Easter was a super awesome celebration of awesomeness. I really have no other way to describe it. The whole day was just great—exhausting, but great. And that’s all I have to say about that.
A big part of my work at field ed this year has been observing and helping out with both the 7th/8th grade class and the Confirmation class (9th graders). This Sunday was the last time I led both classes, and it was a very interesting one indeed.
In the Sunday school class, we talked about the mission of the church. That meant reading the Great Commission (the end of Matthew), as well as the first part of Acts, where Jesus gives his disciples instructions and then ascends into heaven. It was a pretty cool lesson to get to teach. I had a great plan for reading through the passages, and then looking at the mission of St. Mark and seeing where the mission of the church came into play. Then I was going to have them write their own mission statements.
The class had some slightly different plans, however. I had four kids in class—all boys—and apparently I had set a precedent for myself by playing Apples to Apples with them the last time I taught class. This meant that they had decided before we even started class that we were going to rush through the lesson and then spend most of the day playing Apples to Apples. I was not pleased.
Something I’ve learned over the course of this year through teaching and helping out with these classes is that there is a time to be assertive and a time to change your plans. Sunday was definitely the latter. We compromised by spending a good portion of our time on the lesson, not rushing through the readings or the questions, with the promise that we would play Apples to Apples with whatever time we had left at the end.
This plan worked out great. We had one of the best discussions I think we’ve had out of any of the times I have taught that class. The boys were attentive and really knew the answers to the questions—even the ones that didn’t come directly out of the readings for the day. They were able to relate what we were reading to the Creed, and they even knew that Judas had killed himself—which led to us reading the account of Judas exploding in Acts. What more could a group of middle school boys want to hear from the Bible?
Anyway, I was pleasantly surprised by a lot of things. There are definitely times in the past where I would have insisted that we do things my way or no way. I think that would have been detrimental to the discussion on Sunday. The boys would have been sullen, I would have been upset, and true learning in faith would never have happened. Instead, we had a really great discussion, a good time, and they were even able to make Apples to Apples relate to our readings. God works in mysterious ways—even through silly games.
(On an unrelated note, I’m awesome at Apples to Apples).
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