The church website has these pictures of kids in Sunday School - they're smiling, their scriptures are open, they're clearly engaged and loving it.
It doesn't look like that in my classroom. They're leaning back on two legs of their chairs, they are looking at their iPods, or their phones (I'm hoping it means they're looking at scriptures they've uploaded to those devices?), sometimes it's way too crowded and it's hot and the kids faces show it. Oh, and sometimes the other teacher doesn't show up, so the kids from the other class come into my class - so it's way too crowded - meaning some kids are squished together, some choose to sit on the floor (lay on the floor in the middle of the room sometimes too), and their are side conversations all over the place.
My principal would be horrified. Sometimes I am horrified. I know I could totally make it different. Better. Structured. Extremely purposeful! But then again, I also don't worry about it too much. Somehow I think it all works out.
It's interesting to teach kids this age. I find myself walking a fine line between being totally chill and wanting to make the class structured and productive. I think it's important to be structured and productive, but I worry that if it's too much so they'll get turned off and won't come - so I try to be kind of relaxed while squeezing in some important messages. Not sure if I do it very well at all, but I am grateful for the chance, and hopefully I'll get it right in time, without doing too much damage to their spiritual lives in the meantime. I decided I will try to blog about my lessons each week - and thus, the new tag: Sunday School Lessons. I'm hoping blogging will help me to organize my thoughts some and have better lessons. If nothing else, it'll help me learn!
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