This year's Seattle second-generation Sunday school teachers, both new and experienced, attended a Sunday school education workshop in the lovely home of Mrs. Keating, the Seattle family Sunday school director. Mrs. Keating has years of experience teaching second-generation Sunday school and prepared for us a very informative and insightful afternoon. The workshop began with an excerpt about Father's early years and we were moved to know that True Father himself was a Sunday school teacher at our age. We were reminded once more how True Father has been concerned about God and all humanity since he was young until today. True Father is the greatest example as a teacher as well as a true son of God. Then Mrs. Keating poured out her heart and shared with us her wealth of knowledge on the subject of teaching Sunday school, truly expressing her passion to serve and to give us the necessary tools and ideas to educate and uplift our younger second generation brothers and sisters.

The workshop was divided into three sections. Each section was an hour and half long. The first section was focused on teachers, students and the classroom. Mrs. Keating gave internal guidance and emphasized the role and the attitude the teachers need to have toward Sunday school. Mrs. Keating taught us the importance of each greeting, each smile, and each moment of consideration can change the student’s life - and even save someone's life. At the end of the first section our purpose of Sunday school became very clear:

1) To help our students realize God and True Parents’ heart, and to help them to become true children who will attend and follow our True Parents,

2) Help our younger brothers and sisters to learn spiritual knowledge in order to become Chun Il Guk Citizens,

3) To share true love among our blessed families and blessed children in our church and become true people so we can build a true world, which is Chun Il Guk.

During the second section we learned about more practical things: the importance of preparation, how to lead a class from the beginning to the end, how to get the student’s attention, and also how to connect the lessons to different activities and games. Mrs. Keating gave us different ideas of how to unite the class and motivate the students to learn from Sunday school.

The third section was led by our big sister, Towa Lee, who also has experience teaching Sunday school. As we sat and listened, we derived strength and motivation from her testimony on the incredible challenges that God may give us to "round" our character, and how the opportunity to be Sunday school teachers would be valuable character education even for ourselves. We would need to be in a position where we could humble ourselves and unite with our co-teachers, even with differences of age or ideas, for the sake of our students. Towa nuna gave us a "to do list" to prepare to welcome our students. She emphasized the importance of commitment all teachers have to have for the whole year, to prepare the classroom’s environment each time before class starts, and not to forget to write a report of how the class went each Sunday.

The workshop ended with a prayer, a group picture, and a delicious barbecue prepared for us by Mrs. Keating. It was a precious time spent together in which we could prepare for the coming year, left with so many ideas on how to successfully educate and inspire our younger brothers and sisters. With both a giving heart and careful management, we knew we would have success.

Reported by Brendan Williams

 Download entire page and pages related to it in ZIP format
Table of Contents
Information
Tparents Home