What I want my Sunday School class to understand.

I've been in countless classes in my growing-up years, and had a variety of teachers ranging from the barely-qualify-as-adults-themselves to the Depression-era old-timers.  I have different memories of each and several have passed from my recollection altogether.  I remember outsmarting one Brother's carefully planned object lesson on temptation and how Satan traps us.  He was using a variation on an old trap that tribes in Africa use to ensnare monkeys: coaxing me to try to grab the candy bar from the narrow-mouthed glass jar on the table.  He wasn't pleased when I deftly extracted the treat with my dainty fingers, escaping the trap intact  and smug, as teenagers will do when presented with an opportunity to score sugar and impress peers at the expense of a spiritual application.

I remember one Young Women leader who looked no older than some of our Laurels, reading The Giving Tree to us fresh-faced Beehives.  A wizened Sunday School teacher  taught us varied truths, among other doctrines and principles I am sure (though those I don't readily recall).  The term "guy" used to be applied to scarecrows only, a truth he learned the hard way after his father reprimanded him for using the term in reference to his father's boss.

These anecdotes comprise only a few random selections of people who were called to teach my classes growing up.  People who gave up their time and energy to try to shape us into better people.  It makes me wonder what this little Youth Sunday School class in England think of me; and, more importantly, what effect I have on them.

I'm no stranger to teaching.  I've done my fair share in terms of siblings, stints in Seminary, sacrament meeting talks, school group projects, Relief Society lessons, public speaking courses, visiting teaching assignments, arts and crafts groups...oh yeah, and the eighteen month mission I recently completed.  (That's a whole universe on its own: MTC discussions and practices, district meeting role-plays, zone conference talks, training new missionaries, and countless lessons with investigators, recent converts, less active members, fully active members, and somewhere-in-betweeners.)

But teaching a class, and a class full of teenagers at that, is a different ball game.  [Side note: I've taught missionaries on my mission and I've now taught teenagers, which I hope will give me some idea of what it will be like to teach brand-new missionaries at the MTC, should they choose to hire me in the next few months.] There is a whole range of mentalities from fourteen to eighteen, which can make lesson plans a bit of a challenge when you've got a handful of people all in various stages of adolescence.

I don't claim to be a psychologist or a miracle worker.  I don't have kids of my own, and it's been (holy cow) nearly a decade since I was the age of most of the people in my class.  But I have some recollection of what it's like to be that age.  I was not a huge scriptorian.  I went to seminary, and I found it interesting, but when it came down to my own personal study I was not up for more than about five minutes at a stretch.  Some parts of the Book of Mormon were foreign and boring to me.  It took a while to warm up to the scriptures, and I have Institute and my mission to thank for the leap from passing-glance to deeper contemplation.  The Old Testament remains, to a large degree, uncharted territory for me, even at the ripe old age of nearly a quarter century.

I have some idea of what it is like to sit as a teenager in a class and have the teacher ask what is possibly the silliest question you've ever heard.  Teaching manuals are full of those.  Questions that, if you've been raised in the gospel, are really more rhetorical than anything else.  And when you're a teenager, rhetoric borders on the are-you-serious? level of incredulity.  Adults, at least, will give an opinion when asked (though in my experience, the YSA ward members vacillate between the two.  I always tried to help out the flailing teacher during the dead silence portion of the meeting in cases like this.  It's really not their fault; they're just following the manual.)

I don't know what my class got out of our lessons this year.  Possibly they were thinking deep thoughts in the quiet interims.  Possibly they were wishing we would play hang-man.  Possibly they wondered who let in this crackpot who kept bringing up mission stories and asking silence-inducing questions.  But whatever else they gleaned, I hope they will gain a greater appreciation for the people who made these classes possible.  We wouldn't have much material if Nephi hadn't made the several-day trek back and forth to Jerusalem to get scriptures and prospective wives.  If Moroni hadn't written down his father's words.  If Paul hadn't made it a point to send letters to the Church in their respective regions.  If Joseph Smith hadn't kept the plates hidden in a pickle crock or under the hearth when prying eyes came around.

I hope the scripture study goals I invited them to set will help them make these people a part of their daily lives, that they'll gain a better understanding of what they carry around in their scripture cases.  These books are jam-packed with spiritual knowledge, layers-deep.  I hope they'll come to learn for themselves the joy that comes from unearthing one layer of insight after another.

I hope they'll get that adults are not just trying to ruin their teenage fun with rules and standards and skirt length stipulations.   That the book of Revelation is really not as scary as it may seem.  That attitude is the difference between Nephi and Laman.  Ultimately, that Christ is reaching out to them and hoping they'll take the steps necessary to close the gap.

I think I understand now what my old Institute director was trying to help me see: his highest ambition was not that he will be praised and lauded for being a great teacher.  His whole objective was to help his students discover things for themselves.  He was just there to show us how.  I hope I have become, in even a small way, that kind of example for the people I taught.

Maybe that's too much to hope for in a six-month stint of teaching.  But I like to think it made a difference.