CONFIRMATION: Images of Faith

I love supplemental curricula. One of the reasons I've never developed a confirmation curriculum is because I never teach anything directly as it's written. I haven't found a single curriculum that I find adequate both educationally as a teacher and in content. Most of the pastors I speak with would agree as they seem to create their own as well, which is why I wrote my book The Art of Teaching Confirmation. Whatever you use, please teach it well.

That said, there's a new supplemental curriculum out there through the CUENet (Concordia University Education Network) called Images of Faith. The problems I find with much of the confirmation curricula out there is that

1. it feels like it's written by people who haven't been in a classroom in 25 years (or ever) and are out of touch with children that age,
2. has too much reading for both the student and the teacher (as do many put out by the LCMS), and
3. are big on telling people what to say to students (scripting) and low on challenging, thought-provoking questions that make students think. 

Nobody is interested in reading a dissertation on the First Commandment before teaching it to 13 year old kids, especially if they're pastors who have been well-educated. This curriculum appears to have the same problem as the teacher notes for the First Commandment are 15 pages long with 7 of those pages student notes. That's quite a bit of work for a supplemental curriculum and seriously, no 12-14 year old is going to read all that. What this course does have, however, are some fantastic images.

What I would recommend as a professional educator is, if you intend to use this supplemental curriculum that has a number of pages of required reading, have the kids read the information at home before they get to class so that you can have them interact with the material in many and various ways in class.  Also, don't forget that a picture is worth a thousand words when it comes to memory so, whether or not you use this curriculum or any other, use images!