Sunday School.
I'm sure you're familiar.
It's the hour-ish before or after church where, as a child, you get a kid-friendly dose of Bible learning. In the church where I grew up going, there was Sunday School available from the age of three all the way up until you were a freshman in high school.
To me, it was just more church. I couldn't wait to be done.
I was finally confirmed a few months into my sophomore year of high school. In Lutheranism, that means you’re a “full” member of the church. You have gone through everything Sunday School has to offer, and you have confirmed (see what they did there?) you believe everything that was said at your baptism. You promise to be a good church-goer and to do your best for your fellow humans.
It essence, it means you’re a Sunday
School graduate. I was ELATED. No more hour-long learning sessions after we’ve already
sat through church. My weekly time in that church building had just been cut in
half – or so I thought.
You see, in South Dakota, you can
get your restricted license at 14. They figure we’re already driving farm
vehicles as soon as we’re tall enough; might as well just make it legal. I
would have been 15 at the time of my confirmation, and thanks to my parents
purchasing my grandma’s old Buick, I had a car at my disposal. I knew there was
no way I would get out of going to church every Sunday while I lived under my parents’
roof, so I figured I would just drive separately to church while my parents and
siblings stayed behind for Sunday School. My mom taught Sunday School music, so
I even offered to take Dad home with me! What a gem I was.
As quickly as my plan was made, it
was vanquished by my parents. We lived 15 miles out of town, which would mean
30 miles of extra gas for a second vehicle to go to town and back again. Now,
didn’t I think that was silly? I was then awarded two choices with what to do
with my formerly-filled-by-Sunday-School hour.
I could:
1.
Sit
in the fellowship hall with Dad and “visit.” (And no, I could not bring a book
and read in a corner.)
2. Become a Sunday School teacher.
Let me first introduce you to the Midwestern idea of “visiting.” Contrary what you might think, you’re not visiting anyone. To have a visit with someone is a Midwesternism for a drawn-out small talk session. Rarely does “visiting” turn into a substantial conversation – it’s a whole lot of surface level nonsense in a block of time much longer than it needs to be. To “visit” with Dad would mean being subjected to an hour’s worth of chatter involving the weather, farming, who recently died, and – if I was lucky – how school was going.
Can you tell I’m not into “visiting”?
I decided I’d do pretty much anything before I’d subject myself to “visiting” every Sunday for the foreseeable future. I would become… a Sunday School teacher.
Another thing you must understand is my church was absolutely desperate for Sunday School teachers. I was 15, after all. I could’ve had an entire classroom to myself – anyone with a pulse could have – but I signed up to team-teach that year.
I don’t remember much about my first
year of Sunday School teaching except I decided it was indeed better than visiting.
I signed up to do it when I was a junior, and again as a senior.
My junior year was when my best high
school friend Bob and I began our two years of team-teaching. We volunteered to
teach third grade, which was the oldest grade you could get while still keeping
your teaching time down to half-an-hour.
Bob and I put serious blood, sweat,
and tears decorating our classroom. And it was a sight to behold. We had a
jungle theme one year, and it could have been an actual jungle in there. We
stapled giant green palm leaves to the ceiling and plastered the walls with construction
paper animals. We made use out of anything and everything we could find in the
Sunday School supply closet. We hung inflatable fish and old CDs from the
ceiling with fishing wire. Our door was covered with that amazing paper you get
off those gigantic rolls in schools, and our students’ names jumped out in
colorful print. We snatched the spare bean bag chairs and placed those in our
room. We found a little foam cutout of a dove and named it “Fernando” – our class
mascot.
What did we teach? Honestly, I don’t have much of a clue. There was some kind of loose lesson plan we followed, but as neither of us were big on Bible lecturing, we often deferred to games and worksheets. Word finds, crossword puzzles, scavenger hunts, lots of drawing (self-portraits, imaginary animals, what does heaven look like), you name it. I’m pretty sure we even played Bible Hangman at one point.
Bob’s and my classroom was so
colorful and welcoming, we found ourselves hanging out there after school.
During my senior year, I can remember spending hours sitting on those bean bags
and going over vocabulary for that week’s advanced biology test. My grade in
that class wouldn’t have been near as good had it not been for that classroom.
Our classroom did not go unnoticed. Pastor Loren, who was the pastor at that church for my entire young life, absolutely LOVED it. It was a lot different than the other rooms, that’s no joke. He even made us a CD-ROM full of photos he took of the room and wrote us a letter telling us how great and “conducive to learning” he thought it was. High praise for a couple of teenagers with a stapler and no idea what they’re doing.
When I graduated high school, my Sunday School teaching days came to an end. I was relieved that I didn’t have to scrounge for activities from week to week, but I was going to miss it.
Every essay about teaching has to end with a “what teaching taught me” portion, so here’s mine. Teaching Sunday School taught me church volunteering could be fun, but only with your friends. It also taught me I was in no way cut out to be a real teacher. Important life lessons to be had.
