I was a little surprised when I started the Education program at BYU to discover that instead of learning WHAT to teach, we mostly focused HOW to teach.
I didn’t realize that much thought work, planning, and research went into effective teaching.
But pretty soon I was spending my homework time crafting the perfect inquiry-based math lessons and engaging anticipatory sets for literacy.
And, with the super analytical brain that I have, I started seeing these teaching patterns everywhere, from my own professors to church teachers!
I started noticing what my Sunday School teachers, Relief Society teachers, and bishopric members did well when it came to teaching gospel topics.
I do think that effective teaching strategies matter.
But at the end of the day, it’s not the most important thing, right?
“That the fulness of my gospel might be proclaimed by the weak and the simple unto the ends of the world, and before kings and rulers.” (D&C 1:23)
I’ve learned the gospel from someone who didn’t ask any probing questions.
I’ve felt the Spirit listening to someone reading a quote completely out of context.
I’ve been bored during a lesson, only to have the Spirit bring one particular sentence the teacher says to my mind.
The gospel can be proclaimed by the weak and the simple.
How cool is that?!
And in the most important setting, our home, teaching the gospel in the best ways that we personally can will always be good enough.
We are good enough to teach our families.
We are weak. Uneducated in many things. Simple and plain.
And yet, we can teach the fullness of the gospel.
“Everything that is done in the Church—the leading, the teaching, the calling, the ordaining, the praying, the singing, the preparation of the sacrament, the counseling, and everything else—is done by ordinary members, the ‘weak things of the world.’” – Boyd K. Packer
Happy Studying!
-Cali Black
