School is back in session now, and no doubt many students across the country are discovering what my 5th graders learned when I first began teaching religious ed several years ago: their teacher is not all that skilled.
However much it may or may not be successful in practice, there is good reason that professional teachers take all those courses in a classroom management and teaching techniques – teaching to a large group is a real skill, not nearly as forgiving as the one-on-one of tutoring or homeschooling. A love for the students, knowledge of subject, a passion for teaching, these are necessary. But even with these essentials, given a dozen or two tired, restless kids, each coming to the subject with an entirely different knowledge base, the devoted but inexperienced teacher can still crash and burn.
I eventually got the hang of the classroom setting, and by the end of the year had at least one student who liked me. (I found this out through the grapevine – my particular students were not the type to hand out compliments too liberally.) Meanwhile, I had instructed my students from the very beginning that for their own sakes they ought to consider praying for me, and an internet friend and experienced teacher recommended I take up a devotion to St. John Bosco. Duly noted.
(My long-distance mentor also gave me some very helpful teaching tips. Thank you Pam.)
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There is, however, a much more obscure saint that I think is worth considering as an additional aid for those of us who really need an extra measure of divine assistance in this department.
Back in August I was a bit surprised in my reading (Butler’s Lives again) when I came across the story of St. Cassian of Imola. [Date unknown, but thought to have really existed all the same. If you google him, you’ll find accounts offering a wide variety of possible dates. Traditional Feast day is August 13th.] I tend to think of saints as being competent in whatever it is they undertake; it appears from the legend that although this St. Cassian was quite good about the business of being martyred, he was not so sucessful in his career as a school teacher:
A violent persecution being raised against the church, he was taken up and interrogated by the governor of the province. As he refused to sacrifice to the gods, the barbarous judge, learning of what profession he was, commanded that his own scholars should stab him to death with their iron pens. He was exposed naked in the midst of two hundred boys, ‘by whom” says the Roman martyrology, “he had made himself disliked by teaching them.”
The narrative continues, of course, with a graphic description of saint’s martyrdom – fodder for your next horror film or halloween costume.
There is reason to beleive the account of St. Cassian’s death is legendary, but not to worry: regardless of the historical facts, we can be can be content to observe that St. Cassian was associated with the story for some good reason, perhaps as a hint to us that his eternity is available for the coming to the aid of beleagured educators.