How do teaching orders have enough time for lesson planning/grading?

[Lady Grey, Hot]

I'm a teacher in a Catholic school, and even as a single layperson without a ton of other responsibilities or commitments, my job feels completely consuming. I do try to prioritize half an hour or so of lectio divina every day, but even that feels like an indulgence some days - I can't imagine (and not for lack of wanting) also doing the Liturgy of the Hours, Rosary, spiritual reading, Adoration, an entire hour of community recreation, etc. and still having time to make sure I'm not completely unprepared to teach the next day. Any first- or second-hand experience on just how those in teaching orders do it?

[Nunsuch]

Different communities have different prayer schedules and different degrees of flexibility. Not all, for instance, require specific prayers or devotions like the rosary or adoration. Not all do the entire liturgy of the hours, and some may be more likely to have time in contemplative silence or lectio. In some communities, much of the prayer schedule is private, and communal recreation (and even meals) may not be daily. [I do find it interesting that you didn't mention Mass, which is most likely to be a daily prayer commitment.]

I also think it's important what you prioritize and how long you've been doing what you do. 

Finally, don't forget stuff like cooking, laundry, cleaning, etc. Most sisters--like all of us--also do those things, too!

[GraceUk]

I have often wondered the same. But some teaching orders are thriving in the USA but not so much here in the UK I don't think. Nursing would be the same. How could you be a nurse and still have the time for devotions and community life.  I sippose the only way would be in a school or hospital run by the order. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Lady Grey, Hot]

13 minutes ago, Nunsuch said:

[I do find it interesting that you didn't mention Mass, which is most likely to be a daily prayer commitment.]

Teaching in a Catholic school, I'm fortunate to have it built into my school day at least a few times a week, so I guess I didn't even register it as being something separate.

[Totally Franciscan]

The community I was in managed to fit all into the day.  We prayed A Short Breviary, followed by half hour of meditation, then Mass, breakfast washing our own dishes, and then off to class/teaching.  Laundry was done on Saturday, as well as one's assigned charge (cleaning, etc.).  The vast majority of the household tasks, such as cooking, heavy cleaning, etc., were done by the canonical novices, who didn't attend classes or teach.  Out on mission, a cook was hired to prepare lunch, the main meal of the day for the sisters, but each sister took turns cooking the light evening meal for their sisters. Afternoons were free for lesson planning, as well as a bit of time after evening recreation and after other chores on Saturday and Sunday. The whole schedule worked like clockwork, just amazing to behold.

 

[Dymphna]

Also, it may be worth to keep in mind, that in some orders sisters will usually not work a full-time job, but 75-80%. Precisely for the reasons you mention - prayer and also community life need time.

[BarbTherese]

On 4/2/2023 at 4:20 AM, Nunsuch said:

Finally, don't forget stuff like cooking, laundry, cleaning, etc. Most sisters--like all of us--also do those things, too!

I think what nuns do all day is a fairly common question.  It must draw a smile from anyone with convent or monastic knowledge or experience.  Nuns certainly don't have time to grow moss or cobwebs.  

[gloriana35]

I hope this has changed, but it was terrible when I was a teaching Sister. Far too much was done in common - not only Mass and the Offices, but silly 'recreation,' common spiritual reading (aloud), meditation together, the rosary and Stations of the Cross. Technically, there was an hour free during the silence in the afternoon, and another hour between recreation and Compline, but they were interrupted - not because of any emergency, but just to give us another chance to obey. I am very conscientious by nature, and already had degrees before I even entered, but I had piles of papers to grade, no lesson plans on many days - if I started to try and prepare a lesson, it would be interrupted with 'come and dust the pews' (they may have been dusted that morning...), or other nonsense. There were a few hours on Sunday which were supposed to be free, but needing any time to one's self (even though it was schoolwork!) meant one was not 'community minded.'

Some links I've seen on this forum show community schedules packed with all sorts of private devotions, common recreation, then athletic recreation  - think twice! It isn't all inspirational. 

[Nunsuch]

2 hours ago, gloriana35 said:

I hope this has changed, but it was terrible when I was a teaching Sister. Far too much was done in common - not only Mass and the Offices, but silly 'recreation,' common spiritual reading (aloud), meditation together, the rosary and Stations of the Cross. Technically, there was an hour free during the silence in the afternoon, and another hour between recreation and Compline, but they were interrupted - not because of any emergency, but just to give us another chance to obey. I am very conscientious by nature, and already had degrees before I even entered, but I had piles of papers to grade, no lesson plans on many days - if I started to try and prepare a lesson, it would be interrupted with 'come and dust the pews' (they may have been dusted that morning...), or other nonsense. There were a few hours on Sunday which were supposed to be free, but needing any time to one's self (even though it was schoolwork!) meant one was not 'community minded.'

Some links I've seen on this forum show community schedules packed with all sorts of private devotions, common recreation, then athletic recreation  - think twice! It isn't all inspirational. 

Most of the communities I know, at least in the US, are less rigid than they used to be, and local house schedules are determined collaboratively, and generally not from "on high." 

Also, @Dymphna said: "Also, it may be worth to keep in mind, that in some orders sisters will usually not work a full-time job, but 75-80%." Unless they are retired, most sisters I know work far more than this--more than many lay people! And this often goes well into their 80s. Maybe this is true for some orders, of course.

[JHFamily]

You are single, yet there are many responsibilities that you must take on... feeding yourself, doing laundry, cleaning, etc. that the teaching sisters I know simply do not have. Sisters are assigned for these tasks and will not teach during the year(s) they are put in charge of those duties. They take turns, and all must take a turn.

In the morning, they rise and head to chapel for meditation, Office and Mass. Breakfast is waiting after, then it's off to school! Many teachers have a free period in which to do some work during the day, at least in my state they do. When they return home, they have free time until the evening when they return to the chapel for the Rosary and Office, followed by supper. A short recreation follows, which is optional, then time for Compline. Many stayed in the chapel after Compline for spiritual reading/adoration, but again, that is optional. The time after Compline is free once again before lights out. So, there is are two significant amounts of time that can be used for outside classwork. Three if you include recreation. On the weekends, there are light duties, but again, a lot of free time.

One thing that many of us out in the world do not understand is that when time is well-regulated and there is no procrastination going on, then often the demands are not as heavy and are easier to accomplish. 

Edited April 3, 2023 by JHFamily

[Nunsuch]

1 hour ago, JHFamily said:

You are single, yet there are many responsibilities that you must take on... feeding yourself, doing laundry, cleaning, etc. that the teaching sisters I know simply do not have. Sisters are assigned for these tasks and will not teach during the year(s) they are put in charge of those duties. They take turns, and all must take a turn.

In the morning, they rise and head to chapel for meditation, Office and Mass. Breakfast is waiting after, then it's off to school! Many teachers have a free period in which to do some work during the day, at least in my state they do. When they return home, they have free time until the evening when they return to the chapel for the Rosary and Office, followed by supper. A short recreation follows, which is optional, then time for Compline. Many stayed in the chapel after Compline for spiritual reading/adoration, but again, that is optional. The time after Compline is free once again before lights out. So, there is are two significant amounts of time that can be used for outside classwork. Three if you include recreation. On the weekends, there are light duties, but again, a lot of free time.

One thing that many of us out in the world do not understand is that when time is well-regulated and there is no procrastination going on, then often the demands are not as heavy and are easier to accomplish. 

This may apply to some teaching communities, but certainly not all. I know almost none that still have "housekeeping" sisters, who perform the tasks formerly assumed by lay sisters (a status abolished by Vatican II). It is impossible to generalize about these things. The rigidity of the short period of religious life as conducted between 1917 (code of canon law) and Vatican II is neither really "traditional" nor maintained by many communities today. Some, yes, but not most. Most sisters share domestic responsibilities, do their own laundry, clean their own rooms, etc.

[Sister Leticia]

I've attempted to edit this, as after I posted it I saw a line drawn through most of the text. I can't get rid of it! - but I am not intending to cross out my own words, I assure you all!!

 

A few things, from a religious sister (though not a teacher)

My congregation, the Society of the Sacred Heart, was founded to be apostolic contemplatives, for the service of education. St Madeleine Sophie wanted prayer and contemplation to be at the heart of our lives. In order to enable the mission, our sisters never said the full monastic offices, but prolonged personal prayer and the Eucharist were, of course safeguarded. 

What JHFamily has described is how life used to be for our sisters pre-Vatican II, when they lived in communities of 30 or 40, with sisters responsible for cooking, cleaning and laundry. The community's mission focus used to be their school or college, so yes, their daily schedule facilitated this. And I'm aware that in the US you still have congregations like this - but you also have others like mine, who started moving into smaller communities around 1970. And here in the UK I don't know any apostolic congregations in large communities with designated cooks and suchlike.

I have always lived in communities where we do our own laundry, take turns at cooking and preparing prayer each evening, and agree on other responsibilities, shopping rotas, who cleans where - that sort of thing. Ideally there's at least one green-fingered sister able to look after the garden, and someone with a lighter or more flexible workload/timetable who can fill in when someone else is extra busy. But we also don't have an enforced recreation, as Gloriana described from her previous experience. We catch up with each other's day, discuss the news etc over dinner, and then, after prayer, if people want or need to disappear to their rooms they can. 

There is, of course, always a kind of [hopefully healthy] tension between maintaining energy for mission - and the demands of a ministry which might mean working evenings or weekends - and energy for community, and for being part of Province teams, meetings, processes etc. And having time and energy for our prayer life, and for hobbies, exercise, creativity, contact with family and friends etc. This isn't only a tension for teachers - sisters who work in parishes, for example, or in hospitals (neither of these being 9-5), students and others also have to find a healthy balance between these different aspects of our life. But I assure you, it is all do-able.

Edited April 3, 2023 by Sister Leticia
words crossed out, unable to un-cross them

[Lady Grey, Hot]

1 hour ago, Sister Leticia said:

students and others also have to find a healthy balance between these different aspects of our life.

Actually, I might be even more in awe of sister-students - having the flexibility to stay up late was absolutely crucial to my getting through college.

Edited April 3, 2023 by Lady Grey, Hot
Verb tense

[Nunsuch]

17 hours ago, Lady Grey, Hot said:

Actually, I might be even more in awe of sister-students - having the flexibility to stay up late was absolutely crucial to my getting through college.

I have a good friend who's doing her MA at Catholic Theological Union. She lives in an intercommunity house there, which she really likes. As with @Sister Leticia, they do everything cooperatively, including facilitating prayer time. 

Most of my sister-professor friends live either singly or with one other person, and manage their lives much the way I do. They are of course much busier than most students.... 

[Lady Grey, Hot]

@gloriana35 - Thanks for your personal insight! Very interesting!

[gloriana35]

Remember that, though it was after Vatican II, this was many  years ago. There were things that had changed - there were brief home visits; our mail was not read; we had individual bedrooms. (That wasn't true for many Religious I knew, even ten years earlier.)  There wasn't constant silence, but those who were not yet in final vows never knew when they'd be 'in trouble' for 'singularisation' (mention a book the pope wrote, and it still meant 'turning the conversation back on yourself' because you had spoken of reading the book) - or not being 'community minded.' I remember, for example, when a postulant, whose parents lived very nearby, knew her father was dying in hospital. Though the superiors not only gave her permission to visit him daily during the last week of his life, but gave her use of a community car, she still was reproached later. Were she 'community minded,' she would have refused the permission - because visiting her father meant she wasn't with her 'own community' (playing childish games with the other postulants.) 

The emphasis on poverty had unexpected dimensions. Housework tasks were assigned - but helping another required permission, or one was 'disobedient.' I remember when one Sister had filled the washer, but she couldn't reach to push the button (because of pain from arthritis.) I pushed the button for her - that meant that I  'used the machine without permission.' Another time, the superior told me to make coffee for some visitors. There was no open tin, so I opened one to make the coffee... I had not realised that poverty demanded that I return to the superior for permission to open a coffee can!

 

[BarbTherese]

Thank you, Gloriana - your Post was a delight.  I have memories from monastic life that now are fond memories.   At the time, my whole being was in revolt and another reason I decided to leave was because I could feel it on the way - I would be a decided and marked "disturbing influence on the community", unable to hide my interior rebellion.  Our sacristan's covert glances at me with real loving concern at times, became a final trigger to leaving.  The "monastic bowl" we both drank from and washed our knives and forks in really got me down, drove me up the cotton picking wall - as did novices in the Chapter of Faults confessing only to talking during the Grand Silence - and only that and every one of them as well.  Our novice mistress gave me a hard time probably testing humility and found me grossly lacking too.  Each of my faults received a special lecture from NM during the novices' meeting.  She did not mention me; nevertheless, I could feel myself reddening with embarrassment.  I hardly ate at meal times - there was a huge graphic crucifix at the head of the refectory.

Stress, I knew, could trigger a bipolar episode and the poor nuns would have no idea how to handle it.

I received, arriving home again, a beautiful letter I carry with me from our novice mistress about Divine Providence.  I did realize shortly after arriving home that I had been more running away (from a very busy active lifestyle) than running towards/with The Master.  I simply had no vocation, I had not been to where I was called.....and I resented that too for a while.  I was yet to learn The Will of God v my will.   But the experience of monastic life was a fashioning influence after returning home to the active life.

I love religious life especially monastic, but do realize it takes the special Grace of a vocation to keep one living the life fruitfully.  No special Grace and one will be miserable to the core, or leave as I did.  

 

(In monastic life in my teens, a priest told me that I give all to Jesus, put all in His Hands.  But then I say to Him, "Now, take this and put it there, take that and put it here".  Pretty good summary too, although it was quite a journey to realize what Father had been on about.  That priest, Msgr. Dunne, turned out to be an ex parish priest in our family's parish while I was still in primary school, so he knew me pretty well.

My novice mistress gave me The Imitation of Christ to read - it scared the wits out of me.

[gloriana35]

I don't know that everyone who thinks certain practises are outdated does not have a vocation - it's an odd blend, as I'm sure you know. For example, I have known some Sisters (from different communities) who think everyone must do everything together - they don't think that a Sister having a choice of which Mass to attend is appropriate, for example. Yet they are not what anyone would consider to be attached to most 'old ways.'

I did (and, by the grace of God, do) have a calling to consecrated life - I'm a solitary now (no hair-shirt, no grille...), but I've been in vowed life for forty years. I only muse at times because I've noticed a trend towards some communities (many of which I'd never heard of outside of this forum) seeming to want to go back to how it was sixty years ago. That may suit certain Sisters - but I don't want the young to have 'rose coloured glasses' syndrome. (This is not a slur, just an observation - it seems some of the new communities have the sort of garb - including coif and headbands - that Sisters wore when I was a school pupil.) 

[BarbTherese]

1 hour ago, gloriana35 said:

I don't know that everyone who thinks certain practises are outdated does not have a vocation - it's an odd blend, as I'm sure you know. For example

I very much agree that on a cloister one will find a mix of personalities and concepts.  Some, as an example only, can find changes post V2 have gone too far, some not far enough.  My personal interior rebellion went further than any outdated practices and no matter how I tried, my interior conflicts simply got worse and my misery increased.  I had not been eating nor sleeping adequately. Quite possibly, a person with a religious vocation could have persevered through it all.  I did feel best I went home before a bipolar episode forced the issue.  An episode would have introduced probably complete confusion into the community and I would have been asked to leave.

Finishing this off in another thread.

.

[BarbTherese]

With a vocation and call comes the Graces and qualities necessary for the life.