When the Primary President Doesn’t Love Kids

January 26, 2019 by 26 Comments

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Today’s guest post comes from Rebbie Brassfield, a copywriter in Los Angeles.  

I was 29 years old and just discovering our infertility when I got called as the Primary President.

This calling was so far from any natural ability I possess that I had not seen it coming. Not even when the Bishop invited us to his office on a Saturday.  Not even when the words came out of his mouth.

I sat there stunned, unable to hide my dismay.  It made no sense to call a childless woman to be in charge of a bunch of kids – what could I know about them? Not to mention that since growing up I’d always been self-conscious of the fact I wasn’t naturally “good with kids.” I worried over how I would fare as a mother when I seemed to be the only one of the Young Women who disliked babysitting.

I was currently serving as the Primary secretary, and the calling had been both a reminder of the children I yearned for and a potent birth control.  Each week I sat in the back, awed that such small people could wield so much power.  They rarely behaved or folded their arms or listened – some weeks it felt like they intentionally rallied to torch the whole lesson or bleed the teacher of all her candy.  They frankly terrified me, and that terror swirled in my mind as I sat looking up at my expectant Bishop. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Children, Family, Guest Post, Mormon, Primary, Women Tagged With: , ,

Part I: Challenging Classroom Behaviors #TeachingPrimaryCFM

January 18, 2019 by 8 Comments

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L. Williams holds a Masters Degree in Speech-Language Pathology, and is currently completing work towards a PhD. For the last 7 years she has provided speech therapy to children in private clinics, public schools, and research settings. Her background includes training in applied behavioral analysis (ABA), and she specializes in supporting children with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) who are minimally verbal. She previously guest-posted about using developmentally-appropriate language. This post is the first of a two-part series.

The goal of this post is to provide background information about challenging behaviors you might encounter in your classroom. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Children, Primary Tagged With: , , , , ,

Using Language to Support Classroom Learning #TeachingPrimaryCFM

January 14, 2019 by 20 Comments

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L. Williams holds a Masters Degree in Speech-Language Pathology, and is currently completing work towards a PhD. For the last 7 years she has provided speech therapy to children in private clinics, public schools, and research settings. Her background includes training in applied behavioral analysis (ABA), and she specializes in supporting children with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) who are minimally verbal.

I appreciated the post by Lyndsey Jarman, and highly recommend that all primary teachers refer to it as an excellent resource for their classroom.  My goal with this post is to provide additional ideas for teachers to consider, specifically with respect to their use of developmentally appropriate language.

Expert vs. Novice

As adults, we often take for granted how much we know.  In my very early twenties, I was called to teach the CTR 4 class.  One of the lessons focused on missionary work, and each child had a turn to talk about people in their family who had served missions.  I had a beautiful map on the wall to point out the locations where everyone served.  I thought it was going really well. They’re learning! They’re participating! Finally, one of the boys raised his hand and asked, “Is the blue stuff water?”  It was the first time I really understood that we have to teach children EVERYTHING, including that water is the blue stuff on the map. Having a visual is good. Having a visual that children understand is better. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Children, Mormon, Primary Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

Teaching Young Primary Children (ages 3-7) #TeachingPrimaryCFM

January 9, 2019 by 24 Comments

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Lyndsey Jarman is a Kindergarten Teacher with a Masters Degree in Education and 11 years of teaching experience. She blogs with her mother (also an early childhood educator) at Kindergarten Kiosk about early childhood education and podcasts about teaching kindergarten here. This year she is posting ideas to help parents and primary teachers teach young children at Primary Plus. Lyndsey and her husband have three young children at home who serve as her Guinea pigs for all of her education related ideas.

In the TED Talk “What Do Babies Think?” Alison Gopnik, a child development psychologist, explores the relationship between the length of childhood and the development of the human brain. For example, she compares the development of a crow and a chicken, correlating the length of their childhood. The crow, who is a very intelligent bird has a childhood of one year, and a chicken, less than a month. She states, “The disparity in childhood (of these birds) is why the crow ends up on the cover of Science, and the chickens end up in a soup pot.”

Our long human childhoods are a gift for our development, and teachers who work with our youngest primary children (3-7) should first understand that they are undergoing important physical, social, and emotional development that should be as much a part of any lesson as spiritual development. With that in mind, here are some ideas to help you as you plan New Testament lessons for our very youngest Church members.  [Read more…]

Filed Under: Anciently Revealed, Guest Post, Primary, Scriptures Tagged With: , , , ,

Required Training

September 20, 2018 by

On Monday, I got an email from HR reminding me that, as part of the school’s Harassment Prevention & Business Skills initiative, I needed to complete an online Sexual Harassment for Employees course.

I did it that same day, largely because if I don’t get to a work email almost immediately, it can slip out of my mind. And I prefer not to forget to do things that are required for my employment.

The training was basically a series of videos essentially aimed at letting us know what constitutes sexual harassment, with the dual purpose of ensuring that (1) if we’re harassed, we understand our rights and what we can and should do about it, and (2) we don’t do things that constitute sexual harassment. After watching the videos, I had to take a short multiple choice quiz to pass the course. All in all, it took something less than half an hour to complete. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Children, Current Events, Doctrine & Policy, Mormon, Primary, Relief Society, Society & Culture, Young Men, Young Women Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,

Twenty Years

August 6, 2017 by

In preparing for day’s Primary lesson on missionary work, I did a quick search to see if I could find anything out Seymour Brunson’s mission.

The short answer is, not a lot of detail on an iPhone during sacrament meeting. I mean, access to the D&C tells me he was called on a mission in 1832. And, thanks to the Joseph Smith Papers Project, I know that his mission was in Ohio, Kentucky, and Virginia. And, per Ferron Olson’s Seymour Brunson: Defender of the Faith, he went through those states, baptizing hundreds (as missionaries did in the 1830s) and organizing branches along the way. [Read more…]

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Of Bodies and Temples

August 17, 2016 by

I teach Primary, and the theme for this year is “I know the scriptures are true.” As someone who loves the scriptures, and who deeply enjoys discussing them with my eight-and-nine-year-olds, this is a theme I can really get behind. Still, I have some reservations about how the Primary curriculum establishes children’s relationship to the scriptures. In this post I’ll use this month’s Sharing Time scripture to lay out those reservations and to discuss how we might do better.

This month, the designated scripture is 1 Corinthians 3:16-17, slightly redacted to read: “Know ye not that ye are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you? … [F]or the temple of God is holy, which temple ye are.” I love this scripture. In fact, it’s one of my favorites. The Corinthian saints are having problems with schism (see 1:10), and here Paul uses the beautiful image of the collective church members as a temple, home of God’s Spirit, to invite them to greater unity. [Read more…]

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Primary Sharing Time Idea: Repentance

November 23, 2010 by

This is a Sharing Time I did this year on the topic of Repentance. (Previous entries in my Primary ideas series are A Chieko Okazaki Sharing Time Lesson and How to Sincerely Enjoy Working in Nursery.)
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A Chieko Okazaki Sharing Time Lesson

July 4, 2010 by


Continuing with the theme of how awesome I am at my callings, I thought I would share one of the more successful Sharing Time lessons I’ve done in my current calling in the Primary presidency.

The theme for Sharing Time was “Family members have important responsibilities” (last year’s program). I was to do a week on mommies’ responsibilities, a week on daddies’ responsibilities, and a week on kids’ responsibilities to the family. Sis. Okazaki gave a great talk about the Japanese word kigatsuku, which means being aware of one’s surroundings and doing good without being asked, which fits perfectly with kids’ responsibilities in the family.
[Read more…]

Filed Under: Children, Family, Mormon, Women Tagged With: , , , , , , , , ,