the “good” teacher
I remember my sunday school. I remember that there were enough kids in the sunday school that it was separated into two groups. My sister and I were always separated and allocated to different groups.
We competed, swapping stories as to who had the coolest group, who did the coolest activities and who had the coolest teacher.
I remember the day that one of our school friends, Lena, had stayed over for the weekend and went to church with us on Sunday. When it was time to go out to sunday school, Lena had to choose whose group she wanted to join. She had to make an assessment on the spur of the moment as to where she would have the most fun (let’s face it, kids are fairly pragmatic about these sorts of things).
I remember thinking that my teacher would miss out. You see, my sister’s teacher was younger, always wore really nice clothes and had a pretty face and a warm smile. My teacher was older, about my mother’s age. Her clothes weren’t on the edge of fashion, and she wasn’t as “hip” as my sister’s teacher. Sure enough, Lena chose the teacher who looked like a better bet. Strangely enough I remember explicitly discussing the fact that my teacher didn’t look very cool - in a blunt and open way that would never be permitted in adulthood.
But I knew something that Lena didn’t know, and that my sister would never admit (for to do so would have allowed me to win the competition of who had the better group). My teacher hid beneath her plain exterior a tremendous talent for coming up with the coolest exercises and activities for sunday school.
My sister’s teacher would stick to the materials provided - colour this, fill in the blanks in that, draw this other. But my teacher was creative and would come up with interesting activities which no one had ever done before.
And on this occasion I was hoping that my teacher would come up trumps and prove Lena’s decision wrong. And she did. The theme was Noah’s Ark, and we made our own arks out of juice containers cut in half, with tiny model animals inside. Afterwards, as I was standing there with my resplendent Ark, I looked over at whatever coloured paper, glitter and glue activity that Lena and my sister had completed, and I knew that I was vindicated.
My teacher was the good teacher after all.
PS. This is my only memory of this Sunday School class, but I must have done heaps of other cool things for my teacher to have gained the reputation in my mind of “doing cooler stuff”. Ironically, had it not been for Lena snubbing my teacher in favour of the superficially better alternative, I don’t think I would have remembered this Sunday School class or my teacher’s coolness at all.