Parish Religious Education Program (PREP)
About Our Program
The focus and commitment of PREP is to impart, in collaboration with all our parents, the Catholic faith to our young people, from kindergarten through Confirmation.
Our program prepares children cognitively, spiritually and experientially throughout grade school and middle school, and includes sacramental preparation for Reconciliation, Eucharist, and Confirmation.
Our children, coming primarily from non-parochial schools, benefit from weekly catechesis. Our children live their faith meaningfully and joyfully by participating in social service and a communal life and ministries here at St. Ignatius!
PREP Information is available by email or hard copy by contacting Chris McCullough.
Registration & Curriculum
Registration
Registration Form
Registration for existing PREP families with no additional children entering PREP:
Do not complete the registration form online. Registration is through payment.
Registration for New PREP families or siblings coming into PREP:
Complete the PREP registration form online to include all children that will be in PREP.
Make your payment to PREP via FaithDirect or Venmo (*@Saint-IgnatiusBaltimore).
Choose the “Contribute” button to proceed for payment.
Fee for PREP:
- 1 Child $100
- 2 Children $175
- 3 Children $250
Email chrismccullough@st-ignatius.net, with an image of your payment.
Your email should include your child’s name and grade change or school change if any.
If you cannot pay online, send a check to our office, attn: Chris McCullough, written out to St. Ignatius. Keep a record.
Curriculum
Catechesis is led by our gracious volunteer teachers, parents, and parishioners from many walks of life. Teachers lead lessons based on the Gospel and Archdiocesan catechesis materials and use their personal creativity and spirituality to enhance lessons! They are trained in child safety through the Archdiocese.
Pflaum Gospel Weeklies
These are an additional educational supplement. Pamphlets are received in bundles covering a few months.
The editions begin Sunday, September 20th.
Parents are asked to visit the website weekly for the gospel and materials.
Go to Parents, to Readings for Mass, then choose the Sunday that corresponds.
There you will see a child’s version of the gospel.
Loyola Press, A Jesuit Ministry
“Finding God” by Loyola Press, is our classroom textbook for PREP.
It provides an interactive, experiential, Ignatian framework for our learning.
There are wonderful on-line resources that come with it, to accompany the text for both teachers use in the classroom and parents use at home.
They are delineated by grade and contain games and interactive reviews for each chapter.
Growing with God
This year Growing with God replaced our former Benziger Family Life series.
This is distributed for home instruction, and includes information on family relationships, communication, and safety, which is part of the Archdiocese Safe Environment and Child Abuse and Prevention Education.
Families are expected to implement this curriculum unless they complete an ‘Opt Out’ form through the coordinator.
In an extensive 1884 remodeling, stained glass windows by Redding, Baird Company of Boston were installed. The mural on the ceiling “Assumption of the Blessed Virgin into Heaven” by William Lamprecht was added, possibly replacing an earlier mural by Brumidi, the muralist for the Capitol in Washington DC.
A new spirit of restoration infused the 1998/1999 $1.7 million renovation project, which restored and/or replaced architectural details so that the church’s interior again glows with color and light as originally designed. The narthex was created at the same time, carefully designed to blend with the original architecture.
The exterior design of the St. Ignatius Church is the typical Italianate style of the brick row houses being constructed in Mount Vernon in the 1850s. It is Neo-classical in its symmetrical composition.
The baroque interior design was inspired in the late renaissance/baroque model of Vignola’s The Gesu, 1568, mother church of the Jesuits in Rome, as are many Jesuit churches. The Baroque interior decoration is a surprising contrast to the chaste classical style of the exterior.
Filled with color and light, the bold decoration of the sanctuary conveys a rich and active interior space that soars upwards toward the heavens. There are no internal columns to divide the space.
PREP Leaders
Chris McCullough
K-1st Grade
Jessica Mirano
Johns Hopkins School of Public Health, Monitoring Officer
2nd Grade
Ted Engelke
Diageo North America Regional Director
Katherine Engelke
Johns Hopkins Hospital, Physical Therapist
3rd Grade
Vince Lyzinski
Faculty at University of Maryland
4th Grade
Liz Stephens-Kalmar
Washington Hospital Ctr., Certified Nurse Midwife
5th-6th Grade
Manon McGuigan
Freelance French & Arabic Analyst
Confirmation
Amy Petkovsek
Child Advocacy Lawyer, Director of Advocacy
Child and Youth Protection Policy
All volunteers 14 and over having regular contact with children must complete online training to called “Virtus” to ensure the safety of our children.
Teachers and volunteers must contact Barbara Dailey to initiate training.
A copy of the training certificate must be given to the coordinator, Chris McCullough, before service begins in September.
Thank you.
Contact
- Barbara Dailey
- 410-727-3848
- barbaradailey@st-ignatius.net
