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edenfallingToday's lesson was about solstice, after which all the kids in the religious education (RE) program trooped downstairs to decorate the tree in the sanctuary while the adult congregation sang "Deck the Halls," "The First Noel," "It Came Upon a Midnight Clear," (which was written by a Unitarian, incidentally!), and the first verse of "Joy to the World."
I missed most of the lesson, because today I was part of the service, speaking in the "Matters of Our Lives" section. (In my old congregation, we called that section 'My Turn.') It's basically 3-5 minutes for a church member to talk about something important to him or her; the RE program has been allotted four weeks to have teachers speak about why we teach... and, subtextually, why other members should too.
This is more or less what I said, bar some extemporization and a couple last names:
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Matters of Our Lives: Why I Teach RE
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Hi, my name is Elizabeth Culmer and I'm teaching first grade this year; we're doing a modified version of the Spirit Play curriculum. You'll get to see at least some of the class at the end of the service when we come down to decorate the tree.
I started teaching RE when I was sixteen years old. It was my junior year of high school, I was starting to have a slow-motion spiritual crisis, and I wanted to anchor myself back into my religious community. The problem was that my old church's youth group was practically in hibernation, so I decided to pretend I was an adult and participate on that level instead.
I started by going to Sunday services, which were fine, but that left me feeling a bit unbalanced. You see, I've always figured that a church is a community, and communities don't maintain themselves. You take stuff out, but you have to put stuff back in as well.
I was 16. I didn't have the knowledge or the dedication to serve on a committee, and the lack of a car was also something of a obstacle. So I kept feeling like I was drifting away from the community.
And then it hit me: RE! Maybe I could be a teacher. All my teachers had muddled through somehow, and kids couldn't be that scary.
I went to Carol, our DRE and said, "I have no experience whatsoever and I make no promises not to panic if you put me in charge of anything, but is there any chance that one of the current teachers could make room for an assistant?"
Carol very kindly didn't laugh at me. She just said, "Liz, we can always use more help. What age group do you want?"
I picked first grade. I thought that first, the gap between 6 and 16 was just large enough to give me some pretense of authority, and second, I figured 6-year-olds could probably hold semi-rational conversations, which might lessen the culture shock. So the next week I went down to a basement classroom, and within five minutes I found myself helping to corral eight kids and persuade them to sit in a circle and listen quietly, which, weirdly, made me feel more like an adult than attending Sunday services. I admit I liked that.
What I hadn't expected was to like teaching. I'd always thought of myself as anti-social, but I really liked those kids. I liked them even when they drove me nuts. I liked listening when they told me about going on trips, visiting their grandparents, playing at a friend's house, spraining a finger, getting a new pet. I liked trying to explain the tricky parts of a lesson, and that 'click' if I got through. I liked getting the kids to explain the lessons to me, even when their explanations bore very little relation to the reality I saw.
I liked teaching so much that I volunteered again the next year. And when I realized I was staying in Ithaca for a while instead of just passing through, I volunteered to teach RE here as well. Because teaching is how I connect with the church community.
Yeah, sometimes it's hard. Sometimes I get kids who'd rather be anywhere else and doing anything but the day's lesson. Sometimes activities refuse to click. Sometimes I run out of time, or I look at the clock and wonder how on earth I'm going to fill another twenty minutes. Sometimes I even get up on Sunday morning and half wish it were Monday already, as crazy as that sounds.
But it's never a serious wish, because teaching is worth it, every minute. I get to help kids learn to be part of our religious community. I also get to read picture books, play with plastic butterflies, and do silly art projects, which I never thought I'd have permission to do once I was over 12 years old. I get to be in community, and it doesn't matter that most of the people I'm with are now 20 years younger than I am.
Lydia, Wren, Aidan, Leila, Meara, Henry, Emma, Nico, Randy, and my co-teachers, Joanna and Frank, make my life brighter every week. They give me the sense of connection I was looking for when I was 16. And I am so glad I have the opportunity to experience that.
---------------------------------------------
I got some compliments at coffee hour after the service, so apparently I didn't screw up the delivery. Yay! :-)
I missed most of the lesson, because today I was part of the service, speaking in the "Matters of Our Lives" section. (In my old congregation, we called that section 'My Turn.') It's basically 3-5 minutes for a church member to talk about something important to him or her; the RE program has been allotted four weeks to have teachers speak about why we teach... and, subtextually, why other members should too.
This is more or less what I said, bar some extemporization and a couple last names:
---------------------------------------------
Matters of Our Lives: Why I Teach RE
---------------------------------------------
Hi, my name is Elizabeth Culmer and I'm teaching first grade this year; we're doing a modified version of the Spirit Play curriculum. You'll get to see at least some of the class at the end of the service when we come down to decorate the tree.
I started teaching RE when I was sixteen years old. It was my junior year of high school, I was starting to have a slow-motion spiritual crisis, and I wanted to anchor myself back into my religious community. The problem was that my old church's youth group was practically in hibernation, so I decided to pretend I was an adult and participate on that level instead.
I started by going to Sunday services, which were fine, but that left me feeling a bit unbalanced. You see, I've always figured that a church is a community, and communities don't maintain themselves. You take stuff out, but you have to put stuff back in as well.
I was 16. I didn't have the knowledge or the dedication to serve on a committee, and the lack of a car was also something of a obstacle. So I kept feeling like I was drifting away from the community.
And then it hit me: RE! Maybe I could be a teacher. All my teachers had muddled through somehow, and kids couldn't be that scary.
I went to Carol, our DRE and said, "I have no experience whatsoever and I make no promises not to panic if you put me in charge of anything, but is there any chance that one of the current teachers could make room for an assistant?"
Carol very kindly didn't laugh at me. She just said, "Liz, we can always use more help. What age group do you want?"
I picked first grade. I thought that first, the gap between 6 and 16 was just large enough to give me some pretense of authority, and second, I figured 6-year-olds could probably hold semi-rational conversations, which might lessen the culture shock. So the next week I went down to a basement classroom, and within five minutes I found myself helping to corral eight kids and persuade them to sit in a circle and listen quietly, which, weirdly, made me feel more like an adult than attending Sunday services. I admit I liked that.
What I hadn't expected was to like teaching. I'd always thought of myself as anti-social, but I really liked those kids. I liked them even when they drove me nuts. I liked listening when they told me about going on trips, visiting their grandparents, playing at a friend's house, spraining a finger, getting a new pet. I liked trying to explain the tricky parts of a lesson, and that 'click' if I got through. I liked getting the kids to explain the lessons to me, even when their explanations bore very little relation to the reality I saw.
I liked teaching so much that I volunteered again the next year. And when I realized I was staying in Ithaca for a while instead of just passing through, I volunteered to teach RE here as well. Because teaching is how I connect with the church community.
Yeah, sometimes it's hard. Sometimes I get kids who'd rather be anywhere else and doing anything but the day's lesson. Sometimes activities refuse to click. Sometimes I run out of time, or I look at the clock and wonder how on earth I'm going to fill another twenty minutes. Sometimes I even get up on Sunday morning and half wish it were Monday already, as crazy as that sounds.
But it's never a serious wish, because teaching is worth it, every minute. I get to help kids learn to be part of our religious community. I also get to read picture books, play with plastic butterflies, and do silly art projects, which I never thought I'd have permission to do once I was over 12 years old. I get to be in community, and it doesn't matter that most of the people I'm with are now 20 years younger than I am.
Lydia, Wren, Aidan, Leila, Meara, Henry, Emma, Nico, Randy, and my co-teachers, Joanna and Frank, make my life brighter every week. They give me the sense of connection I was looking for when I was 16. And I am so glad I have the opportunity to experience that.
---------------------------------------------
I got some compliments at coffee hour after the service, so apparently I didn't screw up the delivery. Yay! :-)
