Preface: This is a letter I wrote to my kids on 7 February, 2011, about a Sunday School teacher I had when I was a youth. I don't want to lose this story, so here it is.
Hi kids,
Here's the story I promised you, about my favorite Sunday School teacher ever.
For my last two years in high school (from mid-sophomore year to mid-senior year), we lived in Hawkesbury, Ontario and went to church in Pointe Claire (Montreal), Quebec. It seemed like our Sunday School class couldn't keep a teacher for more than three weeks. I don't recall doing anything specific to drive them out, but apparently we did something to make them go away.
Ironically, the Sunday School teacher that lasted the longest was the one that was the least prepared and the least effective. Every Sunday, he would fold the lesson manual back on itself, breaking the spine of the book, bury his nose in the page, and start reading. The. Lesson. Word. By. Word. The only time he looked up was to pick someone to address a question to -- again, a question from the book. Where the manual said "Ask: What did ...?" he would look up, say "Andrew?" and then bury his nose in the book and ask the question: "What. Did. ...?" Andrew would answer something -- anything! -- and the guy would say, "Correct." -- and then read the answer out of the book! Out loud!
I didn't learn anything Gospel-related from that teacher, except how NEVER to teach.
The Sunday School teacher I remember the most was this one little lady, an immigrant from Finland, who didn't speak English very well. I think that she was very poor. I also think that she put hours into preparing every lesson. How do I know? Well, it's a simple thing, and it may make my tender-hearted Mountain Woman tear up just a bit.
Nabisco Shredded Wheat, not the spoon-size stuff but the big stuff, was packaged three biscuits at a time in a wax-paper wrapper. The wrappers were stacked in the cereal box with pasteboard spacers between them, so the biscuits wouldn't crumble. I was very familiar with those spacers because Shredded Wheat was cheap and our family ate a lot of it.
Every Sunday, this Finnish lady would pull her lesson plan out of her bag, written in pencil on several of those Shredded Wheat spacers. The spacers were about four inches wide and ten inches long. She would hold them like a hand of oversized playing cards, and constantly shuffle through them as she taught her lesson.
One Sunday, she handed out triple combinations for us to use to look up something. (This was back in the days before President Spencer W. Kimball, and before his counsel that parents should obtain all the scriptures for all their children.) I ended up with one that didn't look quite right. She had us turn to a section of the Doctrine and Covenants, which was easy to find because all the sections are numbered, right? So are the verses! But the words in my book were all gibberish. She had intentionally snuck a Finnish D&C in with the books she was handing out!
She was illustrating a point that she was trying to make, by giving one of us a book that we could not read or understand. Today we call that an "object lesson." And you can believe that all of us in that class caught the object lesson that Sunday.
She never said "I love you kids," probably because that didn't come into style for a few years after. Maybe she did love us; I don't know. But she was a model of devotion and of preparation that I have followed ever since -- and of humility! creativity! and so much more of what makes a great teacher out of anybody.
--
Love
Dad
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