First Gospel Doctrine Class

Well, this Sunday I taught my first Gospel Doctrine class. It went fairly well. I spent the first 20 minutes handing out assignments to various class groups to read and discuss. I didn't really bring enough copies and enough students were confused by the whole read and discuss in small groups thing that it wasn't working optimally yet, but I felt that it helped get more people involved and discussing.

The bigger issue is with microphones. You see our ward has recently merged with a few others and become much larger. Thus, we are holding sunday school in the chapel. The chapel is a great room for a lecture, but not much of one for a discussion. This is especially true when one third of the class resides in Leisure World. I pushed hard to get a microphone for class discussion and managed to get one with a long cord. Unfortunately, the runner struggled to keep moving from one part of the room to another, and the cord could easily get tangled.

Finally, I got fed up with it and took my own mic off to share with others. This, was perhaps a bit irreverant because they had wired the thing inside my shirt and hurring to take it out was probably the biggest flash of undergarments ever displayed in that chapel (i.e. 2 seconds of a T-shirt). Still I think it helped as I could work one side of the room while the runner could work the other with the corded mic.

There were still some that resisted using the mic insisting that they could project, and several of them did project fairly well, but as I said we have a significant contingent using hearing aides, and projecting simply isn't the same as using a microphone, especially for that group.

I think what I found most frustrating was afterwards when one of the other teachers said he prefered having the teacher repeat comments. He can do that if he likes, but I absolutely hate the idea. You can never repeat someone's comment precisely so it is always a filtering of the comment through the teacher. His point however, was that the microphone formalizes what should be a spontaneous discussion. I agree but I think filtering through the teacher lessens the discussion aspect even more.

Anyway, I'm hoping to have greater success in the future. I fully plan to continue using as many mics as I can get including my own, but I also tossed out the idea to split into two sunday school classes. That of course is not my decision, but it could aide discussion.