It doesn't take long years of church class attendance to realize that there is an infinite variety of teaching styles among us. And it won't take long before you hear someone makes a big deal about sticking strictly with what is printed in the manual, word-for-word, and nothing else. And at the other extreme is the teacher who never uses a word from the manual. Once I had a Sunday School class where every week the teacher printed out one of those "faith-promoting" stories that make the rounds in e-mails and cut them into strips and we spent the entire class time reading them.
And most of us have had the experience of hearing one leader espouse the stick-to-the-manual approach, and another urge using the Spirit as a guide in deciding what we should teach, along with including personal experiences. So how do we know what is appropriate to use as lesson material?
One place to start is the manuals themselves. Every manual has a section called Helps For the Teacher. Read it! Several times! What stands out to you? What teaching questions do you have that are answered there? What teaching questions do you have that aren't answered? Write them down for later inquiry. Here's what jumped out for me:
Elder M. Russell Ballard said: “Teachers would be well advised to study carefully the scriptures and their manuals before reaching out for supplemental materials. Far too many teachers seem to stray from the approved curriculum materials without fully reviewing them. If teachers feel a need to use some good supplemental resources beyond the scriptures and manuals in presenting a lesson, they should first consider the use of the Church magazines”
Each lesson in this manual contains more information than you will probably be able to teach in one class period. Seek the Spirit of the Lord in selecting the scripture accounts, questions, and other lesson material that will best meet the needs of class members.
It is more important to help class members understand and apply the scriptures than to cover all the lesson material you have prepared. If class members are learning from a good discussion, it is often helpful to let it continue rather than try to cover all the lesson material.
If you are teaching youth, remember that they often need active participation and visual representations of the doctrines being discussed. Your use of video presentations, pictures, and activities suggested in the manual can help youth stay interested in the lessons.
So far, what have we learned? Well, first read the lesson in the manual. Don't just skim it and think that you've heard it all before. I am not one of those word-for-word from the manual teachers. But I've found that if I read through the lesson, no matter how many times I think I've heard it all before, then things pop into my mind-- ideas on how to use the lesson material in a way that is more personal to me. Then I write those things down and refer to them later as I am putting together my lesson plan. Sometimes the ideas that come are pretty close to what is already in the manual, and sometimes they go in a very different direction. But I would never get those promptings if I didn't read the lesson as presented.
Second, it seems pretty clear that it is permissible to use material other than what is in the manual. But we should be clear on what we use and why we are using it. Are we just trying to wow people with our skills? Are we using personal experiences as subtle bragging, or as a way to get something off our chest? If we examine the outside material that we are contemplating using, if it is more about us rather than about the class member's needs, we can be pretty sure we might not be on the right track. So examine your motives.
I'll talk about this more in another post, but in the meantime HERE is a really interesting discussion on how to teach.
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