Religion class has been great experience

Kaity Holtman

Last week, we taught our final religion class for a while.

And by taught, I mean we had a big end-of-year celebration.

When we agreed to teach religion classes four years ago, I don’t think either Matt or I realized how attached we would grow to the process, or to the youth.

We agreed to it as a service to our church and faith, but we really had no idea how we would benefit from it personally.

We’ve taught a batch of eighth graders during each of the last four years, and that comes with its challenges, no doubt.

But, wow, does it come with its rewards, too.

Teaching 13- and 14-year-olds can be intimidating.

They challenge our teaching, which is great because that really causes us to do our research.

Keeping them on task can be difficult, but often the tangents we go off on are just as valuable as our outlined lesson plan.

Heck, even the fact that most of them are taller than I am is intimidating in itself.

But what we really realized as we got into teaching was that at this age, these young adults are starting to face some seriously tough decisions.

These years are crucial in their deciding what kind of people they want to become.

This fact is the very basis for why we teach what and how we do.

One thing we try to drive home all year long — if they learned nothing else but this, I’m still happy — is that every single person is created with human dignity, in God’s image, and therefore every person deserves to be treated with respect and kindness.

It’s our hope that this not only helps them grow into young adults, but also impacts how they treat their peers, or anyone at all, for that matter.

The more we’ve said it, and the longer we’ve taught, the more we realize that the belief in human dignity is a foundation of how we view almost everything in our faith.

We’ve learned that every class has a different personality, and we’ve grown to appreciate each of those personalities in time. We had warnings about certain students, or entire classes, from previous teachers before each of them came to us.

But to be completely honest, the students that we were warned about — the projects — they became some of our favorites because we could see the most progress in them.

They asked the most challenging questions, and when we saw their “a-ha moments,” we felt so incredibly rewarded.

Now sometimes we would get in the car after class, look at each other, and say “did we accomplish anything tonight?”

Then we had to remind ourselves that we planted a seed. If their minds go back to one thing they learned from us — next week, next year, five years from now — we’ve accomplished something.

And while we hope each student has learned one tiny little thing from us, the ways in which we have benefited from teaching are endless.

We realized after the first year that this one of those blessings in disguise we didn’t see coming. See, if we would have started having kids when we planned and not faced infertility issues, we never would have taught classes.

Each year, we told ourselves, “this might be our last year, maybe we’ll have a kid by the end of this year.”

It took a while, but the time has finally come.

And it’s way more bittersweet than we every could have imagined.

This has been a huge blessing that has come from carrying our infertility cross, and we’re so grateful to have been given this opportunity.

I got a fist bump in my last class when I told them I’d be helping the high school teacher, so I’d be moving with these students while Matt hangs out with the little one on Wednesday nights.

A fist bump from an eighth-grade boy is gold. I’ll take it.

I’m so excited that I’ll be helping with these four high school classes, as they are the four classes that passed through my eighth-grade classroom.

I’ve so enjoyed watching each of them grow in their faith, and now I get to continue doing just that.

It truly is a blessing.