Veteran teacher goes on as long as school is fun

If there's one thing teenagers deserve to learn, says Sister Marilyn Feehan, CSJ, it's the truth.

"They will learn what you teach them," asserted the longtime religion teacher at Catholic Central High in Troy. "If you teach them that they're good, they'll pick that up. If you teach them that God is absolutely enthralled with them, they can walk away if they want to, but God will always be there. They will absolutely, positively, never be alone."

It's Sister Feehan, however, that seems absolutely enthralled with her students. After 35 years of teaching religion, she shows no signs of wanting to retire.

"When it stops being fun, I'll think about it," she said, but for now she continues to call the daily voyage into the religion classroom "a worthy adventure."

Teaching goodness

At the front of Sister Feehan's eighth-grade classroom is a sign emblazoned with her motto: a quote from the letters of St. Paul.

"It says, 'I am convinced of your goodness,'" she explained. "Young people are very generous; young people are very attuned to fairness; they're naturally prayerful. It's just a matter of keying into them properly."

Teens in Sister Feehan's classroom find themselves studying religion both as a rigorous academic discipline and as a way of life. She's delighted that the new century has established a happy medium between the religious education of the 1960s, which was based on strict memorization and answering questions, and the "touchy-feely" '70s.

She recalls reading 40 pages of a circa-1970 religion textbook before she found one reference to Jesus. "Learning about Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King was wonderful," she said, "but the kids didn't even know the Ten Commandments!"

Balanced presentation

Sister Feehan said she balances the two extremes for her eighth graders, serving up a mixture of knowledge and contemplation, meditation and memorization.

"Oh, they actually do memorize things," she joked, "like the Jesse Tree and the Corporal Works of Mercy. But it's much more important to know why Jesus spoke kindly to the woman at the well, rather than how many provinces there are in Palestine."

Not all is pens and textbooks, however. A while ago, she was introduced to meditation as a technique that can be used to tap into youngsters' sometimes-dormant faith and foster a healthy interest in spiritual things.

On meditation days, students who often squirm, pass notes and misbehave "sit perfectly still for 20 minutes and pray. They have a natural gift for this," she said. "It's a chance to go deep down in their heart. And they don't get that chance very often."

Teens in perspective

Sister Feehan taught French, religion and social studies at Catholic High in the early '60s. For a period of time, she helped run a house of prayer at St. Joseph's Provincial House in Latham before returning to teaching at Cohoes Consolidated Catholic School and Catholic High.

"Maybe because I've spent more time with teens, I see them differently," Sister Feehan mused. "But I don't think they really are different. They have a lot of different outside influences, but at the heart of the matter, they're exactly the same."

However, just like 30 years ago, young people "have to be reminded over and over again of their goodness," she explained.

Different reactions

Sister Feehan believes that junior high students are more inclined to be open with their feelings, while high school students "won't let you know." Because of that, she often praises students' papers in class without saying their names or identifying whose work is whose.

"They never budge when I read things back. They look off in the distance, but they feel like a million bucks," she said.

More than anything else, Sister Feehan wants her students to "think in rainbows, because the world isn't in black and white. They have a right to that. To be on the winning basketball team is fantastic, but to be on the winning team when the only member is yourself -- that's great. Here, kids can be proud of themselves, period. Just for who they are."

(01-23-03) [[In-content Ad]]