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Progressive Teaching = Progressive Students
By Jac | July 16, 2009
We are always encouraged to try and go with different friends when we conduct Bible studies, that way we can learn from each other’s teaching methods. I have to admit that oftentimes Anton and I end up together, or I go out with Jess, and what we use to reach our students generally does the trick. However, recently I had the pleasure of going out in the ministry with someone I haven’t preached with in over 4 years: Liz Tucker, and she helped add a whole new element to my teaching.
I took Liz (who some of you may know as being from our old ASL congregation in Michigan) on several of my studies while she and her husband Scott were here visiting for 2 weeks. Most of my studies are 15 year old girls, and I am comfortable with that nitch, however, I do teach one woman who is 31, Yesenia, lives with her deaf boyfriend, and has 
never been to school, not one day in her life. She actually didn’t know any sign language until she was contacted by Jehovah’s Witnesses nearly 8 years ago. She studied at that time, but then her family moved deep into the country, and she fell off the radar for nearly 5 years. This is Jess and Yesenia in the photo, from the stairs to her apartment.
That all changed in January, when she and her boyfriend, Carlos, showed up at our Kingdom Hall and asked us to help them understand the Bible. We gladly obliged.
Studying with Yesenia has presented lots of challenges for me. She is “trained” to answer a certain way and so she appears to have a lot of knowledge, but she lacks the ability to reason, which is something that I require of my students. We have been working very hard with her, and she is coming along fantastically (said with a nice thick Michigan accent).
It was Liz though, who brought something more to her study.
I go every week on Wednesday to give her a personal study of the Bible and every Saturday morning to help her study her copy of the Watchtower for the meeting on Sunday, so that she can participate and give comments, which she loves to do. Up until I went with Liz I had just been watching the paragraphs, which we have on DVD, and then drawing a little comment for her every so often.
Liz took my drawing to a whole new level! She suggested drawing pictures on a separate sheet of paper for every paragraph. Since Yesenia can’t read, she could use the pictures to help remind her what the paragraph discussed, kind of like taking notes on the Watchtower, or underlining the paragraphs. I thought it was a lot of work, but Liz was willing to draw, and so we went with it.
Yesenia LOVES her drawings. She has saved every single one and uses them at the meetings, as well as at home to review the things she learned with her boyfriend, who is often at work when we call. (Anton visits him on Sundays, his only free day of the week.)
I knew the drawings were a good idea, but I didn’t realize how great they were until I saw this:
She drew it after I left one week Wednesday on what she had learned. You can see the lame man being lowered into th room in the second column of pictures. She likes the annointed – you can see them on the far right, even though they weren’t in the lesson! Oh, and you can see Jesus has the red coloured garment on – that is how I always differentiate Jesus from the apostles. Since then, she has drawn the Wednesday lesson each week as her way of “taking notes” and remembering what she has learned.
It just goes to show you that there is always more to learn and always ways to improve to be a better teacher. Thanks Liz! Yesenia still associates the drawing of pictures with you!
Topics: From the Ministry |
One Response to “Progressive Teaching = Progressive Students”
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July 21st, 2009 at 8:02 am
Reading your blog made my day! Jehovah know how to help people learn. It is truly a team effort..I planted, Apollos watered, but God makes it grow. Thanks for sharing and keep up the good work!