I wasn’t a very good student. I usually came in late, then put my head down and slept until the bell rang. When I was a senior, the teacher took maybe 10 minutes one day and engaged me in conversation, and I was hooked.

As a teacher, I found journal writing very helpful. Is your class a mixture of 9th – 12th graders? The socratic method is a GREAT way to approach teenagers, because their answers will tell you what is important to them, but the difference in age can make it complicated.

For a lot of (most?) people that age, adolesence is a terrible time. They have all kinds of questions about their worthiness, and think that if only they were better people, they would have stronger testimonies. You can validate their desires, and also help them learn to be patient with themselves.

Good luck with it all – I’m sure you will be a great teacher!

How did you use the journals? As a way for them to summarize points just talked about? Did you keep and read them as a kind of assignment book, or just let the kids use them for whatever?

I tried to offer memorable, manageable, measureable challenges, with rewards! My students always liked to be “bribed” – rewarded.

We had scripture chase groups, the winning group at the end of the month went to breakfast with me and I got a sub for the class. Then I would re-mix the groups.

We had donuts every Friday….kind of a relaxation, answer off the wall questions, fun games etc. for the last half of class.

You’ll love it, teenagers are great, you’ll change lives – literally, and when they see how much you love them, they will respond and love you…more than you deserve.

Just a caution – I had to work very hard to stay out of the confidante/confessor role that is more suited to the bishop. As you noted, a seminary teacher spends more time with our youth than the youth leaders or bishop, and often even more than the parents. If they like you and trust you, it is natural they will want to confide in you. I had to develop some guidelines for myself so I could head off the conversation when I could see it was becoming too personal.

The situation was hard on the students as well. When there’s only one or two of you you have to be on every single day. As a teacher I have nobody else to ask questions, nobody else to look at. I talked with my own seminary teacher (a good friend) and he said that there are some Sundays that even he doesn’t want to pay attention in Gospel Doctrine… and that’s once a week! Poor kids, it’s 6:30 in the morning…

When I first got the call one of my first thoughts was, “how can I be ‘in’ with them, how can I be ‘cool’?” I guess it was just natural instinct, to want to be able to understand and relate to them, to better apply the scriptures to their lives. Then I thought about my seminary teacher and frankly, he was the least cool guy I knew. But the man was humble, he understood the Gospel and lived it, and taught with the Spirit. And he was willing to be a friend. We would go play racquetball together on Saturdays… me and my dorky seminary teacher, who knew? But he remains a good friend, he went to my sealing.

All that being said, it was a great experience and I think that it went quite well. We had some wonderful conversations, at times we had the Spirit, we all grew and learned, and I think we are all better people because of it.

Oh, and you’re lucky to be teaching the Book of Mormon. When I was first asked to teach the bishop said I’d be teaching the BoM and I got really excited, started preparing myself for it, thinking of all these wonderful things I’d talk about and then at my first CES meeting I found out it was New Testament. Not that there is anything wrong with the NT, I just have a special feeling about the BoM and was mentally prepared to do it so it was a bit of a letdown.

One of the things that I was going to infuse into my lessons was how the BoM helps us know God better. I wrote a post about it months ago here. (even though it says there are no comments, there are).

Karen, this is a wonderful call and I’m very excited for you. It is incredibly difficult, but well worth it. The kids don’t know how lucky they are to have you as their teacher. Best of luck.

My advise is skewed toward students like me, but I was in the minority in all my religion classes. I wanted to be engaged, questioned, and pushed. I loathed EFY-type pseudo-spiritual entertainment. I have always had a very sensitive saccharin meter. Even though I wasn’t one, I wanted to be treated as an adult.

I was also the guy that never did homework, but did well on tests. So any sort of task oriented projects were ultimately ineffectual (i.e., uncompleted). I’m not saying that I was right (I was way to arrogent and uncompliant), but there may be someone like me in your class.

I was in a small class of 3 or 4 (for the entire highschool). The idea of having donughts with them instead of sleeping would have been offensive.

Once a week donut devotionals are a must. See if you can come up with forty ways to relate the gospel to Krispy Kremes.

I know that the 6:05 call time every morning (minus one) is going to be really tough on me, especially since I just started a graduate program yesterday. (Classes two nights a week.) I think this is going to be a really tough year, and I think that knowing how tired I’ll be is part of my anxiety looking towards teaching. It’s just that I can’t do anything about tired. I can do something about being a good teacher.

don, I’m all about the bribes. I’ve been thinking about having “trivia for your breakfast” games every week or so. It would be a good review for them to have to recall and repeat answers to simple questions, and we all know food is such a good motivator. I like your breakfast with the kids while a sub comes in idea. I’ll have to play with that.

Mark, thanks for the warning about the confessor role. I hadn’t thought about that, but it could be an issue. I’ll have to keep an eye on that.