In the process of housecleaning my professional materials that have accumulated over the past 40+ years I have mixed feelings as to whether to throw away much of the materials are try and archive them. In any case I get to travel down memory lane filled with emotions. These emotions rekindle past events. So is the case with this writing.

In the early 1980’s public and non-public school teachers were presented professional growth workshops on writing instructional objectives. These objectives were the foundation for daily classroom instruction and a teacher was to “teach to the objective” and stay on task. I had the opportunity to be a presenter in several of these workshops.

One workshop in particular was composed of teachers from Christian Schools. As the time progressed and rapport established between the teachers and myself I challenged the group to compose a workshop on teaching to an objective with Jesus as the moderator and the teachers were the disciples. The following is the result of that exercise.

..then Jesus took his disciples up the mountain, and gathering them about him, he taught them saying:

“Blessed are the poor…..

“Blessed are the hungry….

“Blessed are those who mourn…..

“Blessed are the oppressed…..

Then Simon Peter said. “do we have to write this down?”

And Andrew Said, “Are we suppose to know this?”

And James said, I don’t have papyrus with me.”

And Phillip said, “Will we have a test on this?”

And Bartholomew said, “Do we have to turn this in?’

And John said, “The other disciples didn’t have to learn this.”

And Matthew said, “Can I be excused?”

And Judas said, “What does this have to do with the real world.”

Then one of the Pharisees who was present asked to see Jesus’ lesson plan and inquired: “Is this lesson aligned with state standards? Does it address multiple intelligences? Where are your objectives in the cognitive domain?”

And Jesus wept.