RE according to Sam

After Friday you should expect a massive post about my first taste of teaching (it’s in the works, I just can’t be bothered to finish it until I turn in my paper on Friday), but in the meantime I’ve been thinking a lot about this paper. If you’re not part of the Religious Education Massive*, then I should probably explain that we need to plan how to teach Christianity to middle schoolers (Key Stage 3) over six weeks. So basically I have six lessons to teach all of Christianity. Whatever, no big deal.

(*I learned the word “Massive” the other week, and apparently it’s like a gang…and now I can’t stop using it for everything. I’ve even started using it to refer to certain items of clothing, like my underwear is no longer my underwear but rather the “TOP DRAWER MASSIVE.”)

What I hate about this assignment is that I have to make the lesson plan that looks good, not the lesson plan that I would desperately like to do. The lesson plan I have to do is carefully justified with education policy documents and research into how kids learn. The lesson plan I would LIKE to do is justified with “because I feel like it.”

Actually, my justification would be in the form of song. I’d sing “because” to the tune of “We’re Off To See The Wizard” from “The Wizard of Oz.” So it’d be like, “Because because because because becaaaaaauuuuuuuse….” And then say, “Because I said so.” It’s the sort of thing that makes me think I’ll be a fantastic parent one day.

Anyway, what is this fantasy scheme of work? Well, basically we’d just sort of walk around—my God would there be a lot of walking. And we’d listen to Christian pop and haredi techno and Weird Al’s “Amish Paradise,” and it’d be fine. Occasionally we’d feed ducks and talk about it, and when we felt like it we would spend hours with our noses in the Bible, looking for something to laugh about. You know, the sort of thing that gives me the giggles during services (“These men are not drunk as you assume—it’s only 9 in the morning!”).

When we got bored we’d make fun of Midrash and then, if we were still bored, we’d invent the field of Christian Midrash just for laughs. We’d make fun of the Talmud for obsessing over minutiae that God Himself doesn’t have time to worry about, and after we finished we’d put together a “WHO WORE IT BEST?” fashion magazine spread for various popes.

We’d make frequent visits to churches, mosques, synagogues, cult centers, whatever, and for once in my whole method I’d lay down the law and I’d beat any kid who set one foot out of line. Unless someone farted, in which case the children would be encouraged first to laugh and then to loudly debate which member of the congregation dealt it. And rank the church on The List.

As I have completely unpredictable whims, one moment we’d be kumaya-ing it up and looking at squirrels somewhere, and five minutes later I’d be screaming at them to sit their happy asses down, shut up and open their books. I very humbly believe that this system, my system, is the best system of education. Ever.