"We just tease someone until they develop an eating disorder." That's what Elaine says when Jerry asks her what girls do instead of giving people wedgies.
I got a new calling at church last week that I can finally make public. I am now the Sunday School teacher for the 14 and 15 year-olds. I've taught Sunday School many times before but the age group is new. Yesterday, I taught my first lesson with mixed results. I just assumed it wouldn't be all that different from teaching adults and that they would hang on my every word, enthralled. Turns out that didn't quite happen and I doubt it ever happened with the adults either . They spent a good part of the time talking with each other about random nonsense like all teenagers do. There were even a few wisecracks made at my expense which is probably payback for my teenage years. The class only consisted of seven girls because the three boys were absent so that may have explained the incessant talking. Other than one "mean girl" type comment about someone's brown shoes they all seemed like fairly nice kids. I just had a hard time keeping them on track because they liked to talk so much. I need to remember that church is just as much a social experience for kids as it is for adults. The only difference is that I could ignore the adults talking amongst themselves because the classroom was so much bigger. I think I need to be firmer next time about shutting up. I must have looked pretty weak and pathetic because the biggest talker came up afterwards and apologized for talking so much.
We did have some good times. They told me I was dumb for losing my ring after six weeks of marriage. They seemed to enjoy some parts of my lesson because we got a pretty good discussion going at the end. They laughed at my jokes too so they can't be all bad.
So now I have a new mission in life: figure out how to teach this kids. And if that's too much, then learning how to survive forty-five minutes with them without having a nervous breakdown. I think I am going to be relying on Stacey's kid expertise a lot. Things should go better if I could a little tougher with the girls and be more flexible with my lesson plan and just go where the discussion leads.
This experience has made me realize that I was darn lucky to make it out of my teenage years without one of my religious or secular teachers strangling me. Sometimes, I was more interested with causing mischief and cracking jokes than with paying attention. Okay, a lot of the time. I think of one poor guy who seemed to have some kind of teaching responsibility over me at church from the time I was twelve until the time I turned eighteen. Man, I must have been a pain.
Still, a hectic Sunday School lesson sure beats walking to your building in twenty-degree weather to find the sidewalk iced over because it had to be pressure-washed to remove "something even" worse than vomit. According to the shopkeeper downstairs, the entryway had to be cleaned because some homeless person had used it as his personal toilet all weekend.
Update:
The other hopeful sign with the girls was that they strongly encouraged me to teach lessons off my iPhone.
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That poor man that had to teach you all those years and yet he still showed up at your wedding. You have a few redeeming qualities. On another note, your Update comment reminded me of a teaching technique I have wanted to try but not all of my students have cell phone (can you believe it?). The idea is to have a silent lesson with everything being taught and responded to by texting. The only sound allowed is that of the keypads and even those can usually be put on silent.
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Jordan and I taught the same age group when we were first married, only our class was mostly boys because the girls could not stand to be around these boys. We found that looking up the same lesson in the primary lesson was helpful. We would give them about 15 minutes to color a picture or make something to show their parents. It actually worked. With our primary class in Pasco, we always started the class with a random question and let them take turns answering. After that, it was lesson time.
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