Teaching No Greater Call Part B: Lesson 2

Understanding Those You Teach

This lesson was another difficult lesson to prepare for me.  I made a goal to try and incorporate more scriptures into my lessons to help bring the spirit.  I do feel that teaching is sacred, consecrated and spiritual, but sometimes the nature of these lessons leans towards the secular instead of the spiritual.  I was also intimidated in this lesson because the stake president came to my lesson; it turned out being great though because he commented a lot and had a lot of insights that I thought really brought the spirit to the class.

Some of my questions towards the beginning of the lesson didn't generate as good of a discussion as I have had in previous weeks.  Maybe my questions were too simple?  I thought the lesson really started going well towards the second half when we looked at teachers from the scriptures.  HERE is the link to this lesson in the manual.  I followed the outline of the manual pretty exactly for this lesson.

Intro

• What does “understanding those you teach” mean? 
• How does understanding those you teach affect the way you prepare lessons?

Learn the common characteristics and experiences of those that we teach

• What are some things that all class members have in common? What are some characteristics that a lot of us here today have in common?
• How can we use the “common characteristics” of those in our classes to help guide our lessons? How can identifying similarities between class members help us customize and improve our approach to teaching?
• Examples of teachers from the scriptures/prophets.  Let's explore how the teacher uses the experiences of the student. 
• Alma 18: 24-28 - Teaching concepts and relating them to what people already know
• Luke 15: 8-10 Parables taught by Christ to help relate complex concepts simply
• Abraham 3:15/Facsimile #3 - The Lord taught Abraham about astronomy and the creation of the world.  Abraham used these truths to teach the Egyptians the gospel. (I had someone read the summary paragraph that I found at the beginning of the old testament seminary student study guide.) 
• Missionary work story at the beginning of the Teachings of George Albert Smith manual chapter #14 - look for the good and build upon it

Getting to know each person you teach

• Why does getting to know each person you teach help you in preparing lessons? 
• Does anyone have any experiences where they were able to help uplift someone (or someone was able to help them) because they got to know them better?