CHICAGO — I hate getting up to teach Sunday school on Sunday mornings. There. I said it.
I don’t hate teaching Sunday school. I just hate waking up for it.
It’s nothing against the institution of Sunday school. I value and enjoy teaching. Maybe it’s that on Sunday mornings, like most people, I’d just rather be sleeping.
Or maybe it’s a remnant of my early years. As a Jewish day school student in the 1980s, I never went to Sunday school. I remember feeling, in fact, that going to Sunday school would have meant giving up freedom as I knew it. That was a choice I wasn’t prepared to make then.
But I’ve changed my tune as an adult, and for the last five years I’ve spent my Sunday mornings teaching, most recently at Am Yisrael Conservative Congregation outside of Chicago.
The life of the Sunday school teacher is one of perseverance. You have 90 minutes to communicate a curriculum to kids you see once a week, kids who say they’d rather be home sleeping.
At the very least, they’d be satisfied with eating breakfast. My students take turns bringing breakfast for the class, and even though it’s there by the start of class, I make them wait 45 minutes for it. They don’t mind, as I was reminded when, in the middle of a discussion about Noah and his efforts to save mankind, a student raised her hand and asked, “Is it time for breakfast yet?”
Many teachers have tackled the same challenges, including my wife. And my sister-in-law. And my brother-in-law. One year, we all taught at the same school — what a great chance to hold hands for Israeli dancing!
Believe it or not, though, I empathize with the students. I believe that to be a good educator and to decide how to handle students, you have to put yourself in their shoes and understand what they’re going through.
Most Sunday school students would probably say they attend because their parents insist on it. Some might say they had a choice and opted to continue their Jewish education. Either way, they might choose other, more entertaining ways to spend their Sunday mornings.
And that’s the point. They haven’t chosen other ways. They’ve dragged themselves out of bed on a Sunday morning, which is more than I did when I was their age. When I was their age and younger, on Sunday mornings my dad and I went together to shul and then to his bowling league. The only Jewish education taking place there was from my dad’s friend, who gave me a quarter for wearing my tzitzit.
So the truth is, no matter how much the students resist, the teacher has won half the battle, because they’re sitting right there. Some are even paying attention. I do get frustrated when there’s too much talking, but I can’t say that if I were a student I’d be able to stay focused for 90 minutes. So I don’t take it personally when they talk. It helps me get through to the next minute.
But even the kids who pledge to have no interest can be reeled in. Usually it happens when you don’t plan it, when a discussion takes a left turn. A discussion about intermarriage, for example, inevitably gets kids riled up. Religion shouldn’t matter, only love should, one student will say. Another answers back that we can’t let our heritage die. A third prompts a harsh reaction from classmates. Passions ensue, tensions mount.
Class is going great!
And what’s so great about it? Well, as I told my wife when we were still courting each other, I’d rather have her be upset at me than be indifferent when I do something wrong. Indifference means not really caring. It means she won’t care later on, when I correct what I did. Displeasure, on the other hand, is emotion. It means she does care about me, she cares what I do, and when anger gets turned around, it becomes positive energy between two people.
Sunday school is the same way. Students may talk or disrupt class, but talking is energy that, when redirected, fosters better education. Sometimes the best discussions follow the worst disruptions.
So, no matter what the kids think about a certain topic, what really counts is that they are thinking about it — and they don’t even have to realize it. Thirty minutes of talking about the film “Titanic” may have left them feeling they’ve delayed the teacher from starting class, but ask them for a similar example from the Bible and now they’re perplexed. When did humans try to make something God could not overcome? Tower of Babel, of course. No such thing as an unsinkable ship.
Another kind of challenge crops up when students think I don’t notice what they’re doing. Like the kid who thinks he can get in a good 50 minutes of homework by keeping his notebook in his lap. Or the one hiding an earphone to listen to the start of the Bears game. I ask him the score. Seven-three, he says. Please take out the earphone, I say.
Perhaps my favorite of all is the student who talks and talks and then pleads innocent or plays dumb when called on it. Or who says, “What about so-and-so who’s also talking?” Right. Like I’m going to reward you for telling on your friends? What kind of Sunday school education would that be?
But through it all, the Sunday school teacher perseveres, fueled by the knowledge that, together with the bar and bat mitzvah, synagogue and family, the teacher has the opportunity to shape these young people’s Jewish identities.
That when it’s all over, you might turn out to have made the difference that guides them toward remaining actively Jewish.
And that you can still go home and go back to sleep.