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 Friday, January 31, 2014” and then we sing Psalm 118 “This is the day the Lord has made. Let us rejoice and be glad.” Another time of prayer.
Today we went to mass and we prayed. On all other days 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
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.
During morning prayer 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 to another gold fish that died. Some are more serious than others but they are all so genuine and pure.
Some of this week’s special intentions from the hearts of these little Christians were:
They prayed for family:
“my whole family”
a great grandpa and great grandma (new guardian angels in heaven).
a dad who lives out of state
a brother who hurt his foot
They prayed for pets:
For Bessie, Bessie, Bessie and Bessie (a lot of them pray for Bessie)
For Princess (another new bunny)
For a new pet fish and for two fish (Dots and Thunder) who died awhile ago.
For Roxy – a dog with a hurt leg
And even a prayer that “my mom will let us get a new dog”.
They prayed for others:
For poor kids
For orphans
For star student
For Mr. & Mrs. Endres
For teachers
For basketball practice (“strength to do our best”)
For everyone in Care Corner
And…for peace in the world
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.
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 more about magic “e” , learned new “penguin” words like “brood” and “rookery” and “krill”. We started our unit on geometry learned that a corner is called a “vertex” and big math words like rectangular prism and symmetry. We took a spelling test, talked about comprehension in reading and danced. 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 priviledged to sit with them at mass today. I was privileged to tell them about St. John Bosco and his favorite student, St. Dominic Savio. I was privileged during show and tell as they shared rosaries, prayer books, prayer cards and saint medals. I was privileged to hear their voices read Psalm 8, sing Christian songs and pray our sending prayer. I was privileged to talk about the word “miracle” in our religion book today and to watch them write a prayer for the Pope in our journals. Not every teacher got to do those things today. They could do the math, the reading, the dancing and the fun we had. But today I got to do even more. Today I taught in a Catholic School. Today…I prayed..