The Lesson

Friday mornings at school are student chapel mornings. A student committee plans the chapels. This year it's all the seniors--five of them. This group apparently feels no remorse about requiring teachers to participate in student chapels. Last week when they asked every class to present an inspirational skit, the request concluded with "and the teachers too."

That would explain several zombie-like staff lunches during the past week. What to do? No one had any ideas at all, until Wes remembered a Beattitudes teaching session with the listening disciples acting like students. He was able to find it in his files at home--something he wasn't too sure about when he tried at school to recall where it might be. When he showed it to us, I added several things that weren't on the list but are like the things I've heard from students.

Then Wes worked on everything at home, recording a very sage-like Jesus voice intoning the Beattitudes, a few at a time, typing it all up and designating each person's interrupting one-line "student" speeches with a different-colored font, and rounding up a headpiece to don when he had to switch parts to provide a narrator for the little drama. When it was time to do our piece, Seth was installed at the computer to play the Jesus voice at the appropriate times, and Wes did the narration while wearing his headpiece. In between, we all sat primly in a row of three and proceeded to act clueless, impulsive, and disdainful. I hope it looked unnatural for us to act that way. (Wes muttered an apology when the headpiece came apart the first time he put it on during the skit.)

Here's the adapted text (author unknown) :

Narrator: Italics
Jesus' Words: Bold
Disciples/Students: Regular Font

The Lesson

Then Jesus took his disciples up to the mountain, and gathering them around him, he taught them saying:

Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

Are we supposed to know this?
The donkey ate my homework.
The other disciples didn't have to learn this.
Do I have to sit between John and Andrew?

Blessed are the meek.
Blessed are they that mourn.
Blessed are the merciful.

I don't have any paper.
Do we have to write this down?
Will my assignment still be on time if I hand it in before you leave the mountain?
Do we have to turn this in?

Blessed are they that thirst for justice.
Blessed are you when persecuted.
Blessed are you when you suffer.

What does this have to do with real life?
May I go to the bathroom?
Will we have a test on this?
I get first dibs on characters for dramatizing the next parable.

[Sigh!!] "Be glad and rejoice, for your reward is great in heaven."

Then one of the Pharisees who was present asked to see Jesus' lesson plan, and inquired of Jesus, "Where is your anticipatory set and where are your objectives in the cognitive domain?"*

Jesus wept.

*****************************

I'm contemplating making a suggestion: Forbid students to assign parts to teachers for student chapels. Several of us have quite enough gray hairs as it is.

*People who have been through a teacher education program understand this. It's education-speak for certain components of properly prepared lesson plans.