The young 'uns, they are a-learnin'.

So I teach a CTR 8 class (the kids who are 7 and will be turning 8 this year, the year they get baptized) and it's interesting to watch this batch of kids. I have 6 boys in my class now that the inactive one is coming regularly and one moved in. The personalities are as diverse as one can imagine, but there is one sharp divide among them: some of them are instigators, and some of them follow the instigators. Today was particularly frustrating since the one who moved in recently is dealing with a learning curve in the reverence and social respect department, which sets off the instigators and followers alike. During the last bit of sharing time there was an older boy behind my class who started to gossip about one of the instigators in my class, saying that he got many demerits at school. After that the gossipor got shushed but it gave me a new perspective on the subject of those comments. J is a good, bright young guy with focus issues and an apparent lack of self esteem. With my own little boy who has behavior "special needs" I thought I was adequately sensitive to each of my students and what I could expect of them. I thought about the nature of the discipline available at public schools and wondered if it ought to be different at church. Since the discipline methods used in secondary education settings don't seem to work very well, I wondered what was missing that I might use to my advantage at church. By the time we rolled around to the closing prayer, I had my tactic ready. I hugged the new guy, H, and thanked him for being quiet during the talk that day. That's as far as I got before all of the boys bolted for the door. lol Maybe I can keep 'em scared by myself.

I learned a lot about being very frank with a child's value while living with my friends and employed one of their tactics when J didn't want to sit next to G. I told J that G is a very valuable part of my class, just like J is, and that I wouldn't tolerate anyone speaking about anyone like that.

The vigilance necessary for maintaining order in that room is incredible and makes it very difficult to actually teach a Sunday School lesson. I'm learning that when teachers talk about learning a lot from teaching that it isn't just the lesson material they're talking about.