Unitarian Universalist Church of Palo Alto

From the Asst. Minister of Religious Education

February 28, 2010
Rev. Dan Harper

Recently, the Children and Youth Religious Education Committee (CYRE) and I have been evaluating our programs. We’re about halfway through the congregational year, so it’s a good time to check in and see how things are going.

Last month, Joe Chee of the CYRE Committee asked parents and guardians with young people at UUCPA to fill out evaluation forms. The form he used is designed to do three things: (1) track feedback so that we can look for long-term trends over several evaluation cycles; (2) find immediate problem areas; (3) invite open-ended comments.

Via email, Joe invited 130 parents/guardians to fill out the evaluation form online. 21 people filled out the form, and this response rate of 16% is typical. We asked respondents to rate their children’s experience at UUCPA; then we asked respondents to rate their own experience at UUCPA on the same scale. On the whole, parents/guardians rated their own experience better than their children’s experience. While our sample size was too small to draw any real conclusions, we should be watching to see if we are serving our adults better than our young people.

When asked what the strengths of UUCPA are, more than one person mentioned dedicated teachers, the curriculum, and the sense of community. When asked what could be improved, more than one parent/guardian mentioned they would like a better connection with what’s going on in classes, and a desire that both children and youth programs could have more participants. Some parents/guardians mentioned specific problems, and we are contacting those families directly to see what can be done. Finally, more than one person mentioned that they liked having their children attend the first 15 minutes of each worship service.

That’s what parents and guardians think and feel about UUCPA. What about the kids? On Sunday, February 14, I carried out an evaluation process with 12 children from grades K-3 (using a process described on my web site at www.danielharper.org/resource4.htm). When asked what they remembered about UUCPA, nearly all the children talked about Sunday school activities; the only other activities they mentioned were drinking hot chocolate on the patio, and attending the worship service. Their favorite UUCPA activity was drinking hot chocolate (8 out of 12 votes), followed by reading stories, playing games, and opening class rituals (check-in and lighting a chalice). A few, but not many, children mentioned specific topics they had learned about.

Evaluation is an ongoing process, and these two evaluations are merely snapshots in time of how adults and children feel about UUCPA. I see room for improvement in what children get out of UUCPA. At the same time, several people also expressed approval of the general direction of our programs. When we do the next evaluation, we’ll get a better sense of how things are going.