The Law of the Student

 The Sunday School Teacher 11

 

We turn now to the second law or principle of good teaching, namely, this: the student must pay attention with interest to the material being taught.

What is attention? It is the focused direction of the mind upon something. That something can be external, in other words, outside of my mind, or internal. Walk into a Krispy Kreme with a child and watch them stare in fascination at the donut-making process. They are paying attention to something outside of themselves. Alternatively, ask that same child to explain what a color is and watch their face screw up in the same sort of concentration. This time, they are focusing on an idea or concept, something internal. Really, the keyword in all of this is the word focus. To pay attention is to focus on something either inside or outside oneself.

Even a rookie teacher grasps the importance of this almost immediately. Without attention, the teacher cannot transfer anything at all to the student. It does not matter how well the teacher knows her material, or how good her material is, if the student is not paying attention, the teacher is wasting her breath.

This is because knowledge has to be thoughtfully received in order to be owned, to be properly internalized by the student. Knowledge is not a wrench handed from the mechanic to the apprentice. You can do that mindlessly on either side of the exchange. Knowledge is many things, but mindless is not one of them. Knowledge is not just facts; it is facts understood in context.

Gregory said it this way: "Knowledge cannot be passed like a material substance from one mind to another, for thoughts are not objects which may be held and handled. Ideas can be communicated only by inducing in the receiving mind processes corresponding to those by which these ideas were first conceived. Ideas must be rethought, experience must be re-experienced. It is obvious, therefore, that something more is required than a mere presentation; the pupil must think."

It helps me to think of my students' minds as a bookshelf for storing ideas. I cannot simply place a book on that shelf. I have to open up the book, explain the contents, watch and/or help the student rethink those concepts, and then wait while the student rewrites the book in his own words. Then, and only then, once the student has placed the book himself on his own mind's shelf, can I consider my work as a teacher accomplished.

All of this requires the direct focus of the student's mind. You cannot take ownership of knowledge without thinking, and you cannot think without paying attention. So if I, as a teacher, do not have my students' attention, I do not have anything.

At this point, I can hear veteran teachers groaning. Getting and keeping children's attention is arguably more difficult now than at any other time in human history. In addition to the built-in apathy that many children have toward subjects that do not interest them, and in addition to the ordinary distractions that plague every Sunday School class, there is the massive black hole of screens hoovering up all and sundry who come within their embrace. Children, pacified with screens via bad parents, become incapable of paying attention to anything that is not on a screen, and much that is on a screen, unless the display is constantly changing. The resulting ADD/ADHD is treated just as badly via a medication that dulls the student out of the fidgets and right into an intellectual coma.

As I pen this in 2025, there is a growing consensus amongst American educators that phones have no place in a school classroom. That is well and good, though, for this generation, a bit like closing the barn door after the horse has escaped. Nor is keeping phones out of the classroom the sole solution to the problem; 'tis more like kicking the can down the road. But the solution to the issues of screen addiction in modern culture is beyond the scope of this book, though we do need to note for the record that these problems make this part of the teacher's job harder than ever. I still teach quite often, and I feel that too.

Having noted the problem in its currently aggravated dimensions, what can the good teacher do about it? Allow me to offer a handful of brief but hopefully helpful suggestions here.

First, give the student an intellectual task that will stretch him but not discourage him. Of course, this can be in the form of homework, but I mean it more in this context in relation to the thoughts you are asking him to think while he is sitting in your classroom. Do not spoon-feed him everything you want him to know and think. Beginning with what he already knows, hint at what he needs to learn or think about next, and encourage him to feel after these things with his intellectual fingers. To borrow another illustration, do not ask him to bite off more than he can chew, but encourage him to take a bite. Make his mind do some work.

For example, let's say you are teaching a lesson about Mary's journey from Nazareth to Bethlehem while she was pregnant with Jesus. You can tell them how difficult the journey must have been, or you can break them into teams and assign them to research what travel was like in that day for poor people, what the weather is like in that climate that time of year, how hotels did (or did not) work back then, etc.

Second, try to illustrate your lessons with things that naturally interest the age range you are teaching. I had a teacher once who was sick for most of his third-grade year. His mother took upon herself the responsibility of seeing that he got his work done at home. Seeing how he was struggling to maintain interest, and knowing how much he liked baseball, she began to work baseball into as many subjects as she could. How do you teach math? You use baseball statistics. How do you teach geography? You focus the child on the cities that have major league teams, etc.

Granted, the illustration here is limited, but the point is not. Interest catches attention, holding it with tenuous cobwebs of focus. Those cobwebs can be sewn into ropes that will tie the student to the subject at hand with bonds of affection. Find what your students care about, and tie the knowledge you intend to transmit to that. Their attention will follow you to the ends of the Earth, metaphorically speaking.

Third, never be too proud to use the simple tools of the teacher. Raise your voice. Use their name. Walk around the classroom. Evoke the pregnant pause. Ask them for the next word. Break into a snatch of song. Tell a story. Use them to hold something. Hold a competition. Each of these breaks up the monotone recitation of facts, inserting a brief flicker of life into the lesson, and potentially draws back a wandering attention span.

Fourth, be an interesting person. Without being an arrogant know-it-all, bring your variety of life experiences into the lesson. Widen. Know at least a little about a lot of things. My Junior Boy's Sunday School teacher taught a boring lesson, but he was a fascinating man to the junior boy version of me. So I listened to his boring lessons with interest.

Fifth, be interested in your students. By and large, they will return to you the same attitudes you give to them. If you care about them, they will, over time, care about you. If what matters to them matters to you, eventually what matters to you will matter to them. Ask them about their hobbies, their sports, and their school. If they like clothes or food or video games, notice. Ask them often, "What was the best thing to happen to you this week?" And then follow up on it in conversation at some point in the future.

Sixth, stop teaching when they stop paying attention. You do not have to be as rude about it as they are, but you do need to be intentional here. If the majority of your class is not paying attention, it is pointless for you to continue to teach. If you cannot beat them, join them. March off on some brief intellectual or physical interlude, and then resume teaching when you have them back. I do not mean you have to cater to the lowest common denominator; I mean you should seek to avoid the resentment that grows in children who are being forced to sit still. We will talk more about creativity in lesson plans later in this book, but that is precisely what is needed in this context.

Seventh, keep your own attention. If you decide to teach 37 weeks in a row on the kings of Judah, and you find yourself bored with it in week 12, give it up. Move on. It is hard enough to get the subject to matter to the students when it does matter to you; if it does not matter to you, find something that does, and teach that.

Eighth, deal appropriately with sudden interruptions. The church auditorium in my Chicago pastorate lay right along an alley between two streets. Often, as cars exited the alley, they would sound the horn as a warning to pedestrians who would not otherwise be aware. Consequently, on a fairly frequent basis, my sermons were interrupted by car horns sounding on the other side of the wall. I learned to pause, throw in a brief sarcastic, "thank you," and go right back to the interrupted thought. Sometimes, calling attention to the interruption can permit everyone to notice it quickly, and just as quickly return their focus to you.

Ninth, as much as you can, vary the physical space in which you teach. I do not mean move to another classroom. I mean, change the decorations seasonally, for example. Mix up the seating arrangement once a month. Sometimes, teach from the middle of a circle and other times from the end of a triangle. Renew the posters or the bulletin boards on a regular basis. Teach by candlelight some random Sunday morning. Adults like the predictable routine; children adore the opposite.

Tenth, prepare some thought-provoking questions from your material in advance. Occasionally, when appropriate, ask one, pause, and wait for an answer. We will discuss this further later, but much of good teaching is wrapped up in the question. Amongst other attributes, it helps to hold the student's attention.

Focused attention is necessary, but just as often problematic. Having looked at some ideas to strengthen it, let us turn now to the other side. If we want to keep our students' attention, what are some things we should avoid?

First, never begin teaching without getting everyone's attention. This can be as simple as hollering, "Hey, everybody, look up here!" or as detailed as a roving set of sarcastic insults while everyone is getting settled. I have even known some teachers who spent the first ten minutes of class time interacting with the students about everything other than the subject at hand, only to proceed with the lesson once the entire group was firmly in the palm of their hand. However you do it, do it. Do not start without gathering the strands of attention in the room.

Second, do not rely on the fear of punishment to hold that attention. Weak teachers threaten their students, browbeating or intimidating them into pretended heed. Not only does this not build the natural affection that forms between good teachers and their class, but it also practically vaporizes any hope of it in the future. It is not as crucial for the chemistry teacher to be liked by his students as it is for the Sunday School teacher. For the former, he is going to get paid one way or the other. For the latter, money does not even factor into it; life change is on the radar. To change a student's life generally requires a genuine, affectionate relationship between the teacher and the student. Angry threats do not produce affectionate relationships.

There are, of course, exceptions to this. If a student is being so disruptive that no one else in class can pay attention, something must be done, and the teacher is the one tasked with doing it. But setting that to the side, anger and discipline are not to be found in the Sunday School teacher's toolbox. They will only tear down the very thing you are seeking to construct.

Third, do not assume a disinterested student is being rebellious or lazy. In other words, be gracious in your mind as much as you possibly can as you think about that student. We have bus kids with horror stories of a home life that would curl your hair. Violence. Sexual abuse. Neglect. Physical abuse. Hunger. Criminal activities. The dysfunction some of them live in is enormous, and the resulting trauma and how it works itself out is entirely understandable. They do not need another adult to yell at them. They need one to love them, to draw them in rather than throw them out.

Setting that to the side, there is the simple fact that a child's attention span in minutes is generally equivalent to their age in years. If you expect a seven-year-old to gaze at you with rapt attention for a twenty-minute lesson, you have no one to blame but yourself when things begin to go haywire. Put another way round, there is often context to what appears to you to be a lack of attention. Do not forget that.

Fourth, do not assume that character will keep children interested in your Sunday School lesson. "Well, Pastor Brennan, these children are not bus kids. They come from good homes where they have been taken care of and taught well. They should know better." Perhaps they should. On the other hand, maybe you should stop being a lazy teacher. If you are not naturally interesting, be work-at-it interesting. Place the responsibility on yourself first. That is what good leadership does in every arena.

I realize I have been a bit blunt in this chapter. That was intentional. You need to be able to process not just deeper information, but a call to improve performance. Years ago, a young preacher asked an old preacher how to keep people from sleeping during the preaching. The old man said, "Wake the preacher up." Most of the time, a disinterested class is the result of a low level of teaching.

On the other hand, if you put the necessary time and work into getting and holding your students' attention, you will be amply repaid. You will be happier, since the children will actually be listening to you. The children will be happier because obedient children are always happier. You will discover that your attendance will gradually increase, driven by the simple fact that your students want to be in the room. Most of all, you will gain entrance into their heart. They will grant you the increased influence necessary for life change to begin to happen.

Attention is a must, but do not make them pay attention. Make it impossible for them not to pay attention.