posted
I would like opinions on this topic, so I have a better idea on how to be one for my students this year.
It's been one day a week, right before Church, up to now. That's going out the window, effective 6 September. I have two students, and they are actually EXCITED for Early Morning learning. I do not want to disappoint them.
I send an advance "thank you" to all who participate. And to those who wonder, I might be able to get back on Nauvoo on a regular basis in the next few weeks. I'm at the base library right now, and there is a limit to how long you can use the computer.
Posts: 3862 | Registered: Jul 2001
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posted
When I was called as a seminary teacher, I was reminded that it wasn't my class, it was the Lord's. I was reminded to love each student. I've tried to pray as if all depended on the Lord, and study and prepare as if it all depended on me, after all, the Lord needs something to work with. Enthusiasm for seminary and approaching learning in fun ways helps too.
Posts: 621 | Registered: Feb 2004
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There was a much-publicized and ballyhooed seminary event for the youth - promising direct answers to all questions the youth had on sex and intimacy and chastity and modesty and whatnot. The representative from the Stake was totally uncomfortable with the questions. He didn't directly answer a single one of them, kept mumbling a bunch of vague stuff about sacredness, and even got offended and offensive a few times.
A good seminary teacher would try to smooth all that over with the kids. A great seminary teacher would provide some rather zealous feedback to the stake, and maybe even throw the stake guy out once he started belittling the students.
quote:A good seminary teacher would try to smooth all that over with the kids. A great seminary teacher would provide some rather zealous feedback to the stake, and maybe even throw the stake guy out once he started belittling the students.
... and a super seminary teacher would have taken control of the meeting and actually conducted an honest and open discussion about sexuality with the students as promised.
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posted
Amen to LM and Jlm! I have had discussions with my Brain Brawl students while driving to and from matches. Discussions that could get me band as a chaperone. However, the kids appreciated my honesty and willingness to stand up for abstinence. V.
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posted
I’ve never been a seminary teacher though I have enjoyed being a teacher many times in primary, youth and adult Sunday school, and priesthood. My wife has been a seminary teacher for several years and loves it. We talk about it a lot.
What I’ve gathered is that the most important thing a seminary teacher can do is to invite the Spirit so that the students have a spiritual experience in every class. The lesson material is the authorized vehicle, but it is not the destination. Give them a spiritual experience at every lesson and you will have given them something priceless and powerful.
You also have to accept that you might not “get through” to every student. You should strive earnestly and ceaselessly to help each one feel the Spirit, but you may have some who willfully reject it. That has been the greatest challenge that my wife has faced in all her years of teaching seminary. One year she had a group of troublemakers that would chase away the Spirit at every opportunity, and thus ruin the spiritual experience for the rest of the students. I’d love to tell you of a miraculous turn-around for those rebels, but it never happened. They were trouble every year for four years, for four different teachers. A couple of the other teachers who had not yet taught those rebels were full of suggestions and full of “If I were teaching that class there wouldn’t be trouble.” Later they did have those rebels, and there was a lot of apologizing.
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posted
my daughter really loves her seminary teacher, but lately she's been telling me some of the more odd things she's been learning lately--like the reason there are dinosaur fossils is because the earth was made up of fragments of planets that had fossils.
This annoys me, and I want to correct some of the more ridiculous folk doctrinal speculation garbage that she's apparently being exposed to... but at the same time, I want her to love her seminary experience.
quote: like the reason there are dinosaur fossils is because the earth was made up of fragments of planets that had fossils.
Yeah, I've heard that one before. Possibly from my mother, who is not known for, ah, rationality. Yeah, let's go with that.
Posts: 4285 | Registered: Apr 2003
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posted
what's so stupid about the theory in my mind is that if God goes to all the trouble to piece together a world from pieces of other worlds, what's so bad about just using the earth as it is, not pieces, but the whole thing, and that at one time there were dinosaurs on it!?
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quote:like the reason there are dinosaur fossils is because the earth was made up of fragments of planets that had fossils
I've heard that one before but from JWs and very conservative Christians.
quote:This annoys me, and I want to correct some of the more ridiculous folk doctrinal speculation garbage that she's apparently being exposed to... but at the same time, I want her to love her seminary experience.
This is release time seminary, right? This person is being paid by the Church to teach. Don't know if I would let this kind of teaching go by without addressing the issue. Who knows what else is being taught.
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posted
One way to look at it is that the world of the dinosaurs really was a different world from ours, even if it was on the surface of the same planet and composed of the same elements.
One can make the same case that the world of the Neanderthals was a different world from ours.
We have a way of projecting modern meanings onto ancient concepts that doesn't always work. We hear "world" and think planet Earth through all its physical existence (whether you think that's six thousand years or 4.55 billion years.) That's not necessarily how people have always understood it.
Maybe this will help defuse the issue without actually saying the seminary teacher is spouting nonsense. I dunno. I don't suffer fools gladly, and what makes it worse is I'm way to quick to decide someone's a fool.
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posted
I took seminary before I went inactive - for about a minute.
But I remember several things from that teacher: * He had worked on just about every Angel Moroni that topped a temple, and he walked us through the fascinating process of sculpting a mold nude first, then adding clothing, then taking a cast, then pouring the statue, then adding the gold plating.
* A story about a very troubled kid he taught years ago who ultimately killed himself and the state had to bury the body in an umarked grave because they could find nobody to claim his remains. With a particular focus of how normal students like us had contributed to the stress in his life by giving in to peer pressure and mocking and dismissing him as a person.
* I remember he was one of the few teachers who took notice of my existence. It annoyed me at the time, because I prided myself at moving through classes totally unnoticed.
Good teacher.
[edit - it dawns on me that I don't have a single solitary memory of anything else that happened in a classroom that entire year. Upgraded to great teacher.]
posted
My favorite seminary teacher is now Elder Paul Johnson of the seventy. Things he did well:
Used the Spirit. I don't ever remember not feeling the Spirit in his classes.
Cared about us. You could feel his love for everyone in the class.
Was happy. It's difficult to learn that the gospel makes you happy if you are always sour.
Knew how to have fun. Fun was never the point of the class, but he knew that teens need to have fun as well as be serious. One of my favorite classes of his was when we talked of Moroni. After the class time he said we were ending with a guest speaker. He went into his office and came out as Moroni. Moroni spoke to us for a little bit and then opened it up to questions. One of those questions was, "was their skiing in your time." He said, "yes, but we were more advanced. We had motors on our skis to take us up the hill".
He took time out for us after school. I get the impression that he understood how to manage time well and didn't neglect his family, but he knew there were times when we needed him.
Posts: 4947 | Registered: Sep 2002
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posted
Thank you, everyone, for your suggestions on what and what not to teach.
weeds: Do you have a good spudnut recipe you could PM me? Right now, I have juice out for my students, and we trade off every Friday with breakfast. Spudnuts might be fun when it's my turn again.
SW: "Having the Spirit present" is not a pat answer. It is what I strive to do every morning. I could not teach these things without it.
Eyrie: That is good to remember. I do what I can, and then ask the Lord to just help me teach what these students need. I've only been doing this almost two weeks, and I'm not a morning person, but I. Love. It.
Palmon: Yes, I did. I'll talk about that more in another post.
V., I'm trying to make Friday a fun day with food, and focus on Scripture Mastery stuff right now. My students want to have a Scripture Mastery run-off between them and their parents towards the end of the year. Stay tuned....
cook: They are asking questions, and I even try to present questions to them to get them to think and participate. It's in Doc&Cov somewhere, about all of us teaching one another. I'll lead the discussion, but I want to hear from them, too.
LM: I am not in a stake, and the people I answer to are in another country. However, your point is well-taken. I will do what I can to be frank and stand up for my students.
jlm: I strive to be super. We'll see what happens.
kazbert: I am fortunate not to have any trouble-makers (yet), but I have seen from my own experience what can happen when you do, and how it can wear on the teacher. As I said, I try to give them spiritual, and often, no matter what I've planned, there have been a couple of times so far that I've gone in a direction that was tangential to me the night before.
rayb: My mother threw the fossil idea at me when I was in 12. It isn't part of my planned curriculum (smirk). I taught the Creation today, but told them we don't know everything; not even the scientists who think they do, do. And when all answers are revealed, everything will make sense, and it will fit. There could be ways to debunk the folklore she's learning, though. Subtly. You know your daughter better than me, but for me, Seminary is where I literally built my testimony foundation.
JV: An interesting perspective. Thanks for giving me a bone to gnaw on.
yungmom: What a great teacher. I love the Moroni Q&A. Don't know if I'm creative enough to come up with something like that. Right now, I'll stick with my enthusiasm for the subject. My students are all involved in extra-curricular things, and I want to make a point of showing up when I can.
posted
I think really loving the students and the scriptures. OUr ward seminary teacher has taught early AM seminary for 17 years I think. Often in testimony/talks the students refer to her and how she helped them.
She has a neat way of studying the scriptures and is eager to help. When I was struggling to teach OT in primary, sometimes I went toher before church to clarify a question.
One thing Ir eally like is how she has teh kids decorate teh room. (it is also the baptism room, the nursery adn the activity day room). First she puts Mormon ads and other church pictures around the room- ie pictures of Christ and quotes of the prophets,etc.
She also has the students make artwork. For instance, one time she had them "write parables" w/illustrations, then hung these up.
Good luck in this calling!
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posted
I went to release time seminary for one year of high school, although I signed up for several years of it. Only thing I remember is how the teacher made a point to write slowly on the chalkboard, he demonstrated how his backside jiggled when he wrote fast so he deliberately wrote slowly.
Lots of memories of the activities I did during the time I should have been in Seminary, but only one of being in class.
Posts: 686 | Registered: Jul 2005
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posted
I just posted about a bad seminary teacher on the Milk before Meat thread in Mormon Life. Spooky coincidence. Anyway, upshot is, keep speculation/lunacy out of seminary lessons and keep it according to the manual. The youth are at a delicate point in their progression, and being taught things that they can easily discover are not true is one way to convince them that none of the doctrine is true. The manual is the iron rod that will keep them on the path to the Celestial Kingdom. Speculation will cause some of them to wander off in strange paths.
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posted
Well, THAT post threw me--and them for a loop! I will let you know, Sierra, how it goes. (Grin)
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Your former Seminary teacher is still that wonderful, and still does all of those things. I have gotten to know his family quite well, and everything you mentioned continues to be his legacy.
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posted
variety, variety, variety. Keep things fresh and try lots of different teaching methods. Instead of having the fun day on Fridays... rotate. I tend to have them on Thursdays because they have Mutual on Wed nights and live so far from Chapel that Wed. is a late night for them and I make sure that whatever I plan on Thursday will keep them awake. Take a genuine interest in them. If you know about their sports/choir/activity, ask how it went or go if possible. That is when it clicks for them that you really do care.
Posts: 411 | Registered: Jan 2009
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posted
Bumping up because we had our Scripture Chase evening last night. One of my two students moves in two days, and I wanted her and her family there for it. SierraSnow, if you're lurking, it was a great night. You weren't kidding; the Bowens are one competitive family, but it was all in good fun--no Church Ball incidents. I am happy to say my students came in first, but having competitive siblings on another team was a great motivator.
What a great year it's been, so far. There are days when I. Don't. WANT. To get up, but I do. Some lessons are better than others. But I turn to the Lord, and he always seems to pick up my slack. I'm always grateful to Him.
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quote: Your former Seminary teacher is still that wonderful, and still does all of those things. I have gotten to know his family quite well, and everything you mentioned continues to be his legacy.
What a blessing. I haven't seen him since I was 21 (he spoke at my farewell), but from time to time I find other people that know him now.
When the Oquirrh temple was dedicated we got to see it via satellite at our stake center. It was neat to have my son, about to go into 9th grade and take BoM just as I did in my 9th grade year, and have Brother/Elder Johnson, my 9th grade seminary teacher, in the dedication. It was just one of those tender mercy moments, with Brady sitting beside me.
Posts: 4947 | Registered: Sep 2002
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quote: Bumping up because we had our Scripture Chase evening last night.
Does Utah not do scripture chases? I haven't seen or heard evidence of one. I remember these from seminary back in Texas. They would be held the same day as an evening dance (for the Stake) - so essentially once a month.
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posted
Back 25 years ago we did them in class, but not out of class. I'll ask DS when he gets home if he has them.
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posted
MLS is trying to standardise names of callings, but bizarrely, there is no option for seminary teacher. What is the official name of the calling?
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posted
Seminary teacher is NOT a calling. It is a part time job (for which the teachers get such a tiny reimbursement for supplies that it is almost laughable), extended by the CES person in charge of the area, after consultation with SP and bishop for the specific congregation(s).
Posts: 2177 | Registered: Feb 2005
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posted
Around here it's a full-time job and the teachers support their families on it. Every high school in the area has a seminary building nearby, or a church at least, and most have release time seminary, where students can leave high school campus for one period to take their seminary class. The teachers have early morning seminary classes on top of that.
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posted
There are two kinds of Church Educational Service or Seminary and Institute staff members. One is a person employed by the church and paid to teach,organize, and administer the CES programs on top of his Seminary and Institute teaching. You are at the mercy of the world's worst employer and it is a stressful full time job out here in the world. Our CES regional employee is also support for eastern Europe. And he has to monitor the Young Adult centers here in land.
The other kind of S and I staff is voluntary, called persons like myself who either teach at home or at church every day, or meet with the self study students once a week. We get a tiny travel allowance when we go to staff meetings. Manuals, videos, scripture cards and bookmarks are supplied.
My calling was directly thru the Stake and I was set apart by the SP all alone in my Bishop's office. Things have shifted in the last five years. The calling is now announced over the pulpit and the local leadership is more involved with Seminary and Institute. Supposedly. I am not sure how it goes now because I don't care enough to pay attention.
My last seminary student graduates this June. I wonder if anyone in my ward will notice?
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posted
The Seminary teachers in our area are called by the stake presidency. It has been this way for about 3 years. Before that, it was more like pnr described.
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posted
It was a calling for me by my branch presidency--I get the feeling the mission president trusted our BP enough to let them make the decision. It took a while to figure out; do I report to the folks in Bulgaria, or Russia? Stipend? (Snort). I am not expecting to ever see it, and I'm grateful to my wonderful mother for all the Church-related material she's given my family as gifts over the years; plenty of visual aids, thanks to her. As the mission president never brought up the subject at our mission conference months ago, I guess things went as well as could be expected.
I have apologized to the SI couple who oversee me (in Russia, I do believe) for being unorthodox. They replied that EVERYTHING I do is unorthodox--starting with where I'm teaching. I would have liked some training, but I guess the Lord thought I could swim if He just threw me in to the deep end. My form may not be pretty, but I get the job done.
Jana, well done to you. Who cares if the ward doesn't notice. Angels above you have been silent notes taking of your efforts. You have not gone unnoticed by them. I've noticed and appreciated the things you have contributed here as a result. This all may be cold comfort, but I thank you. It will pay off.
Posts: 3862 | Registered: Jul 2001
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posted
All the training/talks/support for new teachers you might want is on the S and I website. You should have gotten the magic words from your supervisor as well as instruction on C-Star.... and all the church materials are there for download- excepting the videos. The music is there but no videos. I could have used them this year because some smart guy only gave me the dutch undertitled videos and apparently not all the videos for the OT are Dutchified...no wonder confusion reigns...
My kids poopoo all the extra fussy bits. I think the one extra exercise we did was the preparation to go West exercise in the D and C course. We sure do discuss- and that is what the directive/ teaching thrust is these days: making sure the kids can articulate their faith, testimony and appropriate gospel principles. To that end , Scripture mastery is crucial: where the verses are, what they mean in context, and what they mean today- plus application in every day life as a student, missionary, and future parent in Zion...after studying for 2 hours everyday to make sure I could do that, I was glad I didn't have to labor over any frills. We never even had breakfast. Lunch making and breakfast happened after Seminary- getting up at 0530 was bad enough without having to look at food....LOL
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And to those who wonder, I might be able to get back on Nauvoo on a regular basis in the next few weeks. I'm at the base library right now, and there is a limit to how long you can use the computer.
