Play! Listen! Talk!

Today I was a “guest teacher” (the preferred way of describing a substitute!) for the third-fifth graders at my church. You might wonder how a teacher of preschoolers would survive teaching elementary kids! At the start, I wondered that too! But while many things were different, I found one thing to be the same: You can never predict what a child is going to say! You know that moment when you’ve just said the main point of the lesson and you think kids are really tracking with you? Often, many of them are following along with you, but there’s always some who are off in their own world. For example, today one of the kids in the class I was teaching found it interesting, just as I was inviting the group to pray with me, to comment that two of the kids’ names were part of Bible words such as “hosanna” and “Philippians.” (Can you find the names?) And isn’t it true that when you teach preschoolers, you have the most interesting conversations about things that have nothing to do with the Bible verse or the Bible story? With preschoolers, it’s often a story of their pet, or a birthday party or a new toy. So what does a teacher of any age do or say when a child wants to talk about something off the track of where your lesson is headed? The best answer I can think of is this: Listen! I listen because sometimes there is a way to connect the child’s comment with the lesson. I listen because sometimes I think kids just need to be listened to. I listen because I care what’s going on in each kid’s mind—and because I’m building relationships with kids for the long term. Actively listening to kids most of the time gives me the ability to say once in a while “My turn for a few more minutes and then you can ask your question.” Or “You’re really excited about that party—tell me about it at the end of our story time.” Don’t you appreciate it when your friends listen to you? I think kids appreciate it, too!