The Best Class Ever!

You didn't use the suggested worship. Your students joined several other grades in a joint opening devotion led by the Sunday School director.

You didn't use the opening activity. A local news story had captured the interest of your students, so you allowed them to share their thoughts, offered some comments, and led the discussion into the Bible account for the day.

You didn't present the Bible account using drama like the guide suggested. Most of your students are not very outgoing, but they like to draw, so you had them line up at the board and have each one illustrate one paragraph of the text.

You didn't use the scripted teacher talk. Instead you phrased questions in your own words and followed up on insights your students shared.

You did remember the key point and general thrust of the lesson from your review earlier in the week, and you kept to that outline, more of less.

You didn't use the suggest application activity, but instead tied the Bible text back to the local event with which you started.

You didn't sing the suggested hymn in closing, but the text was right on target, so you challenged your students to listen carefully as you played the recording.

You didn't use the closing prayer, exactly. Your students are generally willing to pray petitions expressing their spiritual concerns, so you allowed each of them to offer a short prayer and closed with just a couple of phrases from the printed prayer.

You didn't use the leaflet this week, but you passed it out, and you noticed a couple of the students tucked it into their Bibles. Maybe they will use those daily Bible readings this week.

It was one of the best classes you've taught this quarter. The students were engaged. The Gospel was clearly shared. And the lesson material provided just enough structure and substance to get you started and keep you on track. You were the final editor, making choices and adjustments based on local conditions the publisher could never have anticipated.

Thanks! God bless you as you teach His children His Word!

Is This Material Age Appropriate?

That's an important question, both for the curriculum writer/publisher and for those who teach the material.

Several things deserve to be considered.

• Age-appropriateness is a sliding scale; material that is too simple for some kids among its target group may be too advanced for others.
• This scale will slide even within a class of 4 students.
• Age-appropriateness can be physical (reading level, eye-hand coordination), social, or even cultural. (At what age, for example might a teacher feel comfortable teaching students about David's sin with Bathsheba? For some teachers and classes, the answer might be "never.")
• It can create as many problems for the teacher for material to be to simple as may arise when material is too difficult for the students. Discipline problems increase when students are bored rather than challenged.
• The publisher, by necessity, is shooting for a hypothetical average class; that class quite simply does not exist. Each teacher has a very specific set of students (as well as a specific room, and access to other specific resources) about the publisher has no knowledge.

What does this mean?
The teacher is in the driver's seat. He or she is going to be the final editor of the lesson. That will mean decisions about necessary adaptation of every aspect of the lesson.

Sure, you can shop around for a curriculum in which the theology is exactly what your denomination teaches, the material always bright and cheery (or thoughtfully somber) as you desire, the activities always doable in your classroom and building, the supplies required always just what you have on hand, and the level of difficulty always spot on for all of your students. And, you should know, that we editors here at Concordia Publishing House do our best to make this happen for you each week; we really do! But, in my heart, I know that you will have to make some choices and revisions.

So what can you do?

• Be thoughtful in your lesson planning. Note the alternatives offered by the publisher. Think back to what has worked for your students in the past. Be alert for the ways you can revise your lesson.
• If your class is consistently frustrated by "too hard" or bored with "too simple," consider moving down or up a level in the curriculum.
• Don't sacrifice theology, the very reason you are teaching Sunday School classes in the first place, in a chase for the "perfect lesson."

God bless you as you teach His children His Word!

Improving Biblical Literacy

Following up on my last post, I just composed a response for a pastor whose congregation is considering a new model (modified workshop rotation) to increase biblical literacy. Here's what I wrote:
First, let me say that what you suggest is certainly possible. There has been, over the past decade a movement in some churches toward what you describe, usually called “workshop rotation,” so called because, when student numbers warrant it, students can be grouped and rotated through two or more workshop, one each week. The “workshop” leader teaches the same lesson in the same style (drama, cooking, crafts, etc) each week to a new group of students. CPH has not produced a “workshop rotation” curriculum. We are leery of the resulting narrow range of Bible accounts that are then studied in a given period of time. We think it requires more than just a few Bible accounts a year to teach the entire sweep of salvation’s plan. That is not to say that I prefer a shallow approach, in which a large number of lessons are taught superficially.

These are my premises:
• You and I, and most of the parents and students in you congregation, probably grew up in a Sunday School that taught a different lesson each Sunday. The lessons repeated every three years or so, and the result was at least a passing acquaintance with a large number of Bible accounts. That pattern is not inherently flawed.
• If Sunday School leaders and teachers spend the same amount on time improving their present system of curriculum, preparation, and teaching that they would spend in reviewing, choosing, and implementing a new system, the resulting improvement will be about the same. It is not the new system that makes the most difference, but the time and energy invested in any system.
• The material in a typical Sunday School curriculum today (and that includes Growing in Christ from CPH) provides enough teaching activities to fill more than an hour in a typical Sunday School. The teacher must pick and choose the activities that will be best for his or her students and focus on them in order to teach the main points effectively, while leaving time at the beginning of each lesson to review the key points of previous lessons, and at the end of the lesson to review the key points of the lesson just taught. The teacher that tries to cover everything in the teacher guide will wind up glossing over the key points, skipping the review, and still feel frustrated every week because “I wasn’t able to cover everything.” The students retain the material, not because the class covered everything, but because the activities that were chosen engaged the students and made connections between the Bible and contemporary life.
• Doing this final edit of any lesson—choosing and revising the activities so that they will engage your specific students—is hard work and requires preparation that too many teachers don’t invest each week.
• The whole process of retention, call it a lack of biblical literacy, is aggravated in our present day by the growing numbers of students who do not attend Sunday School every week. The depth and breadth of their biblical knowledge is not assisted by repeating lessons on multiple weeks, because they miss significant opportunities for learning new material and reviewing past lessons. The real solution is not to teach fewer lessons, but to get students into the classroom more often.

So, I’m not saying that what you propose is not possible; it is. Assuming that you plan carefully and student number to vacillate widely, you could in theory order the lessons you want when they are available and save the material until you need it. A 13-lesson quarter of material might last you for two or even three quarters. But it will be a lot of work figuring out how to extend the material over two or three weeks. You should be prepared for the extra work. And care will be needed to avoid sending the message that a student now only has to attend one week out of two or three since the lessons are repeated, which would result in even less biblical literacy than you currently faced.

I will admit that I am a traditionalist. I think that the traditional Sunday School can still work and thrive in most congregations.

Let me suggest another tool that you might want to promote in your congregation: biblequizzesonline.com. My wife built this Web site several years ago in response to her own concerns for biblical literacy among the students of our congregation. She continues to maintain it each week, providing a 10 question quiz that promotes accountable Bible reading. The Web site provides a way to read (or listen to) the Bible account for each lesson in Growing in Christ, followed by an on-line quiz with immediate feedback on correct and incorrect answers. This is one tool that teachers and families can use to promote biblical literacy.

I’m sorry if my response is not what you hoped for. I’m open to whatever follow-up questions you might have.

If you are looking for a new model for your Sunday School that incorporates a different form of rotation—“site rotation”—you might be aware that CPH is offering a second alternative for Sunday School in Fall 2012: Cross Explorations. This model combines large-group (“Engage”)/small-group (“Explore”) Sunday School with a rotation of sites in series of “Express” sites. You can learn more at http://sites.cph.org/sundayschool/.

Thanks for working hard for your Sunday School, Pastor. God will bless your efforts to teach His children His Word.

Covering Everything

I remember a line from a Christian education seminar I took many years ago (though I confess I don't remember the person who spoke it); it went something like this: "The teacher who insists on covering everything in a single session, usually covers up more than he or she reveals."

Is the point too subtle? Our task as Christian educators is to reveal the truth of God's Word to those we teach. We don't want to cover up, gloss over, or confuse. The teacher who tries to cram everything into the lesson, even if the teacher guide says it can be done, runs the risk of failing to teach the main points sufficiently.

It is for this reason that I always emphasize that the teacher is the final editor of any Sunday School lesson. It is a responsibility that you cannot ignore. Plowing blindly through every word of the teacher guide will leave little time to reflect on what the students are learning, or not learning. The publisher provides material for a long session with average students. You may have a much shorter session and you have very specific students for whom you can, and should, tailor that lesson.

The successful final edit identifies the main points, especially Law and Gospel, and the activities that will most be likely to teach these points to my class, while leaving enough time for the interaction that will tell me that the students got it.

Please, don't try to cover everything.

God's blessings as you teach His children His Word.