Reason Numer 1,436 Why I Shouldn't be Teaching High School Kids

October 7, 2010

For all of you who've been living in a storage unit since late summer, I'll let you in on the crazy-butt thing that I'm doing in the name of church right now. I'm teaching a class called 'Seminary.' Just in case you're not fluent in Mormon, 'seminary' means that I have ten or twelve teenagers come to my house every single school morning from 6:05 until 6:55, during which time, I attempt to teach them the ins and outs of our religion.

One of the biggest components of Seminary is called 'Scripture Mastery,' and it's exactly what you'd guess it is--memorizing verses. Right now we're working on Doctrine and Covenants 8:2-3, and it goes like this:

2 Yea, behold, I will tell you in your mind and in your heart, by the Holy Ghost, which shall come upon you and which shall dwell in your heart.

3 Now, behold, this is the spirit of revelation; behold, this is the spirit by which Moses brought the children of Israel through the Red Sea on dry ground.

It's a really nice verse, but we all know that memorization is dry and boring, so I try to find a way to spice it up every week. This week, I called on the old white board, and wrote out the first letter of every word to kind of nudge the kids along. Like this:
 
Y B I W T I Y M A I Y H, B T H G, W S C U Y A W S D I Y H. N, B, T I T S O R; B T I T S B W M B T C O I T T R S O D G.
 
So, class started, and I picked a kid to be in charge of teaching scripture mastery for the day. He went up to the front of the room, set up the white board, and this is what immediately jumped out at me:
 
Y B I W T I Y M A I Y H, B T H G, W S C U Y A W S D I Y H. N, B,
T I T S O R; B T I T S B W M B T C O I T T R S O D G.
 
I'm telling you, I 100% had the fight the urge to lean over to the sophomore sitting next to me and says, "Oh my word! Is says tits!!!! TWICE!!!" And by 'fight the urge' I mean I was giggling, rocking back and forth, and forcibly covering my mouth with my own two hands.
 
So the kids recited the verse a few times through and I was hanging on by a thread. Seriously, I was working so hard to maintain composure that my bladder was one fluid ounce away from letting go all over the church-issued chair.
 
Finally, after the their third recitation of the verses (FINALLY!) the two girls to my left started to giggle. Without a second's pause, I physically whipped my head into the middle of their snickerfest and said, "I know! It says tits! I was waiting for someone to notice!"
 
Silence.
 
More silence.
 
Then it progressed to an awkward silence.
 
Finally, the freshman male of the group looked me bang in the eye and said, "Did you really just say that? Sister Lawson, that's really childish."
 
Then his brother piped up and said, "Yeah, you three need to grow up."
 
I tried to pull it together and apologize, I really did. But you guys, the board said T I T S, and it was way more than I could handle.

18 comments:

Unknown said...

What is it about people like us? We're so grown up and mature most of the time, but something like this makes us giggle like grade schoolers! I saw the 'tits' the first time I looked at your chart. Seriously, I worry about what that says about me!

Mindy said...

I'm just as immature as you are... I have tears running out of my eyes from laughing.

Pam @ herbieontherun.com said...

Ditto DeNae. It just jumped right out at me too.

Kim said...

Seriously dying here. Reminds me of when I mentioned Flavor-Flav over the pulpit in my testimony.

It was "not appropriate".


Whatever that means.

Grandma said...

This is the Spirit=tits.Will you ever be able to hear that again w/o giggling? Hey our Sunday Mass "peace be with you"= pbwy, maybe we can say This is the Spirit...or the short form...lol!

Amy said...

I felt the spirit while reading your post.

Anonymous said...

Amy, you rock, girl. I can always count on you for a great laugh. Love you!

Karen said...

It's sooooo bad when you start laughing in an inappropriate place. I usually end out with tears running down my bright red face.

X-Country2 said...

"Tits" is never not funny. I'm with you.

Bahston Beans said...

Agree. It's timeless, like potty humor.

Cheryl said...

You're hilarious! Why in the world did they ever think you'd be appropriate for teaching teens about the scriptures? LOL

January said...

Oh my gosh, thank you for the laugh. And you are teaching Seminary! Wow...you rock.

TanyaG said...

That's awesome. I would love to see you at a dinner party. That way I could be assured that I wouldn't be the only one to laugh when a husband accidentally makes his wife fall off a couch.

wendy said...

I love that you or anyone can teach serious stuff but still find humor in things.
sometimes though I do laugh at inappropriate times. The harder I try to keep it in, the more uncontrolable I becomes.
especially when my best friend and I get together,

I used to teach early morning seminary too....when I lived in Chilliwack British Columbia. I had to leave the house though and go to the church house.
AND I just had a newborn. It was murder, but I survived and have some fond memories of it....that was like 30 years ago....holy crap!!

Hurricanehol said...

The sad thing is that I didn't even need you to point it out and I was giggling cause I knew the post would be about this! :-) Oh my word. How funny!

BrianFlash said...

Somehow to me the funniest part of this is some snot nosed kid calling you Sister Lawson. Very respectful but that slays me!

queenannslace said...

Long time reader, first time comment. I have to say that as an Australian the first word that jumped at me was coit...australian slang: give him a kick up the coit(you get the idea).Urban Dictionary explains.

JC said...

My mother taught 3rd grade. The first day, she wrote the "specials" in the board with the day they would attend. One year, it went like this:

M Gym
T Library
W (etc...)

Guess what - when she got to Friday, it was Art.

Not one kid even noticed.