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As person who has taken lots of instructions from teachers both paid and non-paid, I don’t see there being a simple answer. Throughout my academic experience I had lousy teachers. I also had great teachers. I had teachers I enjoyed more than others. And teachers who seemed horrid until I moved along farther in life, then I realized the value of their efforts. Everyone of those people were professionals. They had chosen or been told they would be good in that field. They had taken years of classes and seminars in the field. Yet the results weren’t stellar to my desires. The part that often flummoxed me were when some other student thrived under an inept teacher. How did that happen? The same thing happens in coaching sports. Here people pour millions of dollars into coffers of hope when they sign up for sports. Talent teachers as well. – Again, each of these area’s of expertise would be called professional.
Non-paid, in my opinion, fare about the same. At present we have a fantastic GD teacher. She is well versed, delightful, diligent. I can’t say enough good about her. She often called on to give talks and speak at firesides. I often skip SS – not because of her, but because we have plumbed the BofM down to the dust of answers. Nothing she can do, with all her skill, can save it for me. Her class is full because people enjoy her. We have discussions, laughter, even some diverse opinion but nothing that floats my boat in the area now.
For me it’s not the teachers, for me it’s the material and our options for choice. I am bored by the material. I feel like I have no escape from it. New videos, new clever ways of engaging people will not change that. Talk to me when we get new material – a lot of new material. Then we can get to the semantics of instruction.
I also think the fundamental issue is the material. Also, I had instructors from wonderful to horrible in college – and that was at Harvard. That is all I’m saying about the issue of improving instruction in church: It is important, but nothing will solve it completely.
I would love to see the materials changed. That is the top priority to me.
How would you change the materials Ray? Old Timer wrote:I also think the fundamental issue is the material.
Also, I had instructors from wonderful to horrible in college – and that was at Harvard. That is all I’m saying about the issue of improving instruction in church: It is important, but nothing will solve it completely.
Not completely, but can we at least acknowledge that as an organization, we have not really tried to systemize the improvement of instruction at church over the years?
Also, whether the quality of instruction even in secular colleges is good really depends on how much of a priority the administration places on improving instructional quality. It’s the same issue we face in the church.
For example, I have been teaching for two decades. The only time I saw active mentoring of new faculty was under one inspired manager. For a period of two years, I was responsible for mentoring new faculty. But even then, it was only if they wanted it. Some needed it but wouldn’t accept my overtures. Most of the time, they hire them based on a short test lecture, and then throw them in class. You see the results in the complaints the students give all the time about it.
There are so many SIMPLE things you can do to help new teachers avoid creating dissatisfied learners. And the teaching of these things has been neglected even in university settings. From simply NOT telling the students this is your first time teaching that particular class “so go easy on me”, to making sure they either pass key thresholds for grades — A, B, C, or miss them by a wide margin to prevent conflict over grades.
So, to imply that bad teaching is everywhere, so its not so bad, or excusable in the church doesn’t hold water with me. Your university experience is likely the result of a system that values research and grant writing over teaching excellence. it wouldn’t surprise me if this is a problem at a research-oriented institution like Harvard. It is likely due to putting insufficient resources into improving teaching excellence.
Quote:you mentioned that you can’t draw an analogy between tithing and improving teaching quality.
I see it differently. What you nourish, what you water — that is what grows. it doesn’t matter if its cultivating tithing behavior, or gospel teaching. The MickInsey Model of culture indicates there are seven “S”‘s that, if aligned around a particular value, tend to really influence behavior. I won’t go into it, but as I said earlier, we have all kinds of systems in place to improve the payment of tithing. We measure progress. We hold people accountable and we even tie it to full membership. I am not saying we should do that for excellent teaching, but the organizational systems devoted to improving gospel teaching are pretty sad. At least we are trying again.
I want to add that the way we select people for teaching is also wanting. The system of calls and releases seems to encourage asking warm bodies to take on assignments without consideration of their individual sources of motivation.
Quote:I would love to see the materials changed. That is the top priority to me.
How might you change them Curt? There may be a gold nugget in there for me.
SilentDawning wrote:How would you change the materials Ray?
I’m not speaking for Ray, but there is no question a revision of the adult Sunday School materials is long overdue. They essentially present a step-by-step lesson in a manual that only nominally encourages discussion and supplies expected answers (while implying that these answers should be presented). The manuals state outright that teachers should not use outside materials, and even the digital versions do not make reference to LDS.org as a resource. GA quotes from the manuals are from the 1980s and before. In my experience, most teachers feel as though they need to get through all the material in each lesson or at least mention everything the manual does.
Priesthood (and I presume RS) is even worse. I am willing to bet that if I handed the manual or TFOT talk to a teacher and asked them how they plan to present it I’d get “We’ll read through it and pause every now and then for a little discussion.” That’s because that’s the way most of them do it and the way they think it’s supposed to be done. I think the last time I had a lesson different than that format (other than the presidency week where we usually talk about home teaching) was when our assigned high councilor came to ward conference and taught the lesson.
So, for starters a revision more in line with the youth curriculum would be a vast improvement. Referencing the essays has been promised since they came out – but no sign of a revision is evident yet. There is a vast amount of material available on LDS.org that would enhance teaching and learning – I don’t see adult teachers using those materials (keeping in mind that I do visit every unit in our stake).
Again I’m not speaking for Ray, but generally speaking historically in my ward and from what I see in my stake, the teacher has been handed a manual and told “Here you go.” And teachers don’t have to worry much because if worse comes to worse they can just read out of the manual and think they did a fine job because there is no feedback. (I don’t go to GD in my own ward for that reason – this guy has had that calling for several years and reads out of the manual week after week. His most often spoken line is “according to the manual….”)
For Sunday School, I would like a revision using the general framework of the youth curriculum, but I would like a four-six year cycle of topics – since recycling the exact same topics yea after year ends up perpetuating the same fundamental issue. For RS and PH, I would favor using the scriptures but going through them much more slowly – with lessons focused on a single chapter or even verse and allowing for deep discussion about one topic only each week. That approach could be used to create a 10 year cycle of lessons that would not repeat source material, and supplemental materials like GC talks could be suggested to mine for short quotes.
Old Timer wrote:using the scriptures but going through them much more slowly
:wtf: have you ever been to HPG??? You want it even slower, Ray??😆 Since this is a key bug-a-boo I will throw my thoughts in. In my dream world we would offer multiple adult classes. We could either offer mixed adult classes 2nd and 3rd hour or a mix up the offerings in both but separate them.
For instance. Offer 4 separate scripture classes year round. Allow those classes to run until the book of scripture has been completely discussed. (This nudges Ray’s slowing down). Old Testament is OT – not book of Moses/Abraham first then back to OT. New Testament as a class, again plenty of time to really discuss. BofM – It would need new manual. LDS Doctrine/or Something. This would include D&C, Pearl of GP, Conference talks, etc.
3rd hour, if we retained RS and Priesthood – Separate classes for women. The different generations need some space. If men get separate, women should too. If not – then keep the adult men together, just like the women. We need separate manuals. Women centered manuals. Old school Relief Society had classes like Cultural Arts and Education, Social Refinement, etc. We could borrow from there. Learn skills, discuss and develop talents, share human life stories. For men, study Lowell Bennion, Truman Madsen, the real biographies of our religious leaders, study men and women of inspiration.
This could happen for Men and Women separately or together. We keep primary classes integrated for 2 hours.
Make church education like going to college. Have a selection, let adults choose where to go, what interests them. This will encourage students and teachers to be more invested. It might even make church fun. I know scary.
I love those ideas, mom3! :thumbup:
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