The Catbird Seat

I love to teach Sunday School. Love it. Sometimes I’m good at it, and sometimes I flop. But because I believe in it, I keep at it; consequently I have learned a few things over the years. So in the spirit of not wanting others to fail in ways that I have, here are a few practical ideas to help you be prepared to teach Sunday School to teenagers.

#1 Eliminate your assumptions.
Now, don’t misread that. By “eliminate” what I mean is, get them out on the table so that they are assumptions no longer. Some students are aware of your assumptions, and comply nicely with them. Other students are completely unaware of them, and still others are fully aware of them, but choose to ignore them entirely. In my experience, once I have made my assumptions common knowledge, I’m much better equipped to deal with the teens I’m teaching; likewise, they’re better prepared to deal with me. Each Sunday School teacher will have his/her own set of assumptions to address. Here are a few of mine:
• My job is to teach the Word of God and give students tools to remember it.
• Their job is to learn. Typically this involves listening, memorizing Scripture, and maybe even taking notes.
• I do not expect either of us to perform our respective jobs perfectly in any given week, but I do expect an effort on both parts.
• It is important for students to respect the teacher and other students. Disrespectful behavior (e.g. talking while others are talking, being rude or inconsiderate, monopolizing discussions, and being late) will likely be addressed by me in front of everyone when it occurs in class.
You’d be surprised at how well most students handle these assumptions once they’ve been made aware of them. Some students have actually looked relieved. I think it can be a low level stressor for them to have no idea where their teacher is “coming from”, so to speak. You’d not be surprised, however, that some students view this with a kind of mild disdain and their behavior reflects that view. All in all, though, I think everyone appreciates being on the same page.

#2 Eliminate their assumptions.
In similar fashion, students have a whole set of assumptions as well. Not surprisingly, the students themselves are sometimes completely unaware of their own assumptions about you, them, and Sunday School in general. It will benefit you and the student to work toward uncovering their assumptions. This, for me at least, is more of a process than a one point in time discussion. The good news is that there seem to be a few common ones:
• Sunday School is boring and something to be merely tolerated.
• Sunday School teachers don’t want to be there any more than the students do.
• Sunday School is pointless and not realistic or helpful in real life.
• Memorizing Scripture is childish and (again) pointless.
• Sunday School teachers don’t really want to get to know them.
• We’ve heard it all before.
• Sunday School teachers don’t care what teens think about them.
• Sunday School teachers make lessons dry and uninteresting on purpose.
I’ve gone about eliminating assumptions in a variety of ways; some successful, some not. What seems to work the best is a light-hearted, humorous, but direct approach. Last semester, I seriously considered developing a multiple choice questionnaire with items like, “Why are you here? (a) I want to learn more Scripture and how to apply it to my life (b) because I’m supposed to be here (c) my parents make me (d) I am asking myself the same question!” I’m convinced that facing their assumptions (which also contain some misconceptions) head on is healthy, helpful and ultimately disarming for the student (and probably the teacher, too). It can also give them permission to answer honestly when I say things like, “I’m boring you to tears, aren’t I?” They say, “Yeah, kinda!” And we all laugh. I apologize (if appropriate) and try a different angle to make it more engaging.

#3 Ask questions.
Lots of them. In every way you can come up with. Students think that teachers don’t know or care about them or what they have to say. Show that you do; one of the best ways is to ask what they think about something. Anything, really. Individually, or collectively. It almost always works. (I learned this from my husband, Paul, the youth minister)
Just this past month I tried something new: I wrote out 10 questions on the whiteboard that ranged from not personal at all to pretty personal. The #10 question was, “What is something that most people don’t know about you?” They wrote their answers on a note card (which I provided), and put their names on them (at my request). I told them the reason I wanted their names on them was because, contrary to popular belief, I wanted to get to know them better. I loved the responses I got! They ranged from not vulnerable at all to very vulnerable. But my goal was accomplished, regardless of how self-revealing they were: I now know more about every single one of the kids there that day!

#4 Expect honesty from them, and model it for them.
My husband and I have a phrase that we say often when teaching teens. “No Sunday School answers!” In other words, tell me what you REALLY think, not what you think I want to hear. Every one of us has been in a Sunday School class where kids answer the perfect religious answer and the lesson doesn’t get anywhere. Tell your students, out of the gate, that you want them to be honest with you, and that you’ll do the same with them. Then hold them (and yourself) to it. I’ve actually started out a Sunday School class saying, “Okay, I really don’t want to be here this morning because…” (usually the rest of that sentence is something like “I didn’t sleep well, and then I woke up late and now I’m in a funk.”); it turned out to be the best Sunday School lesson ever. I don’t recommend that tack, necessarily, but the point is that teens almost always respond well to honesty and vulnerability. I’ve also said on more than one occasion, “I don’t have all the answers” or “I don’t have all this figured out, either!” It’s important that students see the real you. That’s the person they will trust to teach them. Now, granted, you may come across like you don’t have it all together, but who does?
There’s one caveat: if they ask you a question that is too personal, involves personal information about your spouse (or someone else), or that could cause disunity or gossip in the church body, it is appropriate not to answer. Something like, “I appreciate your interest, but that’s too personal/that’s not any of your business/I’d prefer not to discuss that, etc.” is a reasonable, honest answer.

#5 Be prepared.
There’s nothing like good Bible research to give you confidence when teaching teens. If you think you need one Scripture to support a point, have 2 or 3 as a backup. Invariably, the points I’m weak on will be the ones they question me on. It’s like blood in the water to a shark: they can sniff it out from miles away. Plus, from a teacher’s perspective, it’s very hard to recover from lack of preparation. I’ve often felt like a whole lesson gets dismissed by my students because I blew it with one point. That’s not to say that you have to be able to answer every question perfectly. None of us has all the answers, period. There have been many times I’ve had to say, “I don’t know. I’ll look it up and get back to you next week.” The key is to then actually look it up and get back to them the next week. It will show the students that it matters to you, and they’ll respect you for it. They’ll appreciate and respect you even if they really don’t care about the answer. It is better, however, if what you don’t know is a tangential question that comes out of a discussion, and not the material that you’re specifically presenting. The good news is that one bad lesson does not a bad Sunday School teacher make. I continue to be proof of that!

#6 Have a plan.
Know before you walk in the door what your objective is, what needs to be said, and how you intend to say it. Having a plan doesn’t mean scripting your lesson. However, if you have example stories, or specific points you want made, write it down long before you start the lesson so you won’t forget it. Teens can hijack a Sunday School lesson quicker than the blink of an eye; you’ve got to have an agenda so that you don’t walk out of the lesson wondering, “What happened?” Having a plan also doesn’t necessarily mean telling the plan to your students. My husband is the master of this. Sometimes his plan is just to get kids talking. Sometimes it’s to cover a specific Scripture. Sometimes it’s just to get them to think about something a new way. His plan feels very fluid to his students, which often keeps them slightly off balance. They think he doesn’t have a clearly laid out lesson; he knows that his objective isn’t always just to impart knowledge, so he goes about it differently. I am an old-school Sunday School teacher. I have an agenda which I write on the whiteboard at the beginning of every class. It helps keep me organized, accountable and on track and helps the students see where I’m going. Some of my students love it, some of them no doubt find it oppressive. Every teacher will have his/her own way of directing a lesson. The point is this: plan where you’re going so you can get there.

#7 Do not be married to the plan/Have a back-up plan
God’s ways are not our ways. We must leave room for the Spirit to work and move in our lessons. Otherwise, what’s the point? Sometimes my lesson plan goes to pot when we get in discussion about a particular point. I have a tendency to resent this, and to do everything in my power to rope it back in. I am learning (note the continual nature of that statement) that following a discussion, instead of directing it, can lead to some major breakthroughs or great truths that would have been stifled otherwise. It’s hard sometimes to discern when to let a discussion run its natural course, and when to jerk it back in line. Most teachers tend to one extreme or the other. The idea here is that the way you see your lesson playing out in your head may not be the way it plays out in your actual class. So have a secondary plan (particularly if you are trying something new or different) and be willing to give up your plan. God doesn’t always conform to my lesson plan. I am so thankful for that.

So that’s it. 7 thoughts or ideas for you to disregard completely. For now, at least. No doubt I’ll fail miserably at something in Sunday School this coming week and I’ll have to add a #8. I’ll keep you posted.

Filed under: General, Catbird, Like a fire on January 18th, 2006