My name is Toby D'Anna, and I am creating this blog initially for a graduate level course in Religious Education Across the Curriculum taken through Loyola Institute for Ministry. I am beginning as dean of students at a Catholic pk-8 school in a Seattle suburb. I taught high school English for one year, middle school English for three years, and middle school math for two years. I spent five years in leadership with a Catholic literary and philosophical society that helped college students find the connections between the faith and their chosen disciplines. A Catholic convert myself, I have spent the last three years as a catechist in my parish's RCIA program. I am a member of Communion and Liberation, a lay movement in the church that grounds its members in the educational method of the late Monsignor Luigi Giussani.
Because both my strongest academic curiosities and the beginning of my Catholic faith were sparked in a college honors program focused on a systematic interdisciplinary reading and socratic discussion of the great books in light of contemporary issues, I have tried to pass that same torch which lit my way onto my students at every level and from all backgrounds. This blog will serve as a manual primarily for my future use, although it will be shared with colleagues who are seeking to implement REAC at their schools.
