Ups and Downs in Seminary

The best advice I ever got about teaching seminary was this, "You won't hit a home run every lesson."  Well this last week I felt like I had a week of strikeouts!  It is our 13th week of seminary.  It's the week after taking a entire week off for Thanksgiving.  Plus there is the excitement of Christmas in the air! I felt like the kids were the least attentive they've been all year.  There was much more chatting with their neighbors and a lot less involvement in the lesson.  Sigh!  I felt like it just didn't go well at all and was discouraged. 

Amazingly enough though, the spirit prompted me to take some photos with my phone during the week and as I looked back at them I felt so much better.

First lessons were on Moses and the Tabernacle of the Congregation.  This is a replica built by a former seminary teacher in our stake.  In this photo the roof isn't on the tent of the Holy Place and the Holy of Holies so that we  could add the interior furnishings.   This photo doesn't do it justice.  She put an amazing amount of work into this.  Really helped our class see the symbolism to the Savior,  the Plan of Salvation, prayer, sacrifice....having this wonderful visual made that lesson come alive.  

 

For the lesson about the Children of Israel building and worshiping the golden calf, I gave them play dough so that they could make current 'idols' we worship.  I especially loved this "Tweet"....yes we can 'worship' social media!

 

We talked about how the Children of Israel had so many reasons to always be focused on Jehovah yet they turned their attention to a 'Golden Calf Idol'.  We had a great discussion on the distractions of our day and how we can always be facing the Savior.

 

Favorite comment, "Even if we are facing away from the Savior, HE is always facing us." 

One day we played a fun game called "Teacher, Bell, May I".  

 

Four teams, each studying and discussing the scriptures.........

Writing answers on papers and putting them on the board, identifying principles they learned from their reading......and racing against the other teams to finish first. Let's just say it got pretty competitive!!!

 

So good to look back and see that there were some positive moments!  Now I feel ready to face the next week! I do love my seminary calling!