OK so I was the naive one that thought that plenty of experience in youth work, a PhD in theology and plenty of years of experience of pastoring a church would mean I could handle five 11-14 year olds. I now humbly ask for your collective wisdom in running a Sunday school class.
Here is what i tried today:
CREATIVE slot (5 minutes)
battle against the clock to create the ultimate BIONICLE out of an enourmous box of spare BIONICLE body parts - prises promised for the biggest BIONICLE, the most colour co-ordinated BIONICLE, the most elegant BIONICLE.
(what happened… everyone is up for this - except one lad who decides that this is beneath him. once the five minutes is up I get everyone to introduce their new creation to the world - with a name and special features / powers. The kids won’t give the spare body parts back and I end up confiscating the spare parts and stopping two of the boys smashing up another boy’s bionicle).
APOLOGETIC part (5 mins)
I ask the group if I threw the rest of the BIONICLE body parts in the air what the chances of a fully functional BIONICLE being constructed. They all agree this is very unlikely - I ask how many times I would need to throw the parts in the air for a different result? They agree it would take an awful lot of turns. We explore different models of explaining how human beings came to be here.
BIBLE part (10 mins)
I have printed out Genesis 1 and give each young person a copy with a highlighting pencil. I challenge them to a race to scan down the passage and find every time God says something was “good.” The two girls in the group win this exercise and one boy refuses to read the passage at all. We then talk about why God thinks the universe he created was good. We spend quite a bit of time talking about why science is so cool. We explore the nature of assumptions needed to do Science and how it is good to be a christian and a scientist.
We home in on the verse “he also made the stars” i show a clip from the movie CONTACT with “Indescribable “over the top. Everyone engages with this part - its amazing how a video clip acts as a mute button even for disruptive kids.
PRAYER bit (5 mins)
We talk about the fact that the God who made the entire universe - a tiny little bit we saw in the video clip. Also made us. He thinks we are a good thing and if we are Christians then we have permission to talk to him about the good things in our lives and the tough things too. I ask if anyone has anything good or tough they want to talk to God about - someone mentions their hamster, someone mentions their mates sitting SATS at the moment. I give people a chance to pray if they want - one of the girls prays and then I pray for all the other things that weren’t covered.
PRIZE (bribery) part (3 mins)
We know have a prize giving ceremony with the doughnuts in the bag (which had been visible the whole time). We vote on the most elegant BIONICLE, the biggest BIONICLE etc. Everyone gets a prize and we break to go and play football.
Problems:
1. Crowd Control
What i want to do is get alongside these guys as a friend and mentor. What happens is one of the guys won’t sit on a chair and finds something to complain about for all of the super creative activites I have planned.
2. Girls and Boys
I try to pick activities that will help boys and girls engage - hence competitions, BIONICLES, Bible reading competitions. But it is generally the boys who are disruptive and the girls who get a rough deal.
3. Authority
I feel a bit like a supply teacher struggling for authority with the kids - what kind of discpline approaches actually work in a Sunday School setting?
Yes, lads are competitive, but when they feel as if they cannot win (or are used to feeling that way), they either refuse to take part or play by different rules instead, which makes for disruption.
Oh yes, on the whole issue of child behaviour management and stuff, I’d recmmend Bill Rogers’ book Know the Fair Rule. It’s aimed at teaching rather than specifically Sunday School, but it’s very good and fairly friendly (rather than the “Don’t smile before Christmas” school of behaviour management).
It’s hard.
You can’t really have the sanctions the school does, and you’re trying to be loving and welcoming (so they want to come back), whilst not letting the one or two spoil it for the rest.
Personally I gave up and went to work in prison where the behaviour is much better!!
But as a mum, three thousand cheers for all who battle on. My kids love church and they love Scripture Union camp and I’m really grateful to the leaders for what they do.
Hi, Krish. I just found your blog thanks to Jason Clark.
I lead the 10-13 year-olds at my church, so I thought I’d give you my tuppence. Probably most of this is obvious and you’ve already thought of it. Nevertheless, I shall continue.
1. You are incredibly brave and/or insane. I think this age is the most wonderfully maddening bit of childhood.
2. Discipline / crowd control is a major issue in my group. I have several extremely energetic boys — one of them has serious ADHD. Here are some of the things I do.
__Only a few simple rules. My three are: 1) follow instructions, 2) play your part, 3) all join in
__I make an effort to praise the kids who are doing well, rather than come down on the ones being disruptive. This often works.
__I’m not afraid to send a child back to his (it’s always a boy) parents if he refuses to settle down. I don’t have to do this often, but it is important that they know I don’t do empty threats.
__I try to make the class involve as much hands-on doing as possible, much like you are doing. (This weekend we are planting herb seeds in four types of soil.)
3. Authority and friendship. I find that if you get the leadership side right, there is a good chance for friendships to develop. If being a friend is too high a priority it gets in the way of their spiritual growth and your leadership
4. I’ve mostly done away with snacks in my class, unless they relate specifically to what we are learning. They became too much of a focus for the kids. Also, I felt like I was giving a message that the kingdom of God = sugary foods.
5. At our church we feel that it is important that children start learning as soon as possible how to be involved in the whole of church rather than just things that are geared to their age. For us this means that at least once a month my class is in the main meeting for the message. I usually prepare some kind of worksheet to help them follow along and take notes.
6. Many Sundays I come away feeling like I’ve failed. I try to learn from those Sundays.
7. The best, most meaningful moments usually happen outside of class time.
8. Marko of Youth Specialties has a particular interest in this age group. His blog is worth reading. http://www.ysmarko.com
9. I’m sorry for being so long-winded.
Hi Krish – apologies – no constructive comments; but I wanted to say thanks for giving me a good laugh! Antony
Hi,
I came across your blog randomly through the IVP website. I was looking at what your books are about.
I wanted to encourage you to keep going with that age group. Your session sounded fantastic!
Interactive, catering for different leaning styles, God focussed, bible centred and you encouraged them to pray!
There will always be one kid who sits there with their “go on then, impress me” face on (even if you brought in their favourite band and a circus and Gordon Ramsey to cook lunch for them).
Building relationships with them takes time, i am sure you know this already from being a pastor and your previous youthwork experience. They are teenagers and will test the boundaries and sadly so much will influence how they are in your session - did their parents shout at them before they got there? Did they have breakfast? would they in all honesty rather be playing outside or shopping?
I want to encourage you that you ae being a godly role model to them and you obviously care about them or you wouldn’t be stressed. Don’t despair and keep going and pointing them to Christ and praying for them.
If all else fails repeat in your head “Jesus loves them and they are made in the image of God”. You can do this as many times as you need to in a session.
I hope this helps and you don’t feel like i have poked my nose in.
Lynne
(Church based Youth Worker, Kent)
Hey Krish,
Love the fact that you’re (1) committed to doing this, (2) committed to doing it in an engaging way, and (3) committed to reflecting on what you’re doing to make it even better. Those three things in themselves are gonna make all five of those young people look back when they’re older and remember you - and hopefully also much of the stuff you tried to teach them, although I’m not sure that’s as valuable anyway.
There’ve already been some excellent suggestions, particularly from Jeff, but I thought I’d throw in a couple of things I learnt from doing R.E. classes with that age group in secondary schools. Sure, the size of the classes were much bigger and I always worked with at least one other person (who shared the teaching and could act as a covert rule-enforcer), but I’m sure most wisdom is transferable.
The big one to get right for me was the discipline. We had three simple rules which we made very clear at the beginning of each lesson - (1) if I’m speaking, you’re not, (2) if you want to say something, put your hand up (3) everyone must respect each other. You ask whether they’ll agree to those things (they’ll say yes) - but then you HAVE to immediately pick up on any rulebreaking - the critical period being over the next 5-10 minutes. In my early days of leading classes I’d often ignore slightly disruptive behaviour after going through the rules, and would only halt proceedings when it got really bad. But I quickly learnt that that doesn’t work, because they’ve already proved that you won’t follow through on consequences for breaking the rules anyway. No, after the class agreeing to the rules if someone even shouted an answer out without putting their hand up I’d say “Remember - don’t shout out. Hands up please!” It really works. We’d go into classes and the teacher would say “this class is awful” but as long as we were quick to repsond to rule-breaking the kids respected us. Often when teachers say a class is awful/badly behaved it meant there were quite a few extraverts. The flipside is that extraverts make for really animated discussion and enthusiastic volunteers.
Anyway, you’re a parent so you probably know all of that anyway!
Another thing I picked up from a friend who’d gone to a training day on learning styles. They were given a pack of goodies including a small tub of play-dough. The trainers explained that kinaesthetic learners (and boys who love football are often these) often learn better when they’ve got something to play with in their hands. They actually concentrate better with something like play-dough to push/mould/create. Often we think when kids aren’t giving us eye-contact that they’re not listening, but that’s not always true.
Obviously, letting the lads continue to play with the Bionicle body parts could have become a distraction, but maybe giving them paper and pencil to doodle with / playdough might help? It’s a similar thing to people listening to music while they do their homework - it was always a distraction for me but for many people research reckons it actually does help concentration. I know a Christian singer/performer who suffered from stuttering when he did the links/gospel talks between songs in a show, but his band mates found that if the techies put some music on in the background while he was talking, he totally stopped talking.
So maybe you could use different learning styles not just limited to certain activities only in a session but used throughout.
wow guys !
really appreciate all your wisdom on this!
Our church is having an a few all age services for the next two weeks so I have got some time to assimilate your excellent suggestions and insights.
Keep them coming!
thanks
krish