Teaching and Learning

It is definitely true that you learn more by teaching a subject than your students ever will. You learn things you never end up telling them, you learn things better by helping them learn anything at all, and, I'm finding, you learn how to teach...well rather how not to.

For however long or how short (the church is searching for a youth pastor to hire) I'm teaching this Wednesday night Bible study for the teenagers. I spent most of last fall as a helper watching the kids in the room be bored to tears by lectures. So when the baton was passed to me, I was determined not to just get up there and talk.

But it isn't that easy! I didn't know that lecturing a lesson is the easiest way to present it. It puts the responsibility for learning almost fully in the lap of the student, and frankly, 25 teenagers who really had no choice in coming to Bible study weren't going to do much with that. It requires little creativity and no props. I knew it was ineffective, so I tried to supplement with interactive illustrations, but still gravitated back to the lecture for the meat of the lesson. I didn't know that it might be possible to pass the main point of the lesson on the the learners with very little lecture, maybe none at all.

Right before Christmas I was given a stack of youth oriented Bible studies published by Gospel Light called Pulse. It is specifically designed for junior high aged students and uses almost no lecturing. It goes through a series of steps increasing the intensity of the lesson (making it more personal). One thing really nice about Pulse is that you can tailor the lesson to fit your group. You can make the lesson more challenging for kids who're accustomed to giving Sunday School answers. But the best part of Pulse is that the whole lesson is presented in a way that engages the students.

Our Awana books were delayed and we did two Pulse lessons. Neither lesson had as much content as a typical Awana lesson, but honestly, I think all of the students left with much more in their heads and in their hearts.

So here are two things I've learned while teaching these young people who are no longer children, but not yet adults:

1. I cannot control or know what they're coming to church with. They might have only slept 3 hours last night, they might have just broken up with a boyfriend, they might be hungry. I can be fully prepared to deliver the most important information in the world, but they might not be prepared to receive it. I can't take that personally, but I can't let that make me discouraged.

2. Sometimes the best way to deliver a lesson is to say it plainly (in a lecture), but each time I prepare these lessons I need to step back and ask, "Is there a more effective and more efficient way to give the exact same message?" Many times the best way will be in a story or game.

I sure hope it doesn't come across as offensive to the adult helpers, but next week we're studying creation and I had some of the students help me make a video interpretation of Genesis 2. Regardless, I don't think any of them will be asleep!