Hello! I'm Kristen, your new Director of Ethical Education (DEE)! I'm thrilled to be here to help manage our Sunday School program and support our community. 

My goal as DEE is to build on Kimberly’s amazing work over the years to start the next generation on their journey to choose—and practice—ethical living.I see two critical activities in this goal. We need to teach kids, and we need to support parents. 

I see two critical activities in this goal. We need to teach kids, and we need to support parents.

In the Fall, we’re planning to offer two courses — Every Day is Earth Day and Comparative Religion. We know it’s going to be a transitional year and, although we’d love to see every family every Sunday, we’re all figuring out what our new lives integrated into society, both Ethical and broader, look like. For me and others that’s included some fits and starts. Every Day is Earth Day gives us an opportunity to have something for kids to do that doesn’t build on the previous week’s curriculum or require a certain number of kids to be effective.

While we chose Every Day is Earth Day to be low-key, we chose Comparative Religion to respond to what our parents and kids need this year. We’ll get to that in a moment, but first I have my first ask for you all:

If you’d like to teach any of these curricula next year, please reach out to me at dee@noves.org.

The second thing that I’m focusing on this year is providing support for parents. This is a hard time to be a parent, and I know that because I’m a parent and it’s hard. The news is hard, finding like-minded parents with kids who you want your kid to learn from is hard, parenting in a pandemic is hard. It’s all hard.

I want to provide programs that support parents, regardless of whether their kids are able to or want to attend Sunday School. We’re working on that through the summer with monthly meetups. We’re holding one on June 25 at Cox Farms and another on July 30. I’d also like to create an online community for parents and maybe hold some discussion groups.

These ideas are based solely on the things that I would want. I want to go to Cox Farms and see friends so that I can talk to other adults while my daughter, Josie, plays and feeds goats. I’d love a local online discussion group where I can go to ask questions or get advice about raising ethical children. I’d love a Zoom chat where I don’t have to leave my house but I can see some friends and chat or learn something new. However, that’s me and I’m building this community for all of us — not just me. So here’s my second ask:

Tell me what you want out of this community. You can send me your thoughts at dee@noves.org. If you’re willing to grab coffee, either virtually or in person, let me know and we’ll set something up!

Thank you all for having me and for letting me do this work. And thank you to Kimberly, who helped make me feel like part of this community, has helped form and strengthen the connections between our NoVES families, and has been an incredible guide to this role. I’m so grateful for her guidance and for all of the incredible thought and work that she’s put into building this community.