This month we continue our series of articles entitled “Five Things.” Each month, we interview a practitioner of Christian Adult Education to learn about their educational philosophy, books they’ve read, advice they’d give to other educators, and their perspectives on teaching the Word. This month features Pastor Mike Quandt, who serves Redemption Lutheran Church in St. George, Utah.
FIVE resources you’d recommend for educators who teach adults.
1) Jason Teteak of “Rule the Room” fame. His modules for teaching and learning styles is outstanding. Locate this material at: Teach Anybody Anything – Rule the Room Train the Trainer.
2) The book Teach Like a Champion by Doug Lemov, published by Jossey-Bass, is riddled with great educational psychology and techniques. Actually, the subtitle for the book is “49 Techniques That Put Students on the Path to College.” When reading and gleaning ideas from this book, I supplant “on the path to college” with “on the path to Christian life and witness.” The material in this book easily translates to adult learning application.
3) Another book, Understanding by Design by Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe, published by ASCD, i.e., Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development. This textbook will challenge any educator of adults to design their lessons and tasks in order to guide students beyond simple knowledge of facts to enduring understanding of the facts.
4) The Teaching Professor website, www.teachingprofessor.com, as well as the related Faculty Focus website, www.facultyfocus.com, have tons of materials, articles, and reports to inform and stir the pot for educators of adults.
5) Ken Bain’s book, What the Best College Teachers Do, published by Harvard University Press, is a great read that exposes you to the best learning understanding and best practices utilized by dozens of accomplished university instructors.
FOUR individuals who were instrumental in your development as an educator and why.
1) Rev. Jerome Braun, my Latin professor at Martin Luther Preparatory School. Prof. Braun had an encouraging spirit smartly balanced with high expectations for his students. He possessed that it factor of creating the “I, the student, want to do well for him” climate.
2) Prof. John Jeske, my Old Testament professor at Wisconsin Lutheran Seminary. Prof. Jeske introduced me to the power of the illustration or the narrative style of instruction. Stories stick, thus many of the application-illustrations he used in his classroom instruction remain with me to this day. I even pass some of his stories on to my students today.
3) Rev. Mark Birkholz. Mark was my “bishop” back, way back, during my vicar year. Mark was instrumental in demonstrating how you can feel comfortable in your own skin while handling the most important truths in the universe. He also taught me, whether consciously or unconsciously so, the immense importance of using your ears more than your mouth when instructing souls who were new to the faith.
4) Prof. Eric Young. Eric is not a blast from my past instructor. I just met him six years ago. Eric is not even a Lutheran Christian (let this remind us to look at all the opportunities out there for us). However, Eric is my friend as well as an instructor at our local university. He has demonstrated and affirmed that the desire to learn must begin and remain alive with the instructor himself. If we who teach ever begin to think we have all the content mastered and needn’t pursue more knowledge and understanding, then we’ve done worse than become maxed out—we maybe have become flamed out in our usefulness to our students.
THREE differences you’ve noticed between teaching adults in a mission setting and teaching adults in a larger, more established congregation.
OR THREE differences you’ve noticed between teaching adults now and teaching adults during your first go around in the mission setting.
1) Teaching in a mission setting can be even more challenging than in a large established setting because the diversity of backgrounds and knowledge base is far broader in most mission settings. How does one unify and move the group forward together when the foundations for knowledge and facts, etc. are all over the board? It’s a challenge but it’s not insurmountable and frankly can be viewed as a positive rather than a negative.
2) Teaching in a mission setting allows all, including the instructor, to see and experience the beauty of the Spirit’s work in present time! We are, in real present time, side by side with souls who are coming to faith in the Savior. That impacts all present in ways we must acknowledge and appreciate. And you may have guessed it, but the impact must show in the overall approach of how we do things in all things curriculum.
3) A difference I’ve begun to notice now as opposed to then is the frequency with which adults arrive in our studies infected with the “I think” theology. Years ago you could count on the folks representing a denominational bent with their statements. Today, you can nearly bet eight out of ten times their statements begin with “I think.” That usually comes with its own peculiar intricacies.
TWO pieces of advice you’d give to a pastor who’s teaching Adult Instruction Classes (AIC) in a mission setting for the first time.
1) Don’t curtail the amount of exposure time to the most basic and important truths of the faith. There’s always the temptation to shorten curriculum in order to get folks into membership as swiftly as possible. At whose expense I ask? In my experience, if you provide quality instruction folks will want to be around it and in it rather than ask, “When can we be done with this?”
2) Listen, listen, listen. As much as we must talk during our AIC, we must configure our learning tasks in a way that allows the students to grapple and engage with the material and actually talk, discuss, ask questions . . . which thus mandates we instructors take time and interest to listen. The folks are fascinating; give ’em a chance to fascinate you.
3) Bonus answer . . . be flexible! We still utilize the Bible Instruction Classes ministry approach begun in Salt Lake City where our AIC is a weekly highlight event where our veterans and inquirers meet together. However, in the past two years, due to schedule conflicts, we’ve begun to “tailor-design” AIC for folks whose schedules don’t allow them to attend our public gathering. Tailoring the curriculum means we don’t just throw the entire course at them. If they have background in Christianity, we will conduct pre-assessment to locate where our instructional targets have to be.
ONE technique educators could implement in their next adult Bible Study to better engage learners with the content.
“Quiz ‘em” exercises. I will create an assessment tool for the conclusion of a Bible study (can also use it as an introductory exercise with slight modification) in order to check the participants’ ability to compare provided statements with the Scriptures just studied. This coming week we will study Holy Baptism. At the conclusion of the study there will be roughly nine statements cut and pasted from a variety of sources—e.g. a Lutheran conference essay, a doctrinal statement from the Assembly of God, Seventh-day Adventists, and Southern Baptist convention, statements from Mormon Doctrine, etc.—and the participants will be asked to read them, not knowing whence the source of the statement is, and determine whether the statement is in line with Scripture or not. Obviously, this is intended to do more than just illicit a closed answer. The whole intent is to spark meaningful and loving discussion about the truths and errors and the consequences of same in each statement. I use this form of summative assessment fairly as it respects the adult learner’s ability to engage at a higher level than mere data download.