My Little Teaching Epiphany

A Portion of My Hard Working Class

When I started teaching seminary in January one of my big fears was that I would take it personally whenever a student slept in class or spent their time texting non-stop or simply chatted away with their friends all hour instead of listening to the lesson I had prepared.  I worried that I would have one of those moments when I would freak out because I had prepared three hours the day before only to be completely ignored once I began teaching.  You know, one of those "Don't-you-guys-realize-how-much-work-I've-done-here?" kind of moments.  I know that I have had those moments before in my life, and it seemed logical that seminary would be the perfect place for that ugly side of my personality to rear its nasty head because I would be devoting so much time to preparation each day.

Well, I have now been teaching for two and a half months, and I've noticed a weird difference in me.  Maybe it's because I've grown up a bit.  Maybe it's because Heavenly Father has given me an extra dose of insight.  Maybe it's because I've learned to love my class, whether they spend their time sleeping or awake.  I don't know.  But I realized last week that whenever I have felt frustration with behavior that wasn't the most alert as I would wish in my class I have not taken it personally at all.  I don't sit around and fume because I feel like I'm not getting the proper amount of respect.  In fact, that thought never even crosses my mind.  Instead, I found that my frustration was more because I was worried that my seminary students were not receiving the message that they needed to receive that day.  It had nothing to do with me and everything to do with them and what they needed most.  As I have prepared each lesson I have felt that there were messages in each lesson that were essential for my class in one way or another.  I kind of felt like I was the person manning the well during a drought, and my job was to make sure that everyone got enough water to keep them hydrated until the next day . . . but the people coming to the well were only taking a capful of water no matter how I poured it out.  Why?  What was I doing wrong?  Every day I would come home and beat myself up over and over and over again, wondering if I should have chosen a different activity or asked my questions differently.  Maybe I failed someone because I didn't take the time to call on them in class, making them feel a part of the lesson.  Or maybe I ruined someone's day by actually calling on them without preparing them, so they felt humiliated.  Maybe I was a complete bore as a teacher, or maybe I was just too weird to relate to.  Maybe I talked too much.  Maybe I didn't talk enough.  Good night!  It could have been anything.  I just knew that I felt as if I wasn't hitting anything out of the ballpark.  I have had these days where I had these amazing experiences while preparing a lesson, only to have it completely fall flat the next morning.  I think I could handle this if there were equal days where I wasn't sure how a lesson would go over, only to find that the students were completely wrapped up in the messages found in the scriptures that day.  But so far I haven't had any experience like that  -- but I'm still a newbie when it comes to teaching like this, so I haven't given up hope or anything like that.

This has been sooooo frustrating for me.  As the stake girls camp director I felt as if I had a year to prepare hard, and then during the week of girls camp I would see powerful witnesses of the results of that work.  As the program  worked out I could definitely see the hand of the Lord in the work I was doing.  And these were powerful experiences I was having, with no doubt that the Spirit was present and working on the hearts of many of the girls in attendance.  I have not had that sort of powerful experience with seminary yet, and part of me is always wondering if it is because I am getting something terribly wrong.  Luckily, as I've mentioned in previous blog posts on the subject of seminary, I am married to Mr. Seminary Enthusiast.  Herman LOVES seminary.  He loves to talk about seminary.  He loves to talk about how to teach seminary.  And he constantly reminds me over and over and over . . . Seminary is a marathon, not a sprint.  It isn't in the razzle dazzle giant moments of awesomeness that students gain the most from seminary.  It is the daily grind of getting up every morning and immersing themselves in the scriptures that leads to those moments that change lives.  Sometimes I will be able to be a witness to that happening, and sometimes I won't, but ultimately if I keep plugging along, trying to improve each day, lives will change for the better.  In my head I totally get that.  I'm still working on relaying the message to my heart.

Today when I came home from seminary and repeated my same concerns over again Herman decided that it would be totally awesome if we would sit down each morning and do a lesson from the CES Teacher Improvement Packet.  To be honest, today I just wanted to sit around with a nice cup of hot chocolate, a huge slice of chocolate cake, maybe a brownie or two, and a handful of dark chocolate kisses while I whined a bit about how I felt like I wasn't doing a very good job teaching.  So I grumbled and mumbled, and as Herman is likely to do when I get in a funk like that, he just opened up the book and started teaching away, knowing I'd jump on board soon enough.  And I did. 

Interestingly enough, Herman chose to start the lesson about the role of the student in gospel learning.  I thought this was not exactly my issue because my issue was that I wasn't doing the right things to motivate my students.  It was my problem, not my students' problem.  Herman disagreed a bit.  He said it was a team problem with all of us needing to do what was necessary to improve involvement.  I was not there to entertain or for my testimony to magically rub off on them simply because they showed up that day.  But my job was to create the right atmosphere so that they could be blessed for the efforts they made to strengthen their testimonies and grow closer to Heavenly Father.  In other words . . . I could dish out the water at the well, but they had to make the effort to drink it.  

We didn't get very far in the lesson today, but we got far enough to read 1 Nephi 2:16,19 and 17:19 and look for the difference between how Laman and Lemuel approached learning and how Nephi and Sam learned.  Herman told me that sometimes I would be teaching Nephis and sometimes I would be teaching Lamans.  He said that I wasn't always going to be able to get through, but I had to keep working every day because I could never tell which lesson or which moment was going to touch a heart and change a life.  I think I was still feeling a bit persnickety because I pointed out to him that even though Nephi tried and tried to convince Laman of the importance of following the gospel, eventually Laman did try to kill him.  I hope things don't ever get to that point in my class. :o)

The reality is that I have been blessed with a super awesome class.  I don't have a bunch of Lamans in my class.  I have a group of kids who are fairly diligent about coming each day, expecting to learn something that will be important to them.  I don't want to fail them.  Some days I do better than others.  Some days they do better than others.  But hopefully over time there will be enough meaningful experiences for them that they will be grateful for their time in seminary as a youth.  I'm loving this calling.  It is turning out to be one of the hardest I've ever had, but even with the days I worry that I'm not doing as well as I should, it is turning out to be one of the most rewarding callings as well.  Funny how that always seems to happen.