![Picture](/uploads/7/0/4/2/7042382/4455362.jpg)
Sheila Sims Iding
I love teaching. (Don’t all teachers?) But I really love teaching in May. I love teaching in May because I love teaching the Rosary. It is just the right time of the school year for a first grader to be immersed in a month-long lesson about Mary.
We’ve had the Holy Family chapter in our religion book. We’ve learned about the magic and power of the Holy Spirit. We learn about the angels and Gabriel’s important question to Mary and her even more profound answer. We know all about the Christmas story and the journey and the stable and how, on that Holy Night, Mary invented adoration. And still fresh in our minds…and in our hearts…is Mary’s Lenten journey and her Good Friday sorrowful mystery.
So as the year unfolded we have learned a lot about Mary. We have taken what parents and other teachers have taught before us and we have expanded our knowledge of Mary…and our faith. So May, the month of honoring Mary, is perfect timing for first graders to learn about Mary and the Rosary. It’s why I love teaching in May.
So on April 29 we made our Rosaries, we talked about the prayers and we prepare for the “Hail, Mary, Gentle Woman” song. We hang up the posters of the Joyous Mysteries and we make a picture of Mary with a crown of flowers to decorate our cubbies as a daily reminder that this month is for Her. We make our Rosary Leader badges (in the shape of a cross), we get our Mary book (where we will learn about her life) and we take 10 minutes out of the end of each day…every day…to pray a decade of the Rosary together. By the end of May we will have prayed all 20 mysteries.
Now on May 1st, it all seems a bit overwhelming. But I tell them together we will learn what all those rosary beads really mean. We will learn all the words to the Hail Mary, Gentle Woman song. And even though it is a grown up song, we will come to love it. We will learn why Rosary Leader is an important job, who Joachim was and why giving up 10 minutes of our afternoon will be special even if we miss our dancing time…especially if we miss our dancing time.
I told them they will be such grown up first graders because they will learn words like Annunciation, Ascension and Assumption. We learn how to say “transfiguration” and why that was so special. We will learn why the crown of thorns is one of the mysteries and so is a miracle. The weeks in May will take us through the mysteries…Joyous, Luminous, Sorrowful and Glorious. May is special. There is so much to teach in May.
This morning we finished our Mary Book in the Rosary Garden and we took a walk through the garden and reviewed all the mysteries and they knew them in order. From 4 weeks ago they remembered Annunciation, Visitation, Nativity, Presentation and Finding Jesus in the Temple. Really! They knew them all and I had to look at the Rosary Guide to make sure they were right. And as I sat there and reflected on all the teaching of Mary…of all the teaching in May…it was then I realized I hadn’t done all the teaching. Like so many other times, they were teaching me.
So on this May 30th as we gathered for the 5th Glorious Mystery, our final Rosary Prayer together, I was proud of all they had learned and all I had learned from them:
I learned from watching a student help another student when he couldn’t find the bead for the 4th mystery so as we prayed she put down her rosary to help him with his.
I learned how powerful a song can be for prayer. How prayerfully they sang “Hail, Mary, Gentle Woman”. It’s become such a part of their religion, they even recognized the instrumental version we listen too during handwriting. In May it wasn’t the “calming song” anymore. It was their “rosary song” now.
I learned the comfort of our prayers at the Mary Statue in church during May. Today one little boy told me he lit a candle at the Mary Statue with his grandma last Sunday.
I learned how the Rosary Garden becomes less of a “garden” and more of a “Rosary” as the beads have new meaning. And how the signs with the mysteries aren’t just words anymore. They not only know about the scourging and the Wedding at Cana and the Crowning of Mary…they can actually read the words now. Even more, they can actually feel the words.
I learned how sharing your faith can be as simple as the little boy who said “I can’t wait to take my Rosary home to teach my mom." And the little girl who is teaching her dad.
And I learned about the special time spent with Mary in prayer. How they looked forward to our Rosary Prayer time each day. It wasn’t ever an obligation, it was an honor.
So tomorrow…at the end of the month…I will put away the Mary lessons…I will take apart the Mary altar and return Mary to her spot in our prayer corner, I will put the Rosary posters away, and I will be amazed how quickly the month had passed.
As May ends, I am impressed by how the Marian lessons were absorbed in their little hearts. And, even more, I am moved and awed by the realization of all they have taught me about Mary because all along, I thought I was teaching them.