Thursday, June 17, 2004

Lessons about Jesus

If my classes go anything like last year's classes, this will one of many posts on what religous things kids say in my classroom. Jesus in the classroom is a hard subject for me. I am a member of the Church of Latter Day Saints and as such do believe in Jesus Christ and the atonement. I have my beliefs and my faith, and I know that children have theirs too. I try to respect everyone and not crush anything that any parent may be working for. The hard thing is that little four year olds don't really understand that they're not supposed to talk about it in the classroom. Here's what happened today:
Me: "Ok, I need you all to color a piece of construction paper and then bring it up to me to hang on our bullitin board."
Then they all start coloring for quite sometime. Suddenly out of nowhere:
Landen: "Miss Margaret, I saw Jesus today!"
Me: "Well, that's nice." (Slightly confused because this 4 year old is seeing Jesus.)
Landen: "I saw where he died."
Me: "How very interesting." (Knowing I'm not supposed to be saying anything and also wondering if Landen thought that Jesus had actually died somewhere in Spokane.)
Landen: "That's what I drew for our bullitin board."
He brings his picture to me. It is a green piece of paper with crosses written ALL OVER it. I figure I can't just say, no I'm not putting that up, so I put it way at the top where none of the kids really notice it. Then he and a little girl start talking between themselves about Jesus and what happened on the cross. I was floored by how much they knew and how much they 100% believed. Kids are so pure in their beliefs sometimes. Landen just said it because he was thinking about it from his other classes earlier that morning. (Perhaps Bible school?) He doesn't see the difference between the two classes, in both he's learning stuff and he probably talks about bird watching and monster masks when his bible school teacher is telling him about the atonement. All I can really say is, how precious.

2 comments:

Katie said...

I thought you belonged to the Church of JESUS CHRIST of Latter-Day Saints. My bad.

Maggie said...

Yeah, sorry about that. I do belong to that church. How embarassing when I can't even type the right name of my church in? Yikes! Anyway, she's right, I do belong to the church of Jesus Christ of latter day saints. That's what I thought I typed.