7th Grade MDI Virtual Capstone Week – MAY

Dear Principals,

We are all monitoring and adjusting during Covid-19 and that includes MDI! 27 MDI schools (almost 750 7th graders!) will enter in at some level the MDI Virtual Capstone Week to synthesize their individual and collective learning from their religion classes.  The MDI Capstone Week of reflections, activities and more allow our students to enter into prayer reflection on the following…. Who is my neighbor? Who is my neighbor during Covid-19?

The virtual MDI Day Week Experience!

Here is the link to the agenda, which includes all further links you and your students will need to have a successful MDI Week! Here is what is included and some of our reasoning:

  • We have expanded the one day experience to be 3 lessons held over the course of the week, as many of you have instructions to keep lessons to 40-50 minutes
  • Each day begins with a prayer
  • Then, we have 3 lessons, each of which should take about 40-50 minutes:
    • The first is an introduction and overview, with videos from Joe Cotton and Deacon Dennis Kelly, finishing with a worksheet to help your students process what they heard (and also for you to make sure that they actually watched the videos!)
    • The 2nd day includes videos of talks from 3 young adults (2 recent grads and one student at UW) of our Catholic schooling system, along with a worksheet to help your students process and make sure that they watched and a small “art” activity
    • The third day is planned to happen over a dinner with the family of the students, to spark a discussion about God’s unique call to missionary discipleship for each of their lives, as rooted in family reflection and process, with a intro video from Kristin Dixon, video of instructions and story from Anna Johnson, and then a final blessing and thank you to the students (and each of you!) from Bishop Elizondo.
    • We finish this day by asking the students to record a short (30-90 second) video reflecting on their MDI process. I will be sending each of you individually an email with a link to a FlipGrid upload and Google Folder (one folder for each school) where the students are to upload these videos – you can choose which format works best for your students. We will take these videos and compile the best into a collective video which we will send out to all of you, so your students can see that even at a distance, they are not alone in living out this call to missionary discipleship, but rather a part of a larger MDI movement of over 900 students in the Archdioceses of Seattle and Chicago! So with that, please let us know if there are particular students who we should not include in this larger video. You will also have access to this folder so you can see who turned in a video.
    • Lastly, none of this will be synchronous with us or other classrooms, since different schools have different abilities in that regard.  We are here to support you!

From the Office for Catholic Schools, the Pastoral Ministries Office, Maryknoll, and your MDI Companion, we will be praying for you and your students as you all go through this MDI Week! Please let us know what questions you have, and if you have a moment at the end to let us know how it went, please do!

After this week, we’ll be in touch with the final lesson updates for Unit 3 in eLearning format.

Thank you again so much for your continued commitment to missionary discipleship. Each of you gives us hope, during this time especially. We are sad to not be celebrating this MDI Day/Week together in person, and look forward to the day when we can gather together to celebrate again!

In peace, prayers, and gratitude,

Your MDI Team….Anna Johnson, Lauren Hobbs, Joe Cotton, Erica, Cohen, Kristin Dixon, Sandy Smith and our Video expert, Kristin Moore.