Soul Trek: The Gist of Teaching

Teaching-preparation has become so easy in church’s Sunday school classes because of the availability of the ready-made teaching materials. All are already there from the passage, the objectives of the lesson and even a step by step procedure on how to execute them. I have nothing against these materials, content-wise they are so rich and well-planned. The 4 A’s of teaching: Activity, Analysis, Abstraction and Application are all represented, emphasized and detailed.  But what I am concerned of is the teacher himself/herself.  The one who uses this ready-made lessons.  How does his/her teaching intention go along with the content of the material he/she teaches?  What is the teacher up to when he/she instructs?

            The tendency to have a “soulless-teaching” has a very strong inclination to the teacher who follows a manual.  I think, Sunday school teachers should also evaluate themselves on the way they use the teaching materials.  Are they treating it as something that dictates them what to do without a "deep" understanding the purpose of each content? Are they being "slaves" of the ready-made materials because of the comfort-benefits? Or are they still the “masters” of these materials? Do they let the lesson/passage in the material speak  and teach them first?

                What I am trying to drive at is that the materials and the contents of the lessons will all be all lifeless unless the teacher soulfully  and truthfully submits to the heart and the intention of the whole learning process. Another thing that I would like to raise is that these materials should not encourage complacency in the “quality” time that the teacher will devote himself/herself in preparing his/her lessons but instead, these should invite the teacher to see-through the soul of the “intent” and “content” found in these manuals.  This is what I call the “soul trek” in teaching preparation.

Yes, I believe also that teaching should nurture the mind, teaching should touch the heart and teaching should move the hands of the learners. But, for me, the gist of teaching has something to do with the “soul of integrity” of a teacher—meaning, he/she has already experienced the process or the journey of the lesson he/he will bring to his/her learners.  He/she knows the “soul” within what he/she is about to teach.  The soul of integrity in teaching is when the teacher comes in class well-prepared inside and throughout.  When the teacher with all integrity stands in class not with the “manual” in mind dictating him/her what to do next but whole-heartedly has analyzed the “content” and the “gist” of learning he/she will transmit to his/her learners.

Teaching is transmission, how could one teacher transmit if his/her hands are empty?  In every lesson, a teacher should personally discover a "new learning" first. He/she should have the first-hand journey on how wonderful that new learning was and how it will be too to each of his/her student.  In all this, I believe that it is a healthy practice for a teacher to be able to traverse his/her personal “soul trek” on his/her particular lesson before coming to class and for me that is the gist of teaching!