My book & a Giftigami box for Ruby

Where do I start?  I signed up to teach religious education during the week instead of on Sundays because I didn't like the idea of subjecting my students to a substitute teacher when I couldn't make it to class.  The 2013-14 school year consisted of about 26 classes, and I knew I was going to be out some weekends for parent duties.  My daughter was a senior in high school, so there would be weekend trips to various colleges for music auditions in her major.

My class was held on Tuesday evenings, and I was expecting a small class of sixth graders.  On the first day I had two students, a seventh and eighth grader.  Sister T expected more to show up later, but I never had more than three students, the third being a sixth grader. I was unable to use the sixth grade textbook from previous years because my seventh grader, Emily, had been a student of mine the previous year. Instead of teaching about the Old Testament, I decided to teach the New Testament.

My sixth grader quit coming after two or three classes, and Sister T said it was because her non-Catholic family members objected to Catholic indoctrination. Around December, my eighth grader missed classes until late March the following year due to after school practice for orchestra, so I had one student: Emily. In late March, Emily switched from Tuesday evening classes to Sunday morning classes due to a conflict with after school sports activities, so Ruby was my only student.

Most of the year I made the drive from home to the church for just one student, but it was well worth the 26 hours I spent to teach them about the life and teachings of Jesus. I applaud their parents/guardians for making religious education a priority for the sake of their children's eternal souls. 

The Kings of the Promised Land

     The lesson for last Sunday's religious education class included a study of the southern kingdom of Judah under the reign of King David's descendants. I told my students that from 922 BC to 721 BC, the northern kingdom of Israel had been ruled by 19 kings before falling to the Assyrians, and from 922 BC to 587 BC, the southern kingdom of Judah had been ruled by 20 kings before the Babylonians gained control.
      One of my students wanted to know why the kingdom of Judah had outlasted the kingdom of Israel by over a hundred years, with only one more king.
        My immediate response was that perhaps one king had ruled for a hundred years. Some people from the Old Testament lived to be hundreds of years old, and it wasn't unheard of to be 800 years old. The textbook listed the names of the kings and the years they ruled. I suggested that the student look over the list.
      After class, I examined the list myself and compared it to the textbook's list of kings from Israel. What I discovered is that five kings from Israel ruled not more than a year, seven more ruled between five and eleven years, six between 15 and 27 years, and King Jeroboam ruled the longest at 40 years. 
         In contrast, several kings of Judah reigned for longer periods of time. Four kings ruled not more than a year, seven kings ruled between two and eleven years, six between 17 and 37 years, and three between 40 and 45. 
         Students ask the most interesting questions... The same student asked about the origin of the Latin language when the lesson turned to a discussion of the four epiphanies of Christ. I stated that "epiphany" is derived from the Latin word, "epiphania", and the first epiphany occurred on Christmas Day, or the Nativity of the Lord. But this is a topic for another day!

Tragedy at Sandy Hook

The tragic loss of lives at Sandy Hook happened on my 27^th wedding anniversary, and its impact will last a lifetime, most certainly for victims’ families.  The immediate response by the media and the White House is gun control.  Other issues raised are mental health and violence in entertainment and the media.  If Americans are serious about preventing future mass shootings, they’ll do more to support the family, the basic building block of society.  Look no further than the Holy Family as an example for us to follow:  Joseph never cohabitated with Mary prior to marriage nor asked her to have an abortion when she became pregnant.  The child Jesus grew up with a mom and dad, and his parents were active in their faith.

As for the response by the media and the White House concerning a ban on assault weapons, weaponry doesn’t kill; it’s the person pulling the trigger that does.  If that person is mentally ill, all the more reason to provide sufficient care for the mentally ill population and to provide support for their families. 

Some people will deny the connection between violence in entertainment and the media and actual violence.  For these people, I’d like to recall a story my husband told his religious education students a few years ago to help them discern the truth about the existence of God:  Imagine yourself in a room with God and Satan.  One of them wants you to believe that both of them exist; the other wants you to believe that neither does.  Okay, now one of them wants you to believe that there’s no relationship between desensitizing people to violence and their willingness to commit it. The other one wants you to direct your thoughts toward “all that deserves respect, all that is honest, pure, admirable, decent, virtuous, or worthy of praise.” (Phil. 4:8) Who’s who?

For practicing Catholics, prevention of another mass shooting boils down to taking important measures to protect and foster respect for the sanctity of life and to practice our faith as set forth by the Magisterium of the Church.  If you’re feeling pulled away from practicing your faith and following the teachings of the Church, who’s to blame?

Zucchini and the Easter Woodchuck

Palm Sunday fell on April Fool's Day this year, and I couldn't resist playing a trick on my students, but what?  I'd planned a small party to celebrate Easter just before the end of class, so Chuck suggested I tell them I'd brought whole zucchinis to pass out for a snack.  Or, how about telling them about the Easter Woodchuck?  

The Easter Woodchuck reminded me of Christmas around the world, and how Santa rides a surfboard to Australia in bathing shorts and sunglasses, and how it's the Three Wise Men who deliver gifts to kids in Mexico (Ebram learns about this in Ebram's Story: The Haunting).  Impressed with Chuck's ideas, I decided to use both.

At the beginning of class, I told the students I had something to show them and pulled out a zucchini.  I asked if they knew what it was but met with blank stares.  I walked down the aisle so they could have a closer look, and--surprise!  They thought it was a cucumber. 

"The zucchini is very special to some kids in South America," I said after informing them that it was not a cucumber. "They're not familiar with the Easter Bunny; they have an Easter Woodchuck.  On the night before Easter, they leave zucchini for the Easter Woodchuck so that he'll stop by their house and leave candy and small gifts on Easter Sunday."  

At this point it was hard to keep a straight face.  "The Easter Woodchuck eats as much of the zucchini as he can and gives away the rest to orphans and poor children." 

This is NOT a cucumber!

The students were very quiet and I thought they might actually believe this tale. "April Fools!"  I said to deafening silence .  "Look, I wrote April 1st on the whiteboard; it's Palm Sunday, the first day of Holy Week, and April Fool's Day!"  Finally, a cracked smile or two.  Had I let them down?  I guess I'll never know.

Catholic Faith

I told my RE students last Sunday that we would be finishing our study of the Old Testament that day.  We covered some Prophetic books (Malachi, Obadiah, Joel, Daniel, and Jonah) and Historical books (Esther, Tobit, Judith, 1 Maccabees, and 2 Maccabees).  Since this is my first year teaching a bible class, I developed lesson plans beforehand that required research into events and ideas presented in the textbook.

In particular, the First and Second books of Maccabees cover a lot of history that I broke down into a timeline on the whiteboard.  The textbook started with 323 B.C. when Judah was under Syrian-Mesopotamian rule and then jumped to 175 B.C. when the king was warned about the Roman Empire’s intent to invade.  The king’s name wasn’t provided, so I did an Internet search that led me to the Jewish Virtual Library: http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/History/Greeks.html.   Alexander the Great had conquered Persia; consequently, Judah had fallen to the Greeks.  The Jews detested the Greek gods and found certain Greek practices offensive, such as nude wrestling and homosexuality.

Given today’s liberal pro-choice climate, I researched abortion in ancient Greek culture and found it to be an acceptable practice.  This topic wasn’t discussed with my students, but aware of highly popular Greek mythology books published by Scholastic, I asked if they could name some Greek gods and they did: Zeus, Apollo, Poseidon, etc.  

My thought for today: Catholic parents must learn their faith in order to pass it on to their children.  By solely exposing them to secularist and materialistic forms of entertainment and education in books, movies, video gaming, phone apps, etc., they risk leading their children astray from their faith, sometimes to the point of abandoning it altogether.

A Call to Holiness

My family and I attended Mass today at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Little Flower.https://littleflowerbasilica.org/  This church is dedicated to saint Therese Lisieux and  celebrated its 80th anniversary last year. A community of Discalced Carmelite friars, the Convent of the Sisters of the Holy Face, and Little Flower School are located nearby.   

In his homily, the priest told of a touching event in the life of saint Therese Lisieux when she was a child.  He said that she ran away from home with her brother and headed for the Strait of Gibralter to be martyred by the Moors.  The reason she wanted to be martyred was so that she could be present before Jesus.  Of course, the children never got there, and Father asked us if we were in church for Jesus...or out of a sense of obligation.

A couple of hours earlier, I'd taught my sixth grade religious education class the last lesson for the year about the Old Testament, and having a few minutes to spare before dismissal, I asked them about a movie that's getting a lot of attention these days, The Hunger Games. This movie is rated PG-13, but we all know that children as young as eight years of age have been reading the book and will certainly watch the movie.  Not surprisingly, my students had heard the hype.  One is currently reading the book on his Kindle and another had seen the movie with his parents. I was very glad to hear someone say that it wasn't his type of movie and he wasn't going to see it.

I used this opportunity to tell my students that some movies are damaging to souls, and they should look up any movie they want to see on the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) website.  If I'd thought to bring it, I would've given them this website: http://www.catholicnews.com/movies.htm. 

In hearing the story of saint Therese, I thought of how differently we're raising kids in our society today.  Parents can look to Therese's parents, Blessed Louis and Zelie Martin (beatified October 19th, 2008), for an example of virtue and holiness in family life. Blessed Louis and Zelie Martin, pray for us!
http://www.sttherese.com/Parents.html

 Today is the first Sunday of Advent and the beginning of the liturgical year. My RE class didn't meet today due to the Thanksgiving break, but will meet again next Sunday. I plan to bring an easy-to-make Advent wreath I created. Here are instructions to make your own:



Supplies for easy-to-make Advent Wreath

 Supply List



1 - 18" wreath or strip of garland
4 - battery-operated candle lights (I bought these at Hobby Lobby)
5 - floral Christmas picks
acrylic paints, pink and lavendar
paint brush


Instructions

1. Fashion the strip of garland into a wreath.
2. Tuck the floral Christmas picks in wreath.
3. Paint three candle lights lavendar.
4. Paint one candle light pink.
5. Position candle lights in center of wreath.

                                         Here is the finished product:



Easy-to-Make Advent Wreath

 Copyright ©2011 Esther Locascio. Contact the author to obtain permission for republication.

Advent 2011

My religious education class has been studying the liturgical calendar. Sunday, November 27th is the first week of Advent, and I've created an Advent wreath that I plan to bring to class and use to teach the students about this tradition of the Church. Here's a website with lots of information about Advent: http://www.fisheaters.com/customsadvent2.html.


I plan to post a supply list and instructions to make my Advent wreath, which uses battery-operated 
candles. The church recently sustained massive flood damage, and I think it's wise not to use lighted wax candles in the classroom to prevent the risk of starting a fire and burning down the school!