This is a substitute practicum. I was out of town for my sister-in-law’s wedding and did not get to go to my practicum here in Marion. I got together with a group of my closest friends for a bible study they have been doing for a few weeks now.
Hours this week=1.5 (Bible Study)
This week I was out of town and met with a small group of friends and we discussed some very good verses and what they meant to us. It was interesting to hear what different people thought about these verses. We are all at different places in our spiritual walks, but there were a lot of really good thoughts on these verses.
The guy who lead the group is an education major. He wants to be a high school teacher, so he will be teaching for a long time. It was interesting to see the way he taught and discussed the verses we were going over. He initially read the verse then gave an explanation of what truths he got from the verse for his own personal application. We also had some of the other members of the group share what truths they got from the verse. It was kind of like going around the room asking each individual, “what does this verse say to you?” This is not how I envisioned the discussion going, but it actually worked and got most of the group talking about the verse and what it meant to them.
It was interesting to observe the group and watch who was engaged and who was “spacing out.” As I looked around there were a few ministry majors in the room, five baseball players, and a total of thirteen people in the room. For the most part the baseball players were very engaged and participated in the discussion, with the exception of one. As we worked through the verses, he seemed to be “spacing out” more than anyone else. He never said a word and was never engaged in the discussion. This reminded me of the days when I was in my high school Sunday school class back home. There were always those who would never say a word, were only there because their parents made them go, and usually slept through the whole class time. So this brought me to my questions for the week:
1. How do you get people involved when they seem to only be there because of obligation?
2. How do you engage those people and, over time, get them to become a part of the group and share some of their thoughts?
3. Is there more than one right way to teach a lesson, either biblical or secular?
4. If the way one is teaching is not engaging everyone, should there be a change in how that person teaches?
in the future feel free to describe students more.... how they are learning--(see my comment above)
ReplyDelete1. this is the age old quesiton in ministry. Especially in youth ministry. We are in the position to teach people who do not want to learn. Engage them on their level.
ReplyDelete2. find what they like and what they are good at.
3. Yes Chris. There are two ways. First is to have a topical lesson and bring it around to a Biblical principle. The second is to start with a Biblical passage and apply it to our life.
4. Yes.