I can.

And it's a great site. It's a great resource. I would strongly, good. I'm gonna let you say it again because I want to make sure the teachers don't rewind and try to get it. [00:31:00] So, the site address again,

Yeah, it's CatholicReligionTeacher. com. It's mainly religion teacher resources and it's mostly probably 4th grade and up. I taught, again, a little bit of 2nd grade my first year, but then it was mostly middle school after that. There's also, I'm in the works right now of creating a poster store, so that'll be catholicstickersandposters.

com eventually. It's in the works right now, but I sell a lot of posters that I've created over the years. Because we didn't talk about that and we're probably out of time, but the posters that I put on my classroom wall were some of the most powerful lessons that I, I taught my students. So students were checking out and like, oh, this class is boring.

They would look at the, the poster on the wall that had a, this is maybe a little crass, but it had a big picture of dog poop on it. And it said, Sin is like chocolate covered dog poop. Students will not forget something like

they will not forget that. No, that's in their memory.

Totally, yeah, and so I created a number of posters like that, again, kind of coming from my love of Catholic quotes.

I would find these quotes and say, [00:32:00] I want to make this a poster so I can have my classroom so kids see this quote every single day of their life. When they're in my classroom and they walk away with this lesson. So yeah, I sell a number of posters for teachers to put up if they want. Yeah, I just, I love

I know teachers. Yeah, and I know teachers are always out there looking for lessons for this subject or that subject and and in terms of teaching the faith This is no different Except this place. They're all in one site So I highly recommend check it out. I think you will definitely definitely Spend more than a couple minutes on there and just gaining a lot of valuable resources and bringing a lot of Wonderful wonderful tools and ideas into your classroom.

So Greg, I can't thank you enough for being on the podcast today. I've really enjoyed our conversation. I really enjoy hearing about what you're doing to bring the faith to life for our kids and for our families. And keep up the amazing work that you're doing.

Thanks, John. You too. Really appreciate this.