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.

Looking Back On The Song Tournament...

Funny what you think about while vacuuming.  And to be honest, I don't have as many examples of this as I should.  Especially when it comes to the carpet on the stairs to the basement...those guys don't feel the vacuum all that often.

Today, my thoughts turned to my song tournament.

Back in the mid to late 1980's I had a notebook with a carefully designed 16-page bracket for a tournament of 512 songs.  I spent hours  and hours listening and re-listening to each pair of songs, carefully judging one against the other and then moving the best one on the next line of the bracket.  (and remember, this was in the time before CDs, so the rewind button got quite a work out on the cassette player!)

So today as I was cleaning those stairs, for whatever reason, I was trying to remember the final four songs in the tournament....which I actually remembered quite quickly.  So then my thoughts turned to how those songs hold up today.......

#4: The Safety Dance - Men Without Hats

Still love this one....but to be honest, if I was having a tournament of only Men Without Hats songs, I'm not sure this one cracks the top 10.  Seriously, check out that band's entire catalog sometime.  Many great tunes.  This one made them famous, but it's really not one of their best.  And wow, what a weird video.

#3:  Jessie's Girl - Rick Springfield

That guitar intro on that one still does it for me.  But as is the case with Safety Dance, in a Rick Springfield song tournament, Jessie's Girl doesn't make the top 10.

A little proud parent note on this one.  When my 6th Grade daughter was asked to bring in a song for them to listen to and discuss at school she chose this one.  :)
(unfortunately the lyrics did not pass the teacher's pre-discussion test...something about the "loving him with that body" line and the whole idea of wanting to steal your friend's girl.  So she took in Don't Talk To Strangers instead....which still was cool, but that may be my least favorite Rick Springfield song ever.)

#2:  Love Somebody - Rick Springfield

This one would have a fighting chance if the tournament were held today.  One of my favorite air guitar  solos (which I played ferociously on the stairs with the extendable vacuum hose).   The lyrics may not be all that deep...but this is a fun one to crank up loud in the car.  The video is very weak....it would be a first round loser if this was a video tournament.  And remember "Hard To Hold"...the movie it's from...I didn't think so.

#1:  Shades Of Gray - The Monkees

Opposite of Love Somebody in that it has wonderful lyrics but really not the one you want to crank in the car.  Also has the best frech horn solo of any song in my collection.  I still love this song, but I'm not sure how much of that feeling is from the highly emotional episode of The Monkees tv show where Davy's grandfather wants Davy to leave the group and come back to England.  (just noticed the first clip doesn't include the french horn solo....but I'm leaving it for the emotional "Davy contemplates leaving the group" tie in.  The second clip has the awesome horn part.)

What's for supper?

She had been home from school for about 13 seconds when she said it.  

"Eww, do we have to have that for supper?"

It can't be mac-n-cheese, hot dogs, and pizza every night....can it?

Where does all the motivation go?

Days I work at Target:
"Boy, I really feel like exercising today. If I wasn't here, I think I'd do that P90X workout."
"I have such a great idea for a story.  If I wasn't here, I'd be writing that down."
"Maybe I should paint the living room.  If I wasn't here, I'd get started on that."

Days I don't work at Target:
"I'll bet I can beat my streak on Plants vs. Zombies Endless VaseBreaker today!"
"I wonder if there are any new Rick Springfield videos on YouTube."
"ZZZZZzzzzzzzzzzz"