Program Offers Help to Teachers

Teaching the gospel is a role all Church members fill at one time or another, and many are learning how to do it better through “Teaching—A Renewed Dedication,” a program currently being presented in stakes and wards throughout the United States, Canada, and Puerto Rico.

The program was broadcast for videotaping, via satellite, to Church units in those areas on September 8. It was accompanied by instructions for its use in stake-level training meetings before September 29, and ward-level meetings before October 27. (Plans called for the videotaped program to be available to units in other English-speaking areas of the Church as early as late September.)

The program is aimed at all who teach. Priesthood and auxiliary leaders and teachers were individually invited to the meetings, but invitations were also extended to parents, home and visiting teachers, and prospective missionaries.

The program is designed to reemphasize the teacher’s divine commission.

“Teaching is one of the ways we live the gospel of love,” says Elder Hugh W. Pinnock of the First Quorum of the Seventy, General President of the Sunday School, in narrating the videotaped program. “The Savior set the example for us as he strove to perfect the Saints while he walked upon the earth.”

“We should all be engaged in lifting and helping each other,” Elder Pinnock says in introducing the program’s theme. “Above all, we have the example of our Lord and Savior as a teacher.” He taught, Elder Pinnock explains, “with the Spirit, with his pure love, with constant preparation. If you are new to a teaching assignment, apply these principles.”

The three principles are emphasized and reemphasized throughout the program.

On the videotape, actors depict three different situations: a newly called teacher struggling with his class of teens, an aged woman telling a young friend how she overcame shyness to become a much-loved Relief Society teacher, and a father-son home teaching duo faced with an inactive member who wants to hear nothing about the gospel.

After each of the video vignettes, the tape is stopped and observers respond to questions about the application of the three teaching principles. Responding requires those viewing the tape to think about how these principles apply to their own situations. Learning is enhanced through a discussion directed by local leaders.

Through their dialogue, actors in the videotape also offer wisdom for teachers.

“I know if you prepare for it and search for it, you’ll find a teaching style that fits you,” the Sunday School president tells his worried Course 15 teacher.

“I’ve learned teaching is like following a recipe—when you put in the right ingredients, the results are delicious,” the experienced Relief Society teacher tells the young friend who is helping her bottle jam.

The father-son home teaching team discuss how responding immediately to the promptings of the Spirit helped them meet the need of the inactive father.

“Dorothea,” depicted in “Teaching—A Renewed Dedication,” prepares carefully for her first Relief Society lesson.