Twenty years ago, two sisters teamed up to teach a large group of Sunday school children. The venture was born out of circumstances, but it ended up being one of the happiest times in their long Sunday school teaching careers. They worked together for five years. The story is retold here in their own words and is based on an interview that was held with the sisters at the time they were teaching together.
Q. How long have the two of you been working together as a team?
A. This is our second year.
Q. Please describe the class of children with which you work.
A. We started out with a possible 12 children; nine girls and three boys ranging in age from seven to ten. The youngest were just beginning readers, and the oldest, a girl, has severe learning disabilities. She attends a private day school for children with special needs. We have since lost three girls from the class, two of whom have moved away and one of whom no longer attends for other reasons. The remaining children now range in age from eight to 12.
Q. Why did you start teaching as a team?
A. Circumstances. We had two lopsided classes of elementary-age children, one very small and one very large. We were reluctant to break up the larger group in order to create even-sized classes because these children had already developed close relationships with each other. When we could find no satisfactory way in which to evenly divide the teaching load between us, we hit on the idea of merging the two classes and teaching together. At the same time we were introduced to the idea of using Bible learning centers and started using these with the children. We did not fully appreciate it at the beginning, but the centers have been a big help in accommodating the different interests and abilities of the children. Centers have proved to be a key part of the success of this merger. (An article on Bible learning centers is planned for next month, God willing.)
Q. What do the two of you do on a normal Sunday? How do you share the teaching load?
A. First of all, as the children arrive, either of us hears them, individually, with their memory lessons. We also collect their homework before class begins. Ideally the lesson itself includes whole-group instruction for about half the time and learning center activities for half the time. Depending on how much of the hour is occupied with opening and closing exercises, this comes down to 20-minutes or so for each half of the instruction. While one of us teaches the whole-group lesson during the first part of the class period, the other one updates the record book, corrects homework, prepares the children’s lesson books for the following week and, if necessary, jots off a quick note to any absentees to keep them up to date. (We mail these notes on the way home from meeting.) Both of us often help with the centers during the last part of the period. We alternate roles more or less from week to week, depending on the lesson topic and scheduling considerations. Occasionally one of us will take the teaching role for two weeks in a row to complete a larger lesson or cover when the other person is away. With rare exceptions, however, both of us are always present and involved with the children. This is not a case of taking turns teaching Sunday school. It is a 200% commitment to the kids, not a 50% commitment.
Q. How does this differ from the situation where a teacher simply has an assistant in the class?
A. We view ourselves as co-teachers. And on any given Sunday the extra person is not just another pair of hands, but is fine-tuned into what is going on in the class. Over the course of the year we share the work equally. With a teacher and an assistant, the teacher carries the full responsibility of getting everything together every week.
Q. How do the two of you plan things?
A. Planning, in the broad sense, is carried out together, but we don’t want to give the impression that every last detail is worked out between us. The first thing we do is to think through a block of lessons and set up a teaching schedule. We have a prepared Sunday school curriculum that we go by, and we decide which one of us is going to teach which lessons. This clearly has to be thought through together. After this, though, the person who is going to teach a given lesson has the primary responsibility for preparing that lesson. Of course, if either of us has good material on something that the other person is going to teach, we make it available. And we talk to each other quite a lot on the phone. We each have different strengths and by talking together we often help each other come up with ideas of things to do.
Q. This leads directly to another question. What advantages have you found in working together as a team?
A. There are several.
- Working together has brought us much closer to each other as sisters in Christ. We have come to see that there is good Bible precedent for what we are doing. The Lord sent his disciples in pairs to teach the kingdom of God. The yoke of oxen provides a nice analogy as well. We help each other along instead of each one trying to pull the whole load.
- Planning is easier. With input from each other, we constantly have fresh ideas to work with.
- Both of us have personal inventories of teaching materials to contribute to the lessons.
- We don’t have the constant pressure of preparing and teaching every week, the way you do if you’re doing everything alone.
- When Sunday comes around, the one who is teaching can get right into the lesson because the other one is handling the bookkeeping.
- Also, in a year and a half, we have never needed a substitute teacher. One of us has always been present and prepared to teach.
Q. Do you think the children benefit from this merger as much as you do?
A. Yes. We certainly believe that the children have benefitted as well.
- The fact that two teachers are committed to them rather than one sends an important message.
- The continuity we can maintain, even if one of us is absent, gives the children a real sense of stability, too.
- The enlarged class has created a wider circle of relationships for the children. All of our elementary-age boys and girls are together.
- The spirit of cooperation that we have as co-teachers seems to be rubbing off on the children and, interestingly enough, problems we used to encounter have diminished significantly: the peer pressure, squabbling, bickering.
- With both of us involved as teachers, the children benefit from the strengths of two people, not one, and also get some variety in the approach to things from week to week.
- Each of us also has a child in the class. Because we alternate teaching roles, our children don’t always have “Mom” as a teacher.
- Our use of Bible learning centers has also done a lot to stimulate the children’s enthusiasm for Sunday school.
Q. Have you experienced any significant disadvantages in the team approach?
A. The major disadvantage has been the frustration of running out of class time on Sunday before running out of material and activities, and knowing that you are not scheduled to teach again the next week. It is not uncommon, either, to come to the end of a class period and have a difficult time pulling the kids away from a center activity they are working on. The kids have gotten nicely into the flow of things, and we could really use more time.
Q. Would you encourage other Sunday schools to try a team approach to teaching?
A. Yes, definitely. But certain things are needed to make it work, including the right combination of people. Compatibility between teachers is important. It would be better to work alone and run centers by yourself than to try and team up with someone who is not compatible.
Q. Do you think the team approach has potential for all Sunday school age levels?
A. Yes. The concept is certainly applicable to all levels. (Given the success of this model, the Sunday school subsequently applied it to the kindergarten class; i.e., the non-readers. This had its own set of advantages. Three brothers also agreed to form a teaching team and combine two teen classes, following a similar model and using appropriate learning center activities for teens.)
Q. This raises another question. A lot of Sunday schools have difficulty finding one teacher for some classes, let alone two or three. Doesn’t this make teaming up out of the question for many Christadelphian Sunday schools?
A. It’s important to keep in mind if you are merging two classes as we did, that you already have two teachers in place, assuming they can work together as a team. And if you have to recruit a new teacher, it is probably going to be easier to ask someone to work on a team than it is to persuade them to do everything alone. In the case of our kindergarten and teen classes, we had people who were willing to join a team effort, especially after they had seen this approach work with our elementary children. If a Sunday school wants to try a team approach, it may be advisable to start with one class and see how it goes.
Q. One final question. Based on your experience so far, what do you see as the essential ingredients for making the team approach work?
A. Love the Truth. Love the children. Be committed to Sunday school teaching. Beyond this, we’ve mentioned compatibility. You have got to be able to work together. You’ve got to talk with each other. You’ve got to make decisions together. You’ve got to plan broad aspects of the program together. You’ve got to share ideas and materials unselfishly. You also need flexibility with each other and with new ideas. If something doesn’t work, you go back to the drawing board together. Most important, though, you have to share a philosophy of teaching; you have to be on the same wavelength. If one person thinks it is important to have all the answers and acts as if he or she is the one who has them, the team approach is probably not going to work. By the same token, a person who is unwilling to make any independent decisions probably will not work well on a team, either.
Based on an interview with Sisters Patricia Hemingray and Esther Harper
The Origin of the Organic World – Part One