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On the fourth day of the workshop, we began once again with two of the participants teaching a sample lesson. Helen was the lead teacher, and Mary was the assistant teacher.

What interested me about watching these two skilled teachers in action was that they had two very different teaching styles. Helen is calm and centered: she tends to keep her body still, leaning forward slightly in her chair, and she engages the participants with her voice and facial expressions. Mary, on the other hand, uses her whole body to teach: she stands up, sits down, moves, she’s a very physical teacher. Both Helen and Mary are skilled teachers: watching them teach together was both a study in contrasts, and a vivd reminder that there is no one right way to teach.

Watching Helen and Mary caused me to reflect on my own teaching style. I’m a fairly physical teacher, and I find it hard to sit still. Often I have to think hard and force myself to be physically still when the lesson requires it.

After the sample lesson, we shared out evaluations with each other. A couple of the participants mentioned that they weren’t sure where Helen had assessed the learning of the group. As it happened, Helen had included assessment in the lesson, but some of us didn’t notice that she was assessing our learning. This raised the interesting question of whether learners should know they are being assessed or not. I favor always letting participants know when they are being assessed; but I recognize that there is a case to be made for teachers sometimes doing assessment without letting learners know.

After a break, we came back and worked on the religious skill of singing. We learned a new song that we’re going to sing tonight at the conference talent show.

We wound up the session talking about appropriate assessment genres for religious education. In an earlier session, we had agreed that testing is not an appropriate assessment genre for religious education — we all felt that paper-and-pencil tests do not accurately measure the kind of learning that should go on in religious education programs. So what are the appropriate assessment genres? We came up with the following list: Continue reading →

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We began this morning with a sample lesson taught by one of the participants. I acted as the observer during this lesson — that is, I did not participate, but sat off to one side observing and taking notes.

The lesson began with a story about forgiveness, and quickly took the participants to a fairly deep emotional level. It was fascinating to be the observer. I listened to what the teacher and the participants were saying, but more than anything I observed body language and facial expressions. When you sit back and watch all the participants — when you are not a participant-observer — you get a very different perspective on teaching.

The lesson was brilliantly taught by Lynn, assisted by Kate. But what really struck me while I was observing this lesson was how much I can learn about teaching from observing someone else teach. Lynn is a skilled and gifted teacher, but she teaches differently than do I — she emphasizes different things, she has a different bag of teaching tricks, etc. By sitting there and observing how she teaches, and by trying to articulate that in writing, I was forced to think more deeply about teaching. What are my assumptions about how one should teach? What things did Lynn do that I simply don’t do, i.e., what are my blind spots as a teacher? How is her philosophy of teaching reflected in her teaching praxis, and how does her philosophy differ from my own? All these questions were in the back of my head as I was observing. Continue reading →

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Today’s session started off with one of the participants teaching a sample Sunday school lesson. Four of us participated in the lesson, with the understanding that we would be writing down our observations and reactions after the lesson was over. A fifth person, Sheila, was both a participant and Lisa’s assistant. The sixth person, Mary, acted as an observer, and instead of participating she wrote out a rough narrative account of the lesson while the lesson was taking place.

Lisa led us in a lesson about Queen Esther from the Hebrew Bible. First she asked the participants what they knew (if anything) about Esther. We didn’t know all that much. Then Lisa told the story of Esther in the first person, as if she was Esther (this was a summary of the story told in the book of Esther, chapters 2-9). To reinforce the story, Lisa asked us to make a diorama depicting one of the scenes from the story; Sheila, acting as her assistant, facilitated the making of the diorama. To connect the story to the participants, Lisa introduced the concept of heroes, and said that Esther was a hero (or heroine, if you prefer). Lisa asked us to name someone who was a hero to us; there was silence for a bit while we thought that question over, and then Sheila broke the silence (and modeled for us what to do), telling about a heroine of hers. Lisa ended with a short wrap-up and review.

After the sample lesson was over, we all wrote up evaluations: Lisa wrote a self-evaluation; the four participants and Sheila wrote up their observations and evaluation; and Mary added to her narrative account. After about 10 minutes, we all shared our evaluations, beginning with Lisa. What was most interesting to me and the other participants was hearing Mary’s account of the sample lesson: because she was not involved, she saw and heard things that the rest of us missed. There was general agreement that having such an observer was extremely helpful in gaining perspective on this teaching episode. Continue reading →