Unintended Lessons

I had the privilege to complete an 8 week teaching class for the K-1st grade at my congregation. We use a structured program called Stepping Into the Bible. I have learned very quickly that teachers provide many more lessons than the particular subjects you go into teaching.

Part of my class instruction would include some sort of coloring sheet or activity that reinforced the lesson by being about a character or a particular scene/event we had discussed. Most kids love to color and usually see it not so much as class work. I had one particular student that never seemed to enjoy coloring and he would repeatedly scribble or color the entire page in one color. I had asked him was this how he colored at school and he would say no, but not much better.

I was inclined that specific night to stop the class from coloring and asked the entire class the following question, are we supposed to do our best at everything we do? And the class answered yes. I asked the class, are we supposed to give God our best effort? And the class answered yes. The last question I asked the class was are we supposed to give God our best all the time or some of the time? And the class answered all of the time. The young boy’s demeanor changed swiftly to a bit mad. The very next class the young boy came in and was very quiet and proceeded to tell me that “you were mean to me last week”. I asked him to explain how I was mean to him and he couldn’t. He just said that I shouldn’t have said anything about his coloring. I reiterated my past conversation which revealed that I never directly said anything, but had only asked questions to compare his coloring in my class to school. He then told me it made him sad and I told him that God had worked on his heart so that he could give his best and be his best that I had nothing to do with how he felt, and that he needed to listen to God.

That same night, I told the class that there are going to be times when we are asked to do things that we do not particularly like to do. For example, I never had the desire to teach in a classroom setting especially children. However, I chose to step up and do it for these eight weeks so that I could get to know the kids my daughter’s age (my youngest was too in the class which in itself was a whole other challenge) and give the regular teachers time in an adult Bible class. They all understood and a few started thinking of things that they do that they know they have to even if they don’t like and said they get it.

Last night marked, the last night of my class and I am proud to say that the young man gave me the biggest hug and told me he would continue to always give his best. Don’t get me wrong, we learned a lot about the Old Testament, but we also learned many more lessons on character and how all these lesons apply to how we show up as human beings in our everyday life. Being a Christian, requires that you give your best, show up as the best version of yourself that you can be, and always giving God the glory. We reviewed and for the most of the kids they recalled most of the content and I knew walking away that I had left them with more than the lessons we learned. I really enjoyed my classes and I fell in love with these kids. It was such a blessing and a privilege. And who would have thought that I would be looking forward to teaching more classes to young children.