Teaching seminary has been such a rewarding experience for me. I have loved it. ... But it is HARD. Really hard. Of course there are the early morning hours. I can hardly believe that I wake up at 4:30 every single day so that I can get dressed up and come into church so that I can teach the New Testament to high school students. 4:30!!!! That's early! But even harder than the early morning hours is the responsibility that I feel to help the youth of the church really learn to GET it when it comes to studying their scriptures. There is so much value to the things we find in the scriptures, things that are just waiting to be discovered. And yet so much of it remains a mystery to us because we rarely take the time to actually read and study the words.
Time and time again I am told in seminary training how important my job is. So important that they don't just let me go freely on my own to get the job done. No. I get training, lots of it when you compare it to other callings in the Church. And through that training I have learned to rethink the way that I teach. Normally when we teach we are used to just sitting/standing in front of the class and TELLING them information. And that is how the students are used to learning as well. They sit and absorb (maybe). But in seminary the goal is for the students to teach themselves, discovering the magic in the scriptures for themselves. So I'm not supposed to sit in front and lecture. I am supposed to act more like a guide, helping the students to see what they can find inside the books of scripture that we study. And this is hard. Really hard. I have lots of thoughts and ideas that I want to share, and often when questions come up I am quick to offer my answer and move on. Because we have such a limited class time I am even more prone to doing this. And that is not cool according to seminary teaching philosophy. It is better if I help the students to discover the answer for themselves.
Herman often points out that seminary is more like a marathon than a sprint. You aren't going to have day after day after day of home run lessons that are amazingly awesome and leave the class glowing with the message they have received. There will be some days like that, but there will also be days where nothing seems to go right, where everyone seems distracted and uninterested. Days when half the class is fighting sleep or staring blindly at the front, unable to answer any questions. The important thing is that the overall movement of the class is getting better as time goes on. Well, I haven't had what I felt like were many home run lessons. I sometimes just feel as if the best I did that day was to survive without having anyone try to depose me for being a hack. Usually I feel like the lesson goes fairly well, but I admit that I rarely feel as if the lesson rises to my own high expectation for myself. I talk too much. I listen too little. I don't dig deep enough with the students, helping them to see their own great ideas. But I get up each day, determined to make that day's lesson better than the one before it. I am loving the things that I am learning as I study the scriptures each day, and I really, really, really want for my seminary students to feel that same joy in reading and studying.
So that leads to today. There isn't a big story to go with today, but I had an experience that made me happy, so I wanted to record it. Today we were studying in Matthew 6 and 7 where the Savior introduces the proper way to pray. We had some good discussion about the best way to pray and how we sometimes fall short in our personal prayers. The discussion was good, and almost everyone was engaged in what we were saying.
And then my seminary teaching miracle occurred.
While we were talking about avoiding vain repetitions in prayer Laney raised her hand and asked, "Why do we need to say our prayers to Heavenly Father when it says that He already knows everything that we need and desire?" Good question, Laney! Now here is the point when I normally tell the answer and move quickly to our next point.
But not today!
I recognized this as an excellent opportunity to use some good teaching skills and help the class to discover the answer on their own. So I turned the question over to them and said, "What do YOU think?"
At least six hands shot up into the air immediately, and I had to fight my proud inner Melissa, because I seriously wanted to pause everything for a moment so that I could do a little happy dance for my good teaching practice. I didn't stop the class, but I'll pause the story now so that I can do a little one ...
Sigh. All better now.
As I saw the hands of students that I hadn't ever seen volunteer answers I felt so happy inside. Finally I felt like I had done exactly what the CES trainers had been encouraging me to do all these months. And it made a difference. Have I mentioned yet how much I love my seminary class this year? No? Well, I LOVE my seminary class this year! So many talented and strong youth who are such examples to me! And they had great ideas! I felt like the kids were teaching themselves a bit. They were really taking time to discover the meaning of the scriptures on their own.
And if I can help my class to do that on a regular basis, then I can end my class feeling as if we ran that marathon ... and won!
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