One of the first things I see when entering Notre Dame Academy is the Notre Dame seal along with a statue of St. Julie with a girl. When I ride alone in the Holy Cross van, I arrive at Notre Dame from Holy Cross around 7:30 a.m. This week, because of the Holy Cross spring break and the few people left on campus, I will enter the school grounds with a bit of extra time for making copies and looking over my lesson plans.
Today, in two of my three classes, we started new units, which means I spent most of my weekend lesson planning and going into the week with little sleep. My 10th and 11th-grade morality and scripture classes were back-to-back which meant that after 11:00 a.m., I had the rest of the day to check papers.
The greatest highlight during the school day was my morality class. Professor Roche from the religious studies department came to observe me and I received some great feedback after class. During the lesson, which is the first on the unit “respect for creation,” I had a student asked me, “Do dogs go to heaven?” After my response, I had to use a couple of attention signals to have the class settled down.
Next lesson, as a promise to my students to touch on this topic again, I will explain the difference between souls and spirits. Even though the girls became a bit chaotic, I am glad to say that at least this reaction showed that they were invested in my lecture. They also managed to remain quiet for the remainder of the period while engaged in independent reading. Two points for me!
After returning to Holy Cross, I took a long-needed nap. I woke up four hours later. Now, I am headed to lesson plan for my seventh-grade class tomorrow.
