Tuesday, March 8, 2011

I have to tell you a story.

Seth and I teach Primary. Our class is usually 4-6 girls who are 8/9 years old. Last Sunday Seth needed to stay home so I was on my own. I taught about the Sermon on the Mount... The Beatitudes, serve our enemies, the golden rule.

The lesson was going alright... I have a very difficult time keeping their attention on the lesson.They are much better behaved when Seth teaches. I also had Scarlett to entertain, usually whoever isn't teaching is on Scarlett duty. Scarlett's always difficult because she should having an afternoon nap at that moment. She was everywhere, into everything, and they all love her. So I'm pretty sure no one actually understood what I was trying to teach.

In fact, I know some girls didn't understand me. As we read about the Golden Rule in the bible, and I was explaining it to them... one girl interrupts me and says she has the most perfect example for the golden rule. This particular little lady knows Everything, I'll admit she is extremely intelligent, but she also knows she's intelligent and sometimes may feel she needs others to understand she has great knowledge.

So she goes right into her example. The room goes quiet. Scarlett is even listening. She summarizes a book on tape she read along with. It's about a Grizzly bear who kills an entire family of beavers except one little girl beaver.

The little girl beaver gets away and hides from the big grizzly bear. Girl beaver collects foliage, branches, etc to build a false ground trap, and captures the grizzly bear. And then, our sweet primary girl pauses, she says in a high pitched voice as the girl beaver, "Grizzly Bear shall die!"

It was so eerie. Evil was in the room. I'm not kidding. You needed to be there. (read the story here, it's kinda psycho.) We all just looked at her while she looked at us. She sensed the uncomfortable feeling and said "what! It's on the tape, that's exactly how she says it on the tape." Then she turns to me. "And the Beaver killed the grizzly bear. That's the perfect example. A perfect example of the golden rule."

Sigh. Nope... No one understands me. I told her that's opposite of the golden rule. Do unto others as you would want others to do to you. I told her "If you don't want to die, don't kill others. Even if they did kill your whole family.... Should we go back to the "Love your enemies" part of the lesson?"

She looked at me dumbfounded and it was time to go back to the Primary room for sharing time. Oh well.

We all know I'm no good at telling stories or explaining situations/stories, etc. very well. My grammar needs serious help - and I don't punctuate appropriately. I was excited to teach that lesson, I try to remember the golden rule every day of my life. It was really difficult for me on Sunday that I couldn't share this with 8 and 9 year olds. How did I survive my mission?

Living and learning...

4 comments:

  1. Oh man. Don't take it too hard, sometimes lessons just get out of control, especially with kids. When I was teaching the sunbeams in Wymount, they didn't understand what being honesty at all. And when I was teaching 10 year olds the Christmas story, they had some serious questions about who Joseph was if he wasn't Jesus's dad, and how God was his dad, and how the whole pregnancy thing worked...it was a pretty awkward Christmas. Now I'm in YW and the lessons derail all the time. That chastity lesson in particular, it was a little rough.

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  2. Whoa, that IS creepy. They will remember one day and I'm sure a lot more is getting through than it seems. It's hard teaching!

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  3. The big question is who lets their child read this story? Its horrible and poorly written. There is not redeeming value to the this story and I'm not sure why it would even be a book on tape. Sorry it was such a rough Sunday.

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  4. I know right!? It's a TERRIBLE story!!! It's completely of the devil. I survived...

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