Series of entries in my teaching diary about an experimental Sunday school class. First entry.

During the first fifteen minutes of the worship service this morning before we went off to Sunday school, the children got to hear the church choir sing a delightful arrangement of the folk song “Somos el Barco,” originally written by singer-songwriter Lorre Wyatt. Melissa, one of the teachers in our class, went up to light the chalice with her son Zach, who is in our Sunday school class, and her daughter who is in the high school youth group that meets at the same time as our class. Then it was time for the children to go off to Sunday school, while we all sang “This Little Light of Mine” together. This was a spirited rendition of “This Little Light,” with our music director, Henry, at the piano doing a rocking gospel-style accompaniment, which brought forth full-voiced singing from the choir and congregation. I noticed that a number of the children knew “This Little Light” and were singing it as we gathered together at the back of the church, and some of us kept singing during the last verse as we slipped out one of the back doors to head off to our classroom. Each of these elements of this opening time in the worship service has been planned with Amy, our parish minister: at my request, she chose ten hymns that are kid-friendly and that we will try to teach in Sunday school this fall; she is getting families with children to light the chalice each week so kids can see their peers participating in the worship service; and she is including different elements of the worship service during the first fifteen minutes so that the children can get a sense of the different things that happen during worship.

When we had gathered in our classroom, we had nine children: Dorit, Heather, Zach, Sara, Perry, Monty, Lily, Kerry, and Sid (note that I never use real names for children). Kerry and Sid were new this week; Kerry is friends with Lily, has come to church before, and is friends with Lily; Sid’s family is completely new to the church, and is in (I think) 3rd grade. There were four of us adults today: Susie, Melissa, me, and Sid’s mom who decided to us on Sid’s first Sunday.

“Let’s get the carpet squares in a circle,” I said. That took a while, but the children are beginning to realize that I expect them to help set up the classroom, and more children helped out than did last week. As we were settling in to the circle, I reviewed some of the silly lessons in speaking with a New England accent from previous classes: “What’s this called?” [patting the floor] “The flo-ah!” “And what city did I live in before I came here?” “Nu Befit!” [New Bedford] And so on. It turned out that Sid and his mom had recently moved to California from Massachusetts, so they were amused by my New England accent lessons. While these lessons in speaking with a New England accent are mostly silly fun, I have been thinking that many children are unaware that there are regional accents in the United States; they are fairly aware that people who grew up in another country, or speaking a language other than English, might have an accent, but they are not nearly so aware that people talk differently just because they live in a different part of the country. Continue reading →