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Jared Dees

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March 2019 Project & Goals Report

By Jared Dees

Each month I like to assess my time on creative projects and progress on specific goals in my work as a creative entrepreneur and author. Here is my report for March 2019.

My 2019 Goals

My One Word: Together

Professional Goals: 

77% / Double the number of members of The Religion Teacher (December 2017 to present) (+0)

3,162/5,000 copies sold of Christ in the Classroom (+unknown)

131,920/465,00 words for kids (A part of my #1millionwordsforkids goal) (+19,352)

0/4 new published works of fiction on Amazon.com (+0 published books)

4/7 paid speaking gigs (+1 gigs)

Personal Goals: 

15/100 books read (+5 books)

2/73 Books / Read the entire Bible from beginning to end. (+0 books read)

17/100 30-minute workouts (+6 workouts)

Incomplete / Play Bruce Springsteen’s “Thunder Road” on the harmonica.

How I Spent My Time in March 2019

I track every minute of time I spend working on projects using an app called Toggl (here is why). Here is a list of the top ten projects I spent the most time on last month:

  1. 19:22 – The Religion Teacher Email & Customer Service
  2. 14:48 – Los Angeles Religious Education Congress Workshop
  3. 9:57 – The Religion Teacher’s Parable Worksheet Pack
  4. 7:52 – Beatitales Fables
  5. 7:30 – Daily Review
  6. 6:07 – Last Supper Skit Script and Lesson Plan
  7. 5:08 – Weekly Review
  8. 4:29 – 2018 Taxes 
  9. 4:05 – Morning Preview
  10. 3:29 – Social Media Content and Communication

Total Time: 113:36

March 2019 Highlights & Lesson Learned

Los Angeles Religious Education Congress

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It was great to be back at @lacongress today! This is my eleventh visit to California for this event and the number of faith-filled people here is always inspiring. Thanks to everyone who came out for my workshop on Teaching Faith with Fiction. Every Day, Every Class, Every Student, an Encounter with Christ! Thanks to @avemariapress (booth 501) for all their support. All my books are there this weekend. It feels weird not working the booth for the first time since 2009. Also big shout outs to the authors featured during the presentation. Thank you for sharing your gifts and your work of fiction to inspire faith in young people: @lisahendey @literarily_love_kidlit @maxlucado @matthewpaulturner @sdsmithereens @themikejthomas @a.j.cattapan @holyheroes #recongress #recongress2019 #faithwithfiction #christintheclassroom #encounterchrist #encountereducator #cslewis #thelionthewitchandthewardrobe #thegivingtree #thetaleofthethreetrees #beatitales #lectiodivinalessonplanning #tollelege

A post shared by Jared Dees (@jareddees) on Mar 22, 2019 at 5:23pm PDT

I was blessed with another invitation to speak at the Los Angeles Religious Education Congress this year. It is the largest gathering of Catholics at a conference in the United States. I had a full room of about 300 people who came to hear me give a new workshop about teaching faith with fiction. I was really pleased by the response. 

It was a strange experience for me to go for the first time as a speaker and not an employee for Ave Maria Press. I’ve been going to the event for ten years, but this one felt very different. It was a great, but short trip and I was glad to be back at home after only a few short days out there. 

The Religion Teacher’s Parable Activity Pack

As I was brainstorming ideas for new products to serve religious educators through The Religion Teacher, I realized that I was only about a dozen worksheets away from having a full collection of handouts for every parable.

So, I put in some time creating new worksheets for young people to use to help meditate and pray with the parables. I was glad to finish these up and I look forward to creating more worksheets for the many more stories in the Bible that I haven’t covered yet. 

The Religion Teacher’s Parable Worksheet Pack is available here. 

Skit Scripts

I was hitting many birds with one stone with this project. I couldn’t find a skit I liked online for the Last Supper to use in my own catechesis class, so I wrote one of my own. I used the words to count towards my #1millionwordsforkids project and published it as a test resource on The Religion Teacher. 

I was really pleased by the response both from my students and from the many religious educators who used the script this year. It has already been downloaded more than a thousand times. I’m looking forward to writing more skits for more Scripture stories. 

I wasn’t planning to write plays, but there is clearly a need for them in religious education classrooms and it’s something I’m going continue to do. In fact, I’ve had a few emails asking if some short stories I wrote could be turned into plays. 

When I started writing fiction, I had no idea there would be a need for scripts for kids. It is something I could have only figured out by putting in the time and doing the work by testing out new ideas. 

The Religion Teacher’s Tenth Birthday

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Happy 10 years to The Religion Teacher! On March 12, 2009 I hit "publish" for the first time on the Internet. I had no idea what I was doing. All I knew was that I wanted to help religion teachers and catechists find practical resources to help them teach faith to young people. That mission has never changed, but it has taken on new forms over the years: from blog posts to books, email lists, videos, worksheets, workshops, webinars, online courses, and more. I simply cannot express how grateful I am to be able to do this work. I never imagined things would grow so big. God is good. I'm excited for the many more decades that will come. #thereligionteacher

A post shared by Jared Dees (@jareddees) on Mar 12, 2019 at 8:09am PDT

A decade! 

Wow. 

We were just a couple months away from the birth of our first child. I remember sitting in our living room with the computer on my lap when I hit publish for the first time. It’s funny looking back on moments like that. I didn’t have a grand vision for becoming a full-time author, at least not yet. I didn’t have big dreams or big goals. I simply wanted to share what worked for me. I thought there should be more and better resources for religious educators online, so I started creating and sharing them. 

I thought maybe I would be able to get a publishing company interested in hiring me to work for them someday. Seven months later, I got that job. 

Ten years later and that little blog turned into my full-time job. I had to leave the publishing company that had been my dream job ten years earlier. We’ve been very blessed.

God has a lot in store for you when you place your trust in him. 

April 25, 2019 Filed Under: Monthly Reports

About Jared Dees

Jared Dees is passionate about sharing practical resources to teach faith. He is best known for his website The Religion Teacher and is the author of many books including 31 Days to Becoming a Better Religious Educator, To Heal, Proclaim, and Teach, Praying the Angelus, Christ in the Classroom, and Beatitales: 80 Fables about the Beatitudes for Children.

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Jared Dees is passionate about sharing practical resources to teach faith. He is best known for his website The Religion Teacher and is the author of many books including 31 Days to Becoming a Better Religious Educator, To Heal, Proclaim, and Teach, Praying the Angelus, Christ in the Classroom, and Beatitales: 80 Fables about the Beatitudes for Children. See all of Jared's Books →

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