I am not a teacher...I just play one on Monday nights

Last fall, I agreed to be a "table parent" in my son's Monday night Christian Education class.  (I still call it Sunday School...even though it's not on Sundays.)  That meant I would have to sit at a table with a handful of 5th graders and make sure they were paying attention, and staying on task during the class.  On about the second week of class, the teacher announced that she had a change in her work schedule and she would no loner be able to teach.  I had a chat with the pastor and said I could lead the class until they found a permanent replacement....and of course, that meant I became the permanent replacement.

I am not a teacher.  

Luckily the class came with a leader's guide to the lessons every week, so I mostly just had to follow right from a book.  Most night's I was just trying to fill the hour without things getting too much out of hand.

Tonight is the last class of the school year, and I find myself wondering if they will remember anything we did or talked about.  Were they just filling space and killing time....or were their brains engaged?  There were certainly times I wondered....for them and for me.

That group of boys that was always giggling to themselves.

Or the girls that seemed to be counting the minutes until they could check their phones for any missed text messages.

Did anything get through?

Someday when talking about God's grace, will they think back and say, "I remember Mr. Nathan explaining to us about God's Riches At Christ's Expense!"  (shout out to my Sunday School teacher from way back in the day Mark Shepp for teaching that to me!)

Or will the spontaneously break into a rousing chorus of "Father Abraham"?

Those (sort of creepy) videos applying old testament concepts to today's world...will they remember those (and have nightmares of the sock puppet serpent from the Garden of Eden episode)?

Will they remember that there is nothing they can do that will make God love them less (or more)?

Or are there things they will remember that I have forgotten....that to me were just time killer activities?

To my teacher friends....how do you deal with these end of the year questions?

I guess you've always got another year, so maybe it all kind of blends into one endless stream of young minds....but I don't have another year.  (unless something happens to the permanent teacher again next year, but let's not!)

And just for fun, here are the cupcakes I made for tonight's year end celebration!

Ending the year with  blue cupcakes....that's probably what they will remember.

Parent Handbook: Drama Chapter

If there was a parent handbook (wow...would that be a BIG book) there would most certainly be a chapter on handling middle school drama.  I may be wrong...and this may be stereotypical thinking on my part....but I'm pretty sure this will be a much bigger issue for my daughter than for my son.  With him, we're lucky to get the names of people he knows, let alone details about who said what and who is mad at whom.

My daughter was in tears today after school because two of her friends are mad at each other.  She didn't know what to do...they're each such good friends.
Helpless Dad said, "It will all work out."

Really?

That's the best I could do?

Need to find that handbook.

I can't imagine the heartbreak if it was actually my daughter in a fight with a friend.  But come on...how could anybody get in a fight with such a sweet little girl (Dad Blinders fully covering both eyes!)?

Somebody start sending me words of advice for when the first boyfriend situation ends badly.
Seriously....I'll keep them in a folder under my bed and pull them out when needed.

Grocery Superviser

Seriously.....I should not be allowed to go to the grocery store unsupervised.
Make a list and stick to it....how hard is that?

Picking Friends

Wouldn't it be so much easier if I could just go to school with my kids and pick their friends for them?  I'd just sit in the back of the class room and observe for a while, then watch a recess or two and then I could decide who my kids sit with at lunch, who they play with at recess, and who invites them over on the weekends.

I think that would make things much easier on everybody me.