Stranger danger. Addiction. Sunday school.

Thursday. The non-meeting day.

It's the day that I start to prep for the Sunday school class I teach. I've started to block out the lesson for Sunday. It's more challenging than most weeks for two reasons. One reason is that we only have about a half hour. I think most people who teach would tell you that they would rather teach the full hour than 30 minutes.

The second thing that makes this challenging is the subject matter. I found out a couple of Sundays ago that, according to diocesan standards, we were supposed to teach a session on stranger dangr and the like. The diocesan stndards are maddengly vague about what should be taught. I know enough about trafficking that this will be no problem. I could do this without notes, just winging it. Not that I ever wanted to be this acquainted with the subject, but I am.

The careful balance I must maintain: this is a class, most of the members of which are junior high age. I want to present the subject directly enough that they will know that we're talking about a serious serious danger. I also must be tactful enough that I'm not a cause of trauma.

The age group makes this interesting as well. If we only had 7th and 8th graders, it could be difficult enough. In any roomful of people there is a variety of maturity levels, but 7th and 8th graders present the variety in exaggeration. Add to that, that not all of the folks there are 7th and 8th grade. Our class is not designated by age group or school grade. It consists of kids who have been baptized, who have received their first Eucharist, who are of an age at which the Confirmation process could begin, but could not get into Confirmation class because the current Confirmation class is in its second year. So these youngsters are mostly 7th and 8th grade, but we have a 9th grader, we have a high school sophomore. Big variety of maturity levels and ages.

There's another subject that I know much more about than I ever wanted to know - addiction. For me, alcoholism, but alcoholism is just a form of addiction. Had I been thinking about this earlier in the year I would have had a class session in the fall about stranger danger and trafficking, and one in the spring about addiction. Mashing the two together won't be hard - there's an obvious connection between trafficking and addiction. But I'd rather have done this in two sessions. Lesson for next time - but I'm not at all sure that there will be a next time. I will be 60 in July, y'know.

So, to work, and work it will be.

Thanks for hanging out!