Catholic school teachers will take a fresh look at their religious education materials this school year, as a step in the process of adopting new religious education standards promulgated by the diocesan Office of Catechesis.

"Our hope is that this will help us to have some consistency across the diocese about what's being taught in our Catholic schools and in our parish formation programs, so that by the end of eighth grade our students have a solid foundation of the Catholic faith, both in terms of knowledge and in terms of practice," said Jonathan Sullivan, diocesan director of Catechetical Services. Sullivan and a committee of religious, staff, parish directors of religious education and educators compiled and released the standards this April in time for the 2015-2016 school year.

According to information from Sullivan and the diocesan website, the standards cover pre-K through eighth grade education, and cover nine core religious "strands" on sacred Scripture, creed, the sacraments, liturgy, morality, prayer and spirituality, ecclesiology, parish life and vocation. The strands are further defined into basic tenants of the faith, and act as an outline for a systematic building of religious concepts throughout a child's time in school; comparable USCCB standards for high school religious education are also promoted by the Office of Catechesis.

An adapted version of the pre-K through eighth grade standards will be written in the future for parish programs, once the Catechesis office receives feedback from schools and compiles a complete list of texts.

"We would like the teachers to start looking at what they're doing this year in comparison to what the standards say they should be doing, try to check off what they're doing, and see what they need to add," said Jean Johnson, diocesan superintendent of Catholic schools. "It's more of an observation to see if there are any voids or vacancies in areas that need to be addressed and see if they need to be covered, or even to see if they're covering the same topic too many years.

"Hopefully by the time the child has gone through pre-K through eighth, we've helped to move them along to our goal: to be disciples of Christ. Then the high school takes them on from there," Johnson said.

Because the standards are so extensive, Sullivan expects them to be gradually adopted. "The implementation process is going to take some time; I think we're trying to make that as easy as possible for them. So far the feedback I've seen has been positive," he said.

More information on the religious education standards is available from the Office of Catechetical Ministries, or on the diocesan website at www.dio.org/catechesis/religion-curriculum-standards.html.