Teaching Teachers

At my church of employment, we offer a ten week Catechist Training Program that runs during the school yeah, and again in the summer. As a religious education staff, we have divided out the topics so that we each only have to teach one or two classes per cycle. This is ideal so that the students have an opportunity to hear from speakers who are better qualified on the given topic and to gain a well rounded education, as each teacher has a different approach.

This week my class, Sacraments, was up. Thankfully we're on my second run of this course, so I had my slides, my outlines and my activities ready to go. I also had my list of questions the last class asked with my research notes in case the questions came up again, or so I could weave the answers into the presentation. Seriously, it was awesome teaching the same exact lesson twice. I have never done that before!

Tonight I had 17 adults in my class. I only recognized three faces: two were parents of teens in the youth group, and one works at the archdiocesan grade school on our property as the head of the religion department. I assumed the rest were just PSR teachers from our church.

Class went well. It took me about 10 minutes to warm up, but by the end of the two hours I was telling jokes (eek) and giving the class some spiritual goals/challenges to examine in their Sacramental lives. A few of them asked some challenging questions - normally the tough ones come with like Holy Orders, but tonight's tough ones came from Baptism (I usually have those in the bag!). I like tough questions. I get the class discussing - throw out some varying arguments - and then say, "I'm going to double check my answer before I tell you the answer next week".

Love it! I left so jazzed.

Until....


My co-worker told me exactly who my audience was: the head of the religion department, the entire middle school religion staff, and the principal of the school across the street.


I want a job there in two years.

I hope my jokes were funny :)