Special needs Sunday School teachers in Alabama Baptist churches adapt and innovate curriculum to teach the Bible to children with special needs.
LifeWay Christian Resources’ approach is to write general Sunday School literature so teachers can adapt it for use with children having special needs, according to Marci Campbell, special education specialist, LifeWay Church Resources.
She said LifeWay’s goal is to avoid labeling children who have special needs and offer help to teachers by spreading throughout its literature ideas and teacher tips on to how to deal with children with short attention spans, for instance. Attention spans could be an issue brought about by certain developmental disabilities such as autism, but it could also apply to children without disabilities.
LifeWay offers a Sunday School curriculum specifically for special needs adults, but addresses to some extent special needs curriculum for children in its “Family Bible Series,” written for the whole church Sunday School, Campbell explained.
Lack of literature
She said another reason there is more curriculum for adults with special needs is they are going through fewer changes than children and are more settled into adjusting to their disabilities.
“It would be very difficult to do an overall curriculum for children given all the developmental issues, different ages, abilities and disabilities,” she said.
“The amount of literature available [specifically] for special needs children is sparse,” said Sherron Culpepper, consultant for the Alabama Baptist State Board of Missions.
This lack in literature stems from a growing movement away from classes exclusively for the developmentally disabled to assimilation into regular classes.
This mainstreaming is why many publishers are cutting back on what they offer, Culpepper claims.
She said although there are situations where a separate curriculum for special needs children could be the best choice, often mainstreaming within regular curriculum is preferred.
Campbell and Culpepper said the best approach is for churches to offer mainstreaming and special classes. There are usually times within the same Sunday morning that a child might be best served by being in a mainstream class for a while, then moving to a special needs class. Teachers knowing as much as possible about each child with special needs is essential for providing effective Sunday School ministry to them.
Church staff members from Alabama Baptist churches say being innovative with existing curriculum and filling specific needs are the keys to effective special needs ministry.
According to Charles Uptain, minister to children at Calvary Baptist Church, Dothan, his church has offered a special needs Sunday School class for at least four years.
“As far as curriculum we use the regular Sunday School materials from LifeWay that are written for 3- to 4-year-olds. The teacher takes it and presents it in such a way that the kids can get the most out of it,” he said.
“We seem to have had an influx of kids who have come in — some with autism and with other difficulties,” Uptain said. “They have a real hard time being in a class with other 4- and 5-year-olds and getting anything out of it.”
To alleviate this problem the church is beginning a preschool special needs class with the help of church members Sam and Cathy Irvin, a couple who have a special needs teenager who benefitted from Calvary’s approach to special needs.
Kathy McCown, special needs department director at Whitesburg Baptist Church, Huntsville, said, “We use the kindergarten literature for Sunday School, find curriculum ideas on the Web, and I have some of my own resources from teaching.”
She said they always try to cover a Bible story, have a memory verse and do crafts. Teaching a memory verse often involves visual activities such as making a paper chain with each link having a different word of the verse on it.
Because many of their special needs children cannot speak or have limited speech, the teachers use puppets to tell them stories, with the idea being, “they can’t talk, so the puppets do the talking for them,” McCown said.
Church leaders, teachers and parents can find approaches to special needs ministry in LifeWay’s Special Education Today quarterly magazine, which offers a balance of features, news items, resources and the ABC’s of salvation in every issue, according to Campbell.
Education needed
She would like to see the magazine have a wider audience than parents of special needs children and teachers.
“We would like for it to be displayed and distributed throughout churches so that the fear of the unknown is taken away — fear often disappears when there is knowledge,” she said.
Another general resource for Sunday School curriculum that has a section devoted to special needs is “Essentials for Excellence.”
This is a book with resources for general leaders in the church, but also has a CD-ROM in the back of the book.
The CD contains additional information, including 25 leadership articles that give help in teaching special needs children. On the CD is a step-by-step plan for a church to begin a special needs ministry, she said. Necessary forms associated with special needs ministry are included on the CD.
Attending conferences and networking can be ways to find ideas to approach special needs ministry, Culpepper said.
One group that offers conferences is the Baptist Developmental Disabilities Ministry Fellowship, based in Georgia.
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