Sunday School
Taught by Jeff Slocum
Reflections
Taking the responsibility of a Sunday School teacher for my church has
been an experience I will not soon forget.
I found myself in a variety of teaching situations that I had to solve or
at least do the very best I could do. Even
if I was tired or wasn’t interested in spending a quarter of my weekend at
service, I was always glad to arrive at church and prepare my lesson.
Sunday School teaching was a very fun experience for my Senior Year and I
am glad to have worked with the people in my church.
One of the most important lessons I learned from this is that if you are
doing something with or for a group of people, you need to plan very well to be
successful. This came from both
positive and negative reinforcement. It
was really uplifting to have a class go well and have the children enjoy the
time they spent at Sunday School. The
most positive day I had was on the first day (it was also exciting to be
starting my project) when we made collages.
The night before, I made my own collage to bring in and show the children
as an example. This was a
well-planned day that helped set a positive tone for the months to follow.
Not all days were like this though.
My advisor reminded me a few times that, “You should always plan for
more than you expect to do. That
way you can keep going to stuff if something doesn’t work, or you have more
time to work with.” I found this
to be advice worth taking. I had a
day that I thought would go fine with the lesson I prepared.
It was about the story of Jesus’ temptations on the third week of that
subject. I had planned on doing the
things that were in the lesson book that we haven’t done already.
That would have been a good idea under normal circumstances.
However, this was the third week, so there wasn’t really much left in
the book designed to only do two weeks of the story.
I ran out of material quickly and was hoping something would come along
and help spice up the class.
Naturally, I couldn’t make a lesson out of a subject that I had no
material on that wasn’t already used in preceding weeks.
So, I learned to avoid boredom by over using a subject. In my subsequent lesson planning, I made sure that I would be
able to work with the subject, as I need to.
The resource I was using, “Bible Quest,” usually had two days per
story. If I felt that I needed to
combine weeks to keep the class positive, I did and I avoided the dilemma of
planning lessons I couldn’t work with.
I was really surprised when I found out that when the children see a
teacher teaching something, they would not take initiative to help the other
children around them. On the day we
learned how to make origami cranes, a few of the older children were able to
grasp the concept very well. They
were spread out at the table among the other children who did not quite get all
the steps. This harbored a great
opportunity for the children to help each other learn how to make cranes. This was not the case, however.
Each child asked me how to fold whatever step they were on.
This led to a little frustration on my part because I was explaining the
same steps over and over again. It
was not that I didn’t like doing that. I
was realizing that if I were teaching something more complicated, or something I
didn’t like, this method of teaching one by one would be very inefficient and
unproductive.
In my introduction, I said that I planned on having a fun time as a
Sunday School teacher. This has
been able to remain a true statement throughout my project.
It is fun to work with children. The
respect that they give teachers is really good.
This made coming to class worthwhile some days.
One of the things that I found in my project as well as my paper was, the
usefulness of themes in a teacher’s lesson plan for an extended period of
time. When we did the Esther play,
most of the children were excited to be in Sunday School every week.
A few weeks ago, I heard a comment from a parent saying that their son,
for the first time in a while, was begging them to take him to Sunday School
because he had so much fun there. This
was in part by our Esther play that we presented to the whole congregation after
six weeks of preparation. In this
theme study, we covered different aspects of the entire lesson, at different
times.
Our Esther unit started with an introduction to the story with a
Veggietales video. On another week,
we reinforced opinions on the good guys and the bad guys in the story and made
Groggers (noisemakers) for the Jewish tradition of drowning out the bad guy’s
name. The next week I taught a
lesson independent of our play to put a little break in the schedule. Play practice was for the next week, with Megillah making the
week after that. Finally we
presented the story of Esther to the Congregation.
This schedule, allowed the children to learn a story and concept more
in-depth than if we were to talk about it once or twice in a class.
When we keep bringing up facts or things we learned from the week or two
before, the information is still in the children’s semi short-term memory.
Bringing this information back to the surface before it is forgotten
provides a better chance that they may put the information into long-term
memory. The combination of fun and
effectiveness of the theme study makes it an excellent tool for any teaching
application.
When I look back on the time I spent at the Church Sunday School, I
remember how much fun I had while teaching a class of elementary aged children.
The Church was appreciative of the service I provided to them and the
children of the church. However, I realize that I was more than a service to the
children in my class. They could
see that I was like them once much easier than the other teachers that spend
time there. They looked up to me as
a role model. I am proud to have
made a positive influence in the lives that I have touched.
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