Displaced Beachbums

Usually CCD (Confraternity of Christian Doctrine ~ Catholic Religious Education) teachers are moms or dads who have children in the class. FM and I were a little unusual because we started teaching prior to FG being born and it was the scary Confirmation class. Scary because we were dealing with twenty 9th graders who sat a little too close to each other and also had very introspective questions.

I felt compelled to teach because of the strange way it came about. I had been attending a Bible Study class at the Ft. Riley church and the teacher had talked about using our “gifts” such as singing in the choir if we had a good singing voice or being a lector if we enjoyed reading in public. I came away from the class thinking I don’t really know what gift I had to offer. So I said a prayer: “God, let me know what my gift is and I will do my best.” I kid you not the very next day we received a call from our local church (no association with the Ft. Riley church) who we had just registered but hadn’t put down any volunteering. As inadequate as I felt to teach the class, I knew I couldn’t say no. The phrase “Be careful what you wish (pray) for” kept coming to mind.

Since then, I’ve taught the 2nd grade First Communion Class twice, third grade and the fourth grade twice. I wasn’t planning to teach this year because we had just moved here and I wasn’t feeling all that great. I missed the outdoor picnic Mass in August when they were signing up teachers. FM and FG attended the picnic and FM took the liberty of signing me up.  I wasn’t thrilled with the prospect but because I had a great substitute to cover me while I recovered from my surgery in November, I agreed.

I’m so glad I did. My eleven students are wonderful and have been a joy to get to know. There are a couple of kids who really don’t want to be there but it’s more because they are tired and hungry during class. That’s an advantage to having classes on Wednesday nights instead of early Sunday morning.  

One of the things we do at the beginning of each class is to VOLUNTARILY tell something that someone did good for you or something you did for someone else during the previous week. If a student had a good deed to share, he/she got a sticker.  Community Service good deeds got two stickers.  Now that the end of the class is coming up soon, I’m getting a little gift for each student depending on the number of stickers they’ve accumulated. There was one student who got the most stickers and I got her a much wanted Webkinz. It’s all the rage with this age group. Now, I have no idea what to get the rest of the class. I have three ranges of collected stickers ~ under 10, 10-15 stickers and 16-20 stickers.  Both boys and girls are in each category. Any suggestions?

I’m moving on with this class next September and will be teaching the 5th grade. This is the first time I will have the same students the next year. It’ll be great to have a consistency already established. One thing I need to get through is my CCD teacher certification. It’s an online course and a lot more intensive than I expected. After all these years of teaching, I’ll be happy to have a certification to make me “official.”