Adventures in Seminary Teaching

November 27-December 8. My two weeks as a seminary teacher. Two days of 0bserving the class and then (theoretically) eight days of teaching. I was at Timpview High School, about a 25-minute walk from my campus job (about 5 minutes driving). A normal day meant about 22 students; others, as low as maybe 15. The scripture block for the eight days I was teaching was Doctrine and Covenants 60-67.

Strange days, what can I say. On average, I stayed up about two hours past midnight and did no other homework for other classes while I was preparing my lessons for the next day. In general, though, the lessons were ready to be taught when the time came. Except the first Thursday. I thought it was ready, but it wasn't so good. I was stumbling through things to say, wondering where my notes were leading me, and then (not knowing exactly when the class ended - oops) ending class a full eight minutes(!) early. But that was better than my not showing up on Wednesday . . . (It's not as bad as it sounds. I missed my ride due to miscommunication or absentmindedness, or something like that; but the class period was only 12 minutes anyway because of some assembly or teacher meeting or I don't know what.)

That first day of teaching was very, very tough on me, actually. That's probably a story for another day, but I wasn't exactly feeling great about myself.

This past week was much, much better. It was especially easier once I had some grasp on a few names of students - but more on that later. And by then, too, they'd pretty much accepted the fact that I was going to be boring, so that helped them move on and try to learn something regardless, I think. As I already knew from observing and from the teacher's comments to me, this class was a special challenge because they were basically devoid of energy. Okay, so every once in a while, they had some distracted energy, but it was seldom that they really seemed much interested, collectively, in what was going on.

Already facing the (adequately foreseen) personal difficulty of getting the planning stage underway - i.e., choosing which principles to emphasize, deciding what type of activities to use for each, etc. - I really just didn't have time or energy to dream up creative activities that would get the students energized and interested. I suppose if I thought that was really what they needed, I would have tried to come up with something like that, at least every couple of classes.

It was very interesting to read the students' evaluations of me this morning. Some responses tended to reflect more on each student's personal interest and participation than on my teaching, but others were definitely directed directly at me myself. For example, on "things to work on," quite a few students said something like this (these are paraphrased): "try not to mumble so much" (I tried very hard!), and "do more exciting activities to keep us involved"; some said there was nothing I needed to do differently; one said s/he just wished I could get them to sing (that one I really didn't work on, though it was definitely lacking). Then there were the more involved responses, like the one (whose owner I think I can identify) that had a "*" and footnote pointing out that his responses reflected more on his negative position towards seminary as an institution than on me as a teacher (oddly, his responses were better than most - almost overwhelmingly positive). And yet another was directed to me, saying I'd done a great job and reminding me that even Brother Woodward, their normal teacher, found it difficult to encourage meaningful participation.

Of course, to top it all off, and on the day I was being observed by my teacher and two others, and once I'd finally become comfortable with everyone's names (this was my last day of teaching), I called Melissa on the front row "Jessica." She wasn't exactly responsive, and I clearly wasn't getting it, so Allison in the back shouted out, "Her name's 'Melissa'." Great. Fabulous. And even better, I ran into another student teacher whom I was barely acquainted with from my trips to the Referral Center at the MTC last year, and I could remember her name just fine. I was already laughing about it, but it was honestly frustrating.

There were bright spots to the experience, and I really love the students and was very impressed with most of them. The whole thing, though, further brought to light my feeling that the job would be much better suited to someone else. But I've learned a lot about gospel teaching in the last two semesters, and I'm sure I'll use much of that knowledge the rest of my life.

I am very grateful, as well, that that feeling had already been growing in me before I started to teach. I'd been feeling much more interest, even more than before, in getting started down some career path in translation. That was the decision I had come to for my little self, since I knew I would need to decide (by today, actually) whether I would want them to use my eight-day experience to consider me for a student teaching position for next semester, or whether my journey down the seminary-teaching road was over (at least for now).

That's it, really. A lot to learn in the last couple of weeks, but I have been glad to do it. I also got to become friends with a guy from my class, Dave Card, who gave me a ride each day. It was great to chat with him about his plans each day and mostly just be encouraged about the whole situation.