Windows and Mirrors

Unitarian Universalism views our members’ multiple perspectives as a blessing. In spirit, we embrace the contribution of diversity to our collective ability to pursue truth, fairness, justice and love. In practice, however, we often fail to embrace all the experiences and viewpoints in our communities as respectfully or as wholly as we might. Sometimes, we fail to even see differences among us. We seem most prone to gloss over differences when to acknowledge them requires acute self-examination and may lead to pain, shame, discomfort or guilt.

Windows and Mirrors nurtures children’s ability to identify their own experiences and perspectives and to seek out, care about and respect those of others. The sessions unpack topics that lend themselves to diverse experiences and perspectives—for example, faith heritage, public service, anti-racism and prayer. The program teaches that there are always multiple viewpoints and everyone’s viewpoint matters.

The metaphor of windows and mirrors represents the dynamic relationship among our awareness of self, our perceptions of others, and others’ perceptions of us. Beginning in Session 2, an ongoing art activity gives children a way to respond to the metaphor creatively and concretely. Participants do guided work on individual Window/Mirror Panels in each session to explore looking inward and looking outward in terms of the session’s topic. As a mirror, the panel reflects the individual child. As a window, it represents their view and connections beyond themselves to the congregation, other communities to which they belong and the world.

An important element of this program is to display participants’ Window/Mirror Panels collectively. The group may want to discuss whether, and if so how, they want the congregation to view the panels. The exhibit serves the congregation as a window into each and all of the children’s experiences and perspectives. It is also a testament to their learning. Although it is important that each participant complete a panel as an integral part of the program, it is equally important not to lose sight of the journey of each participant. The self-reflection and discussions are the heart of this program. The panels are the expression of each participant’s self-discovery process.

Your plan for creating and exhibiting the Window/Mirror Panels will determine the arts and crafts materials you purchase for this entire program. See Before You Start in this Introduction for planning guidance.

Be mindful of visually impaired participants. While the Windows and Mirrors program is based on a visual metaphor, activities can generally be adapted to incorporate tactile and other senses. Using alternate ways of “looking” will help the whole group understand the metaphor more deeply.

Unitarian Universalism is a faith we live in community, acknowledging and acting on our responsibility toward one another. We encourage one another’s search for truth and meaning. We affirm the interdependent web of which we are all a part. In Windows and Mirrors, children will learn that when we come together as Unitarian Universalists, we nurture our individual spirits and work to help heal the world; the two are inextricable.

The entire curriculum can be found here.

Our Whole Lives (OWL)

Our Whole Lives helps participants make informed and responsible decisions about their sexual health and behavior. It equips participants with accurate, age-appropriate information in six subject areas: human development, relationships, personal skills, sexual behavior, sexual health, and society and culture. Grounded in a holistic view of sexuality, Our Whole Lives provides not only facts about anatomy and human development, but helps participants to clarify their values, build interpersonal skills, and understand the spiritual, emotional, and social aspects of sexuality.

Our Whole Lives uses approaches that work. The curricula are based on theGuidelines for Comprehensive Sexuality Education produced by the National Guidelines Task Force, a group of leading health, education, and sexuality professionals assembled by the Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States (SIECUS).

Our Whole Lives covers topics and skills that both parents and students want to have available but schools are less likely to cover. The Kaiser Family Foundation has an interesting report on this subject called “Sex Education in America: A View from Inside the Nation’s Classrooms.” New national surveys are challenging the convention that Americans are reluctant to have sexual health issues taught in school, the surveys show that most parents, along with educators and students themselves, would expand sex education courses and curriculum.

The Our Whole Lives Values

• Self Worth
• Sexual Health
• Responsibility
• Justice and Inclusivity

Each level of Our Whole Lives Offers…

• Up-to-date information and honest, age-appropriate answers to all participants’ questions
• Activities to help participants clarify values and improve decision-making skills
• Effective group-building to create a safe and supportive peer group
• Education about sexual abuse, exploitation, and harassment
• Opportunities to critique media messages about gender and sexuality
• Acceptance of diversity
• Encouragement to act for justice
• A well-designed, teacher-friendly leaders’ guide
• Parent orientation programs that affirm parents as the primary sexuality educators of their children
• Sexuality and Our Faith, an optional religious component for Unitarian Universalist and United Church of Christ settings

Our Whole Lives is appropriate for use in a variety of congregational, school, and community settings, including classrooms, after-school programs, and youth groups. Although developed by two religious organizations, Our Whole Livescontains no religious references or doctrine. Religious references are contained in a Unitarian Universalist and United Church of Christ companion publication,Sexuality and Our Faith.

You can find more out here.

Faithful Journeys

Because ours is a creedless faith, defining what it means to be a Unitarian Universalist can be challenging. Our adults and youth often welcome such a challenge — indeed, a questioning spirit is part of our faith. Yet, our children need to learn who Unitarian Universalists are, what we believe, and how we live in faith. Faithful Journeys equips them with language and experiences to answer these questions and help them develop a strong Unitarian Universalist identity.

Participants embark on a pilgrimage of faith, exploring how Unitarian Universalism translates into life choices and everyday actions. In each session, they hear historic or contemporary examples of Unitarian Universalist faith in action. Stories about real people model how participants can activate their own personal agency — their capacity to act faithfully as Unitarian Universalists — in their own lives, and children have regular opportunities to share and affirm their own stories of faithful action. Through sessions structured around the Unitarian Universalist Principles, Faithful Journeys demonstrates that our Principles are not a dogma, but a credo that individuals can affirm with many kinds of action. Over the course of the program, children discover a unity of faith in the many different ways Unitarian Universalists, including themselves, can act on our beliefs.

In the last session, the central story will be provided by individuals in your congregation whom you will invite to share their own experiences with the group. The children will have previously heard examples of Unitarian Universalist faithful living through the centuries. Now bring it home, and share the faithful journeys of people in your own congregation.

All sessions include hands-on activities as well as guided discussion, reflection, and self-expression to engage participants with various learning styles. Sessions that rely heavily on verbal learning and expression also offer alternate activities that may better reach learners who are more active. Many core activities suggest adaptations to address different abilities as well as learning styles. Craft each session using activities you think will best suit the children in your Faithful Journeys group.

Each session of this program includes rituals: sharing opening words, a chalice-lighting, centering in silence before hearing a story, and singing. You may also choose to add a ritual of lighting candles of joys and sorrows (Session 1, Alternate Activity 1). Most young children love ritual, and these spiritual activities form an important element of the program.

The entire curriculum can be found here.

Wonderful Welcome

Welcome. Welcome in love. Welcome in friendship.Welcome in faith. The Wonderful Welcome curriculum engages and challenges leaders and children alike to explore how and why we are willing to welcome others into our lives. We welcome not only strangers, but family, our peers, our neighbors and even entities that are not people such as our animal friends and nature itself.

How do we welcome? We welcome by sharing intangible gifts, those positive qualities which we all have inside us such as kindness, love, invitation, covenant and empathy. In this program, children learn to articulate and express a variety of intangible gifts, empowering them to share these gifts with others.

The intangible gifts explored in Wonderful Welcome are all components of welcoming itself, a core Unitarian Universalist value. This program helps children understand and practice other values central to Unitarian Universalism such as friendship, hospitality, and fairness. It offers children safe, positive and intentional ways to relate to one another, the people in their families, and the world around them as they investigate how they use gifts they can’t see or touch to welcome others into their lives. Children will think about the intangible gifts they bring into the world, and the intangible gifts they receive. When and how do they get love from others? When and how do they show empathy? Who has given them the gift of friendship? How do they show that they want to be someone’s friend? What does “helping” look like?

Each session begins with a Wonder Box that contains a symbol of the session’s theme. The Wonder Box engages the children’s curiosity and encourages a spirit of inquiry and reflection. In the first session, the box is empty to introduce the concept of ” intangible.” Throughout the program, a Wonder Box poster serves as a continual reminder of the gifts explored in each session.

You can find the curriculum in its entirety here.

Our Whole Lives (OWL)

Our Whole Lives helps participants make informed and responsible decisions about their sexual health and behavior. It equips participants with accurate, age-appropriate information in six subject areas: human development, relationships, personal skills, sexual behavior, sexual health, and society and culture. Grounded in a holistic view of sexuality, Our Whole Lives provides not only facts about anatomy and human development, but helps participants to clarify their values, build interpersonal skills, and understand the spiritual, emotional, and social aspects of sexuality.

Our Whole Lives uses approaches that work. The curricula are based on theGuidelines for Comprehensive Sexuality Education produced by the National Guidelines Task Force, a group of leading health, education, and sexuality professionals assembled by the Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States (SIECUS).

Our Whole Lives covers topics and skills that both parents and students want to have available but schools are less likely to cover. The Kaiser Family Foundation has an interesting report on this subject called “Sex Education in America: A View from Inside the Nation’s Classrooms.” New national surveys are challenging the convention that Americans are reluctant to have sexual health issues taught in school, the surveys show that most parents, along with educators and students themselves, would expand sex education courses and curriculum.

The Our Whole Lives Values

• Self Worth
• Sexual Health
• Responsibility
• Justice and Inclusivity

Each level of Our Whole Lives Offers…

• Up-to-date information and honest, age-appropriate answers to all participants’ questions
• Activities to help participants clarify values and improve decision-making skills
• Effective group-building to create a safe and supportive peer group
• Education about sexual abuse, exploitation, and harassment
• Opportunities to critique media messages about gender and sexuality
• Acceptance of diversity
• Encouragement to act for justice
• A well-designed, teacher-friendly leaders’ guide
• Parent orientation programs that affirm parents as the primary sexuality educators of their children
• Sexuality and Our Faith, an optional religious component for Unitarian Universalist and United Church of Christ settings

Our Whole Lives is appropriate for use in a variety of congregational, school, and community settings, including classrooms, after-school programs, and youth groups. Although developed by two religious organizations, Our Whole Livescontains no religious references or doctrine. Religious references are contained in a Unitarian Universalist and United Church of Christ companion publication,Sexuality and Our Faith.

You can find more out here.