The Law of the Teacher

 The Sunday School Teacher 10

          We begin with the first law or principle of good teaching, namely, this: the teacher must know what he would teach.

Why is this the case? Allow me to give you four brief reasons.

First, as a teacher, knowledge is the substance with which you work. I know what it is like to be asked, "What do you teach?" In one sense, the correct response is, "Students." But in another sense, the correct response is the actual subject you are tasked to communicate. A mechanic who does not understand what makes cars tick cannot possibly teach someone else how to repair them. What is he going to teach? He has nothing of substance to say. Without knowledge, as a teacher, all you have is smoke and mirrors. And the students will eventually notice that and tune you out.

Second, as a teacher, you cannot convince others that a subject is worth learning if you have not convinced yourself it is worth knowing. A good teacher has a genuine and visible enthusiasm for his subject, but his enthusiasm has to spring from an internalized estimation of the high value of this knowledge. Such an enthusiasm cannot be faked over the long term, nor can a teacher rightly expect to guide a student over ground he has not first covered. If the teacher himself cannot be bothered to learn the information, he cannot have any genuine passion for someone else to learn it. To lead, you must be out front.

Third, it is only when a teacher thoroughly knows his material that he can focus on the student's reception of that material. I had a professor in college who called his lecturn the death zone. He loved to walk away from it and get down amongst us. This helped him connect with us, but it also allowed him to determine if we understood what he was saying. If you must have your nose buried in your notes in order to teach, you cannot read the reactions of your students, let alone adjust your teaching as a result.

A perfect example of this is soul-winning. A soul winner who has not practiced his ministry, who is still insecure in his knowledge base, is forced to spend his time in conversation figuring out what to say next. It is impossible to do this and focus on the prospect at the same time. But if an experienced soul winner leads the same conversation, he can afford to focus on the prospect because he does not need to focus on himself. This allows him to tailor his soul-winning presentation individually and precisely.

Just so, a Sunday School teacher who has not adequately prepared himself with a solid knowledge of his text cannot forget himself and focus on his students. He must pay attention to himself in order to make sure he says the correct thing. In the course of this, he will surely miss some critical visual or verbal clues as to the reception of his lesson on the part of his students, and fail in his responsibility to attach new knowledge to current knowledge.

Fourth, a teacher must prioritize his own knowledge because an ignorant teacher cannot breed confidence in himself as a teacher nor instill in his students a love for the subject. And a student without confidence in a teacher is a passive student at best, a hostile student at worst. Usually, if students tune you out for this reason, they will never tune you back in. They will write you off permanently.

In my small Christian high school, I was required to take two years of Algebra and one year of Geometry. The two years of Algebra were taught by a graduate of General Motors Institute, an engineer who understood both math and teaching. Studying under him was a delight. But it all fell apart when I took Geometry. He was no longer available to teach, and a sudden demand was placed upon the church secretary to fill his place. In her defense, she was a secretary, not a teacher. Nor had she had more than a couple of weeks to prepare for the beginning of class. To add injury to insult, she had a cleft palate, and it was difficult to understand her clearly. I have no idea if she was any good at Geometry in her own high school days, but I do know she didn't know much at all about it when she stood before us as our teacher. The result was the disaster you imagined it to be. I received an A in the class only because I ignored her entirely and used the textbook alone to teach myself. I suppose she got better as the year advanced, but I tuned her out early, permanently, and justifiably.

Gregory said it this way: "We follow with expectation and delight the guide who has a thorough knowledge of the field we wish to explore, but we follow reluctantly and without interest the ignorant and incompetent leader." Indeed.

Having established the necessity of the law of the teacher, what then are we supposed to do? What flows from this necessity? Again, I offer you four thoughts.

First, as the teacher, you need to write down your knowledge of the subject in clear terms. Writing is beneficial not just because it is a means of transferring truth to people beyond our immediate vicinity, but also because the process of writing disciplines our thinking. To put thoughts into words on a page clarifies and orders those thoughts. Writing forms thought precisely and efficiently.

This alone is enough of a reason to compel me to write all of my own sermons and lessons. I use a wide variety of resources in my preparation, but I never borrow another man's outline, thoughts, or words whole cloth. I rework and reword them until that information is imprinted deeply and clearly in my own mind. Then I give it out.

In plain language, take the knowledge you have gained and put it into outline form. (We will talk later in this book about how to do this more specifically.) You will then use that outline to guide you as you teach the students.

Second, in preparing this outline, go from the simplest thought to the most complex. In other words, it should build on itself. Point four should follow from point three, which should follow from point two, etc. To reference math again, we do not start first graders with Calculus; we begin with addition and subtraction.

Third, along the way, constantly ask yourself what the practical implications of this knowledge are. How does this information apply to the students who will be sitting in front of you on Sunday morning? If you teach facts merely to soothe your conscience for having taught them, you will likely be ineffective. If you teach those facts just so students can recite them back, you may feel like a good teacher, but you will not be. As Andrew Murray well said, biblical information is not given to increase our knowledge base but to change our conduct. Why are you teaching the students this? What are you hoping to accomplish? How are you trying to help them? How will they be better off having gotten this biblical knowledge from you? Always teach with a why in mind, with a purpose underneath passing along that information.

Fourth, develop a personal plan of study. Put another way round, develop a system of learning scriptural truth that works for you, that drives the information deep into your mind and heart.

At this point in my life, I know myself relatively well. I learn well by reading. If I want to learn a subject, I begin by gathering several books on the topic. Then I read those books, slowly, making notation marks in the margins along the way. I combine that with reading and re-reading everything I can find in the Bible on the same topic. This process may take many months. Finally, I gather the books into a stack, sit down at a computer, open up a Word document, and begin to input the information collated from all that material. After entering all the information, I organize it into categories. The categories and the information in them become the basis for the sermons and lessons that I teach.

In point of fact, this is precisely how this book came to be. I wanted to teach my Sunday School staff how to be better teachers, so I gathered every good book I could find on the subject. I then read them while also reading all I could find in the Bible about it. Following this, I organized the knowledge I had gleaned into categories, wrote an outline, and taught a semester-long class to my Sunday School staff. Now I am writing it again, and, not coincidentally, deepening even more my own understanding of what it takes to be a good teacher.

Thus far, we have discussed the importance of a teacher knowing their subject and examined the implications of this understanding. Let us turn now for just a moment to three things he should avoid in this process.

First, he should avoid being careless in his lesson preparation because he thinks he already knows so much more than the students do. Now, it may well be true that you are far in advance of your students in your biblical knowledge base. It does not then follow that you can simply wear long sleeves and teach off the cuff. I have noticed something curious as I age: the more I know, the more I forget. My memory used to be fantastic. Now it is merely adequate. If I do not discipline myself to refresh my knowledge of a particular aspect of biblical truth before I teach it, I am sure of one thing – I will leave something out I will later wish I had said. Good teachers do not assume; they prepare.

Second, avoid constantly having fill-in time at the end of your lesson. If you find yourself occasionally coming to the end of your material with time left on the clock, that is fine. If it happens often, though, there is a problem. It is an indication that your study routine is insufficient and your preparation is shallow.

Third, good teachers, while filled to bursting with knowledge, avoid intellectually condescending to the mere mortals who gaze up at them worshipfully. If you do not know what condescension is, I will deign to equip your puny mind with the barest understanding, something simple that you may perhaps be able to comprehend… See? That does not send you away marveling over what you have learned and eager to apply it. Rather, it leaves you feeling resentful, having been made to feel inferior by the academic brilliance of another. Condescension puts barriers between the teacher and student that will help to prevent the very positive life change you are seeking to produce in your Sunday School class.

Assuming you are with me and agree with the content of this chapter, what benefits come when you follow the law of the teacher? I offer you two.

First, you will personally gain from an increased knowledge base.

This bodes well for sanctification. The more of the Bible you know, the

more ammunition the Holy Spirit has within you as He forms you into the image of Jesus Christ.

This also matters for your future aptitude as a teacher. The greater your own knowledge base, the better and faster you will be at connecting various biblical thoughts and concepts. Depth is not the aim; edification is, but in the process, the depth you acquire over time will make you an exponentially better teacher. Which only serves to help more students more better. Bad grammar that, but good truth.

Second, a solid knowledge base in the teacher helps enable good attitudes all around.

In the teacher, it produces confidence, passion, and clarity.

On the classroom side, the students will have more confidence in you, more enthusiasm for the subject you are teaching, and more respect for you. Your obvious apprehension of the subject and passion as you communicate it will, in turn, stimulate them with an increased appetite for learning. After all, it is not just what they now know they did not know before that matters. It is what they now do that matters. Put another way round, it is what they now become as a result of your teaching that is the point.

Teachers are life-changers. Well, potentially, teachers are life-changers. But they cannot be if they do not learn and apply the law of the teacher.

Know your stuff.