Improving Gospel Teaching, Part 2: How To Be Adequate

[Part 2 in a series about improving gospel teaching. Previous entries in the series: Part 1]

Describing how to be an adequate teacher might also be termed “How NOT to be a poor teacher” (thus no need to give poor teachers their own section).

Oftentimes, the difference between a poor teacher and an adequate teacher can be summarized in a list of “Don’ts”. In many cases, the breaking of some bad teaching habits can be all that is needed to lift a poor teacher into adequacy–perhaps making the difference between someone willingly sitting through a class, and finding excuses to skip it every week.

Let’s start with some basic bullet points, and go on to more general principles afterwards:

• Adequate teachers don’t mumble or speak indistinctly: They speak clearly enough so that everyone in the class can hear. Nothing tunes out a student’s attention like having to strain to make out what the teacher is saying.
• Adequate teachers don’t start preparing their lessons an hour before church: …or later.
• Adequate teachers at least pretend that they want to be there, teaching: …without making it obvious that they’re just trying to ‘get this over with’ so they can leave. Gee, if the teacher doesn’t want to be there, do you think the students will?
• Adequate teachers ‘teach’ from the manual, rather than ‘read’ from the manual: If you’ve been in a class where the teacher ‘reads’ from the manual, you’ll understand the difference…
• Adequate teachers don’t bury their heads in the manual: Instead, they make eye contact with students on a regular basis. It’s also easy to tune out a teacher who never once looks in your direction.
• Adequate teachers don’t lecture the class for 40 minutes: Unlike sacrament meeting talks, second and third-hour lesson blocks are designed to involve student participation…and should. You’d have to be a very compelling teacher to get away with 40 minute lectures–and if you’re THAT good a teacher, then you’re also good enough to know how to involve the students so as NOT to have to lecture for 40 minutes to make your point…
• Adequate teachers don’t let students run the discussion for 40 minutes either: Some teachers let the inmates run the asylum–essentially setting things off and letting the students talk about things in a haphazard manner for the rest of the class period. A structured lesson augmented by controlled class discussion rather than a loose lesson dominated by class discussion will almost always be more effective.
• Adequate teachers don’t read EVERY scripture mentioned in the lesson manual in class just to fill up time: Instead, they pick and choose only the most important and relevant scriptures that fit their lesson.
• Adequate teachers don’t read scriptures in class and then immediately head into the next section of the lesson without discussion: Class time is not for READING scriptures–anyone can do that, on their own time. Class time is for discussing and learning from the scriptures. If a scripture is going to be read in class, then at least some time should be spent discussing why this scripture is significant to the lesson, even if it’s just asking the person who read it: “What does this scripture mean to you?” (In a related note, adequate teachers make sure any scripture they read in class HAS significance to the lesson…)
• Adequate teachers don’t turn the class into ‘stand-up comedy hour’: In other words, their effort is to ‘teach’ not to ‘entertain’. Note that being ‘interesting’ or ‘compelling’ is not the same thing as being ‘entertaining’.
• Adequate teachers don’t insult their students: …by making condescending statements about the students’ gospel knowledge and/or being boastful about their own gospel knowledge. More common than you might think…
• Adequate teachers don’t ask ‘bad’ questions: Questions that leave the classroom in an awkward silence, or take the class discussion in a wrong direction. (The art of asking effective questions in class will have its own article, later in this series. Note that there is such a thing as ‘non-awkward’–even ‘powerful’–silences)
• Adequate teachers don’t fill lessons with false doctrine: Or unofficial ‘heard this on the street’ doctrine, or hearsay. (“Anyone who commits suicide gets an automatic ticket to the telestial kingdom.”) Basically, any doctrine that’s not easily supported from the scriptures. (The other stuff is what blogs are for…)

A couple other general principles in achieving adequacy:

Credibility: Teachers need credibility–students are going to automatically tune out any teacher they think is wasting their time and has nothing of value to offer them. Adequate teachers need to maintain at least some semblance of credibility in order to get people to pay attention. To that end:

DON’T start the lesson by apologizing for not having prepared very well: This is basically a golden invitation NOT to pay attention–after all, if you haven’t prepared, why should I bother listening? For some teachers this is just part of being humble, and they will often end up giving a perfectly decent lesson even after claiming they were ‘unprepared’. But preparing a lesson has nothing to do with humility. (If someone says, “I’ve been preparing this lesson all week” do you think, “Wow, what a prideful person…”?) Even if you really haven’t prepared very well, you’re still going to get more mileage out of just pressing forward and letting the students figure out you weren’t ready on their own, rather than essentially announcing from the very beginning that your lesson isn’t going to be worth listening to.

Don’t share present sins or transgressions as part of your lesson: …even if the lesson is on a subject that you currently struggle with in some capacity. Some teachers can discuss past sins in a compelling fashion–explaining previous struggles they’ve had and how they overcame them and became stronger in the gospel. (Even then, this can be dangerous territory…)

Present sins, however, are different. In this context, I don’t mean ‘don’t confess your p0rn habit in front of your class’ (although this should go without saying), but rather those teachers who mention a gospel principle from the manual that they don’t really follow themselves, feel guilty and hypocritical about it, and then feel compelled to add sheepishly, “Well…actually I haven’t been doing this too well in my own life. I need to work on this myself.”

Then, of course, the student simply thinks, “Well, then, I have no reason to listen to you discuss the issue, do I?” Again, this is not humility. Admitting to yourself and the Lord that you might need to work on principle X is a sign of a humble person. Admitting to everyone in your class that your lesson has no real credibility because you’re just saying things from the manual that have nothing behind them is a sign of a less-effective teacher.

(What to do, then, if you’re ‘supposed’ to teach a principle that you either don’t follow or don’t even really believe in? Either pretend you do for the time being, even if you feel like a hypocrite–most of the students won’t know, anyway–or, if you’re not willing or able to sell it effectively, then just don’t teach it at all. We’ll discuss this further in the next section.)

Roadblocks: “Roadblocks” are obstacles to learning that distract or prevent students from obtaining the full import of the lesson. Some bad habits (like speaking indistinctly) act as roadblocks that poor teachers put in front of their students that make learning the gospel in class harder, rather than easier. Adequate teachers may not be skilled in attracting and keeping students’ attention, but they should certainly seek to eliminate anything that might distract their attention from the content of their lesson.

Put simply, if students are spending any amount of clock cycles thinking “Wow, the teacher sure is wearing a short skirt today…” or “Did the teacher actually just say ‘urethral’ instead of ‘ethereal’?”–true story–then, obviously, that’s brain power not focused on the actual lesson. Many students will take any excuse offered to stop paying attention and focus on something else. Adequate teachers (or any teacher, really) won’t be able to stop students who are determined not to pay attention, but will still do their best not to enable those students, by eliminating distractions.

Some common roadblocks:

• Pointless or inappropriate stories or jokes: Yes, everyone likes telling stories, especially about themselves, but discipline is needed–otherwise, students just look at each other and think, “Why was that part of the lesson…?”
• Political commentary: Sharing political opinions grafted on to normally apolitical gospel lessons will simply alienate students who have different opinions. (Don’t assume all or even most of your students are staunch Republicans…or Democrats, for that matter)
• Weird doctrinal interpretations or speculation: Leaves students thinking, “Really? That doesn’t sound right…” Best case scenario: most students recognize ‘personal interpretation’ as such and ignore it, but will often start considering everything else the teacher says as ‘personal interpretation’ rather than gospel truth as well. Worst case scenario: sometimes a student will be bold enough to raise their hand and challenge the teacher’s statement, thereby making the teacher take up valuable class time trying to defend it. Contention and/or loss of credibility often follow.
• Other: One teacher I visited had the class set up their chairs in a circle as if the lesson was going to be largely a group discussion…and then taught normally from the chalkboard, meaning a third of the students had their backs to the teacher virtually the entire lesson–a big roadblock to their learning. Immodest and/or wildly attention-getting dress can be a roadblock as well.

Sharing ‘controversial’ subject matter is an easy roadblock that will get students focused on the controversy rather than on basic gospel principles.

Once, when teaching Sunday School, I asked a question (somewhat relevant to the actual lesson) about spanking: is spanking your children right or wrong? Under what circumstances is it appropriate (if any) or is it basically a mild form of child abuse?

This question was wonderful for student participation–and doesn’t every teacher want more student participation? Many people shared their feelings, and we had a lively discussion with many different opinions which, to the class’s credit, was civil and did not devolve into contention or hurt feelings. (Dodged a bullet, I think…)

It was certainly an interesting discussion…the problem was: it was not a “Sunday School” discussion. “Sunday School” is for gospel principles–whether to spank your children is a decision that many parents may actually struggle over, but is not fundamentally a ‘gospel principle’. There’s a difference between ‘doctrine’ and ‘application’ and discussing spanking in my class was, in hindsight, a ‘roadblock’. I’m sure my students remembered my lesson afterwards, not because of the gospel content, but because of the tangential discussion I instigated. And, like most controversial topics, nothing got resolved–it’s not like anyone can ‘prove’ from the scriptures one way or another…

Fundamentally, Sunday School is a precious period of time. For many people, the 40 minutes of a Sunday School class is the ONLY time they will open the scriptures and actually study gospel doctrine the entire week. Therefore, any teacher must be very careful how that time is used, and not waste it. Spanking would be an interesting subject for a blog post (and surely the FMH sisters have covered this already…), but it’s not worthy of valuable Sunday School discussion time. Discussions of spanking don’t fit within the scope and purpose of the “Sunday School” block, which is to provide Church members with gospel instruction and spiritual fulfillment.

(Neither does–wait for it–polygamy, despite the many blog writers and commenters who seem to think so. Since those same people who want polygamy discussed openly in Sunday School, discuss polygamy openly and frequently themselves on the web without anything being resolved, I wonder what exactly they think would be different during a Sunday School class… Quick, think of a polygamy thread on the web–any thread–that either (1) resolved the issue such that there was no further need to discuss it or (2) left you in a spiritually uplifted mood afterwards. If the answer is ‘none’, what would be the point of wasting Sunday School time talking about it, then?)

Summary: The scriptures make it clear that during gospel lessons, the Holy Spirit is the real teacher. This means that half the battle is just the teacher not getting in the way of the Spirit, and the spiritually prepared students will often end up having a meaningful and fulfilling class period anyway, regardless of how much the teacher ‘helped’. Many of the ‘don’ts’ associated with being an adequate teacher serve just this purpose–DON’T mess things up, such that the Spirit has nothing to work with.

Notice I’ve used the word ‘pretend’ a number of times in this article: Adequate teachers should ‘pretend’ they want to be there, ‘pretend’ they believe and follow the things they are teaching, ‘pretend’ they actually spent adequate time preparing the lesson, etc.

Isn’t it better to be honest and NOT to pretend, you say? Well, obviously… And–foreshadowing alert!–we’ve just stumbled onto the main difference between adequate and good teachers. (Good teachers don’t pretend–they have no need…)

Yet, for an adequate teacher, pretending has a purpose–many students will give you (the teacher) the benefit of the doubt in a lot of cases, so don’t spoil it! Being an adequate teacher means NOT becoming a roadblock to the students’ learning like poor teachers do, and if ‘pretending’ helps some of the students get into the Spirit of the lesson versus complete and brutal honesty (“I starting reading this lesson during sacrament meeting. ‘Tithing’? I haven’t paid tithing in months… I want to get home in time for the San Diego/New England playoff game, so let’s hurry this up…”) then–please!–pretend for our sake, and maintain the ‘fantasy’ for those students who may mistakenly believe the lesson has something important in it…

Next: How to be Good…