Ha, that age group is actually the age I find easiest to work with (10+ years of summer camp leadership, currently a school teacher). They're still young enough that they're not too cool to have fun, but old enough that they have some great observations and insights about life.
Here are a few things I've learned to do over the years:
- Spending time building rapport is not wasting time -- plan for it. Use ice breaker games every lesson (really important to have fun together). Ask questions about their lives and genuinely want to know about them. Get to know what they like, and use their interests in your lessons as much as possible.
- They should be talking more than you are in lessons. Give them space to be heard. Prove you care by listening. That's more important to them than you having all the answers.
- When you prepare your lesson, don't answer the question, "What do they need to learn?" Answer, "What can I do to inspire curiosity?" You want them to be seekers of truth... not absorbers of everything they hear.
- Use trial and error. Be okay with failing. Kids are more forgiving than you think. They're more forgiving than adults are, anyway...
- Expect them to have great insights. Practice asking better and better questions. Read about how to ask better questions.
- Let time do its thing. You only see them once a week, so expect it to be uncomfortable for a while until they get used to you. Most kids like adults after a while as long as they're not particularly mean and cranky adults. If I'm working with a new class, I expect that it will take about two months before I have enough rapport to really work with, and that's seeing them three times a week. They don't hate you. They just want to make sure you're alright before they open up. And that's actually pretty reasonable. It's like cats -- if you want a new cat to like you, you don't chase it around the house and try to catch it. You just don't be mean to it, and keep putting out its food and water, and eventually it comes to you.
- Connect with other sunday school teachers if you can get the chance. Maybe once in a while, you can get someone to take your class so you can go to another church with a great youth sunday school, and just sit in and observe. I would be a much, much worse teacher if I never did this. Almost everything I do, I copied from someone else.
When I'm planning lessons, I keep a note of guidelines posted on the wall in front of me for reference. Mine says,
- Does this inspire curiosity?
- Trial and error
- Embrace the mess
- Make space for fun
Which is slightly adapted from a Ted Talk by Ramsey Musallam called "3 rules to spark learning." Look it up. Definitely worth a watch.
