I got my first job when I was in my last year in college.
I was 21.
But despite taking on a heavy load in college, 140 kids to mentor in four classes in an all-Catholic, all-girls’ grade school, I was happy. Not only was I sharing what I had learned in my 21 years with younger kids, but I also had faith as big as a mustard seed. I was answering my calling. I could move mountains. That same faith grounded my teaching, and directed my life’s plans.
I guided 15- and 16-year-old girls through the many angst-ridden problems they faced at home and in school in one of the extra-curricular organizations I was made to handle. Like me, they were also searching for meaning in their lives. The extra-curricular activities were what my Saturdays were made of. During these days the kids came over to school and we talked for hours.
When I opted to live away from home, also at 21, my life changed forever.
I began my days then in quiet prayer. For every time I did that, and each day that I searched for answers in my work at school, I got closer and closer to what I was looking for.
It was the best time of my life.
To reach out to young kids, who looked up to me as their mentor, was a big responsibility. One that I took with much care and affection.
It was my dream to help the kids see life as wonderful, and to look at learning as something interesting. To see stuff that we did in the classroom as a reflection of what was also to be done in real life.
Lesson plans were made with lots of thought on making learning a memorable experience, not just a memorization of words, concepts and ideas.
I was young, the kids were younger.
They had much to share. I had much to learn.
Many recess and lunch breaks were spent with the kids. I guess I did not have much time with schoolmates. At 21, the kids meant everything to me.
It was a time for reaching out, for listening.
I taught Christian Living classes in grade school. It was my dream to make the subject a way of life for these young kids.
I remember how the kids would ask about the Old Testament and question whether everything that the Bible said really happened.
Because surely, they said, snakes couldn’t talk — much more tempt Eve. They wondered out loud if people in the olden days lived forever. Did God really hand over the Ten Commandments to Moses? Was God easily angered?
Beyond that, the kids loved to ask questions about right and wrong. They often asked me if what their parents told them about God punishing bad kids was true.
It is never easy for a teacher to have all the answers, at least I never thought I had them all. These 11- and 12-year-olds were still kids who thought they were no longer kids.
Fun, laughter and lots of jokes were exchanged during class hours. The Catholic faith, after all, is in not something that we learn from books. It is what we learn in life, in the dealings we have with people.
Faith, I have always believed, is caught, not taught.
And so it was. Our classroom was a place where the kids could express themselves. It was in this way, I thought and believed, at 21, that they discovered Christian Living.
I am still the same person. I still have the same calling.