Sheila Sims Iding
Today I taught in a Catholic School. Today I prayed. Not just our morning, lunch and sending prayer. I prayed all day. WE prayed all day. I was thinking about it on the way to work this morning as we celebrate Catholic Schools Week. I was thinking about the privilege of being able to pray…not just our morning prayer, lunch prayer and sending prayer…so much more than that.
Before we even gather for prayer, as we do our journal work, we sing the gathering song many teachers sing…”Good morning…how are you…it’s so nice…to see you…” But at the end we change the words a bit to say “One…and a two…and a me…and a you…a big hello. May God bless you….” And that becomes our first spoken words of prayer for the day.
Then we go through the day’s schedule, do calendar work and announce “today is Tuesday, January 31, 2012” and then we sing Psalm 118 “This is the day the Lord has made. Let us rejoice and be glad.” Another time of prayer.
As we put journals away and get ready for our morning prayer, our prayer leader turns out the light and we gather for prayer singing a special hymn “He Came Down that We May Have Love”. Another song that does double duty as a prayer.
Now we are gathered in our prayer circle and it is barely 8 a.m. We start our prayer by learning that today is the Feast Day of John Bosco. He was the teacher of St. Dominic Savio…Tim’s favorite saint growing up. Tim even took Dominic’s name as his confirmation name. A mini saint lesson tucked in the beginning of prayer service.
Then they read the Psalm of the month, Psalm 8. Yes…they read it. Words from the Bible on their Psalm sheet. Oh it’s hard at the beginning of the month but I often wish parents could come be with us the last week of the month when they are more sure about this reading. Bible words can be hard. Bible words can be confusing. But Bible words read by the voices of little children are amazingly beautiful. And they are so proud. And they should be. They are even more proud the last day of the month because they get to take the Psalm sheet home and teach their parents. More than one parent…or grandparent…has been impressed by how well…and how meaningful…they read these scripture words.
We read the Gospel reading and talk a bit about it and then comes my favorite time for prayer each day. Special intentions. This is when they can share any prayer in their heart with us so even more people are praying for their special intention. These prayers range from a family in crisis to a doll that fell out of the top bunk. Some are more serious than others but they are all so genuine and pure.
Some of today’s special intentions from the hearts of these little Christians were:
For a pet dog who has cancer, one who just died and one who just
had a birthday.
For a pony learning to canter, a pet fish, a cat that was given away and
and a pet bunny who visited us this month
And always a prayer for Harriet…our pet hamster
For a grandma in heaven
For an aunt still in the hospital and an aunt with a new baby
For sewing lessons, skateboarding after school and all hockey teams
everywhere.
For a dentist appointment and an eye doctor appointment
For moms, including a mom “waiting to have a baby” and a mom’s friend
For classmates who were sick today
For me and Care Corner
For the world and all of heaven
And that about covers any need for any prayer. They voices are so sweet in prayer. It’s no wonder this is one of my favorite times of the day. They listen so respectfully to others’ prayers and carefully word their prayers …every teacher should get to start the day like this.
We end our daily liturgy with the prayer of the day and then we say our Care Corner morning prayer…where we offer our day as a gift back to Jesus. “Good morning, dear Jesus, this day is for you. So help me and bless me in all that I do.”
All this prayer is before 8:15 every day. I am so blessed. Even more blessed because the rest of our day is not without prayer. Our day is decorated with prayerful moments. Today we prayed to St. Thomas Aquinas patron saint of students to help us make good choices. (Because some of us have had trouble with that lately.)
We prayed before lunch and then a cafeteria full of kindergartners, first graders and second graders say a prayer together after lunch. We pray at the end of the day with our sending prayer asking all the angels and saints to “lead us on our way”. And finally, we gather in our friendship circle and sing our sending song with a prayerful line “May each day of the week be a good day. May the Lord always watch over you…”
Many teachers and first graders gathered today and did amazing things. We did amazing things too. We learned about magic “e” with a iPad game, we did a penguin book and learned new “penguin” words like “brood” and “rookery” and “krill”. We started our unit on geometry and learned about the properties of plane geometric figures and learned that a corner is called a “vertex” and the plural of that is “vertices”. We had a special penguin art project and did a sight word paper all on our own for a special heart sticker. We finished our Junie B. Jones book and tomorrow will start our new Magic Tree House book about Abe Lincoln. Many first grade teachers all over the country could say the same thing. It would be a full day and that would be enough.
But I was privileged to have even more. I was privileged to tell them about St. Dominic and his teacher, St. John Bosco. I was privileged to watch the St. Dominic movie with them. I was privileged to watch them play the saint game in small groups today. I was privileged to hear their voices read Psalm 8, sing Christian songs and pray for classmates who were sick. I was privileged to talk about the Great Commandment in our religion book today and to write “we prayed for you today” on the sick classmate’s homework sheet. Not every teacher got to do those things today. They could do the math, the reading, the singing and the fun we had. But today I got to have even more. Today I taught in a Catholic School. Today…I prayed..