They Bring Ice Cream.....

We were talking the other day in seminary about how people can comfort us when we are experiencing trials. One of my students called out, "they bring ice cream". How true. It wasn't exactly the answer I was looking for but who can argue with a little counseling session with Ben & Jerry?

Valentine's Day Project

One of my favorite activities is to walk through any and all craft stores. I love looking and envisioning my next craft project. To be honest, I have not had much time for craft projects but I still love to go and plan. So, when I went into AC Moore the other week and I found wooden hearts on a stick on sale, I decided to buy 40 of them and get crafting.

In December, a friend of mine from church showed me her family's Christmas service star: a wooden star on a stick. The star was painted gold with lots of glitter and ribbon. The idea is that one person does a good deed for another member of the family.  Then secretly, the wooden star is placed on the bed of the person who received the kindness. Then that person who received the kindness takes a turn serving another member of the family. The stick keeps getting passed from one family member to another as good deeds flow through the house.

I thought this was such a cute idea. And to be honest I really really wanted my own wooden gold star on a stick. But when I saw the hearts I decided to make my own service stick for Valentine's Day, Same idea, same plan, different holiday. So, I bought the sticks and headed home.

My friend and I were going to do the project together but with our busy schedules, we just divided and conquered. We bought cherry red spray and glitter spray paint and we went to work. I wanted to spray paint outside but it was so cold I thought I could just spray paint the hearts in my basement. I read the warning on the spray cans and opened a window and turned off the furnace. Well, that was an extremely bad idea. My house smelled like spray paint for days and the fumes were so thick that I did not turn my heat back on for 2 1/2 days. It was cold and a bit miserable but it was worth it! The hearts turned out so cute.

I tried to take the poem attached to my friend's gold star and rewrite it to fit Valentine's Day but it just didn't work. So I decided that I would just write my own Valentine's Day poem. I gave the hearts to each of my sibling's families and my seminary kids.

February fourteenth, it's the day
When your friends and fam'ly give gifts to say
I love you, I like you, You cutie pie
Some even write love notes up in the sky.

This red wooden heart is my gift for you,
Hoping you'll spread kindness and service too
'Cause love's not love 'til you give it away
With thoughts, in actions and the words you say

At least this month and perhaps even more
Give a kindly deed, no need for a store
Do it secret, keep your mouth shut tight
Quickly place the heart on their bed that night!

Then it's their turn to continue the chain
Feeling good inside brings secret acclaim
The heart will pass from one to another
Siblings, your dad, don't forget your mother

A domino effect of kindly deeds
Bringing smiles, and love, even meeting needs
Place this heart, they will surely wonder who
Spreading happiness, joy this whole month through

HAPPY VALENTINE'S DAY!

The Mini Experiment- Part 2

I knew when I started teaching early morning seminary again this year, that my blogging would suffer but I had no idea that it would actually just stop. This year of seminary has required a lot of creativity and sometimes I feel that I don’t have any creativity left to write and blog. With that said, I am trying to be better because I want to record these memories. I need to do so many posts but I will start with the last one that I left hanging. I have received a few inquires, “What ever happened with the students and the teaching experiment?”

So finally, here is the follow-up (better late than never).

At six o'clock in the morning, everything just takes a bit longer. So, when I presented the class assignment, I got a mixed reception but soon each group was working away.

The first group got up and took the information I had given them, read through it, and presented the information in much the same way as it was given to them.

(It's an action shot!)

The second group had a hard challenge because they had similar information to the first group but they had to present second. This group amazed me in the fact that the wrote out the scripture references and passed them out before their presentation (something I do most class periods) and they put together a game. The lesson as you remember was on keeping the Sabbath Day Holy so group 2 had written out different activities and put them in a bag (i.e. go shopping, visit a friend, go to a movie, etc.). You had to pull out an activity out of the bag and put it in the right category (Good vs Bad or Not Appropriate).

It was fun watching them present but it was more fun learning about how they teach.

Here are some things I would do differently.

1. Assign each group a different aspect of the same topic. That way there would be some overlap but hopefully you would not get two identical presentations.
2. I would also give them less information. I gave out quotes, scripture references, other references but I should have let the students search for the information in the reference material. I think that they would have had more buy-in to the presentation and learned more if they had to find their own information.

It is said that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery so I should be flattered that the students took a few of my teaching techniques and made them their own. However, this made me realize that every time I teach, I need to not only focus on teaching the subject matter but I need to focus on different teaching techniques. The second group taught their lesson much like I would have taught it and it occurred to me that I am being the example for the future teachers. No pressure there...all in all, it was a interesting lesson and I will probably try something similar again. Luckily for me, I got the whole year:)

The Mini Experiment-Part 1

I have a fabulous seminary class. They are respective and attentive and I love being their teacher. I do however worry about the fact that I have very quiet kids and it is so early in the morning that sometimes I feel like I do all the talking. Well, tomorrow morning I am going to conduct an experiment. I have wanted to do this for two weeks but it had to wait until the right topic came up. My plan is to divide the class into two groups. Each group will get a list of instructions which state: Prepare a 5-10 minute mini lesson on the topic of keeping the Sabbath Day holy. The mini lessons must include the following:

1. Participation from each group member
2. Two scripture references
3. Class participation

I have created a cheat sheet for each group with quote ideas, scripture references, and the paragraph on Sabbath worship found in the For Strength of Youth Pamphlet. Each group will receive their instructions, paper, markers, and some candy. I am going to give them 10-15 minutes to come up with a lesson and then each group will give their lesson to the class. This could either be really fun or a big bust at 6 a.m. I am off to bed, wish me luck!

Seminary Blesses My Life

My mom sent me this article by Orson Scott Card which was written in the Mormon Times. I thought it was a great way to start of the year.

Seminary's at our house this year, and we couldn't be happier.

And not just because that means we don't have to drive our high school freshman daughter to somebody else's house.

Seminary was held in our house before, back in the fall of 1992, the first full year we lived in Summit Ward. Our firstborn, Geoffrey, would get himself up, turn off the house alarm, turn on the lights and open the doors. My wife and I didn't even have to get out of bed, though usually Kristine was up before seminary was over.

Then, after two years with other teachers, my wife was called to teach seminary and continued through five years. Seminary only moved out of our house when Kristine was called to teach institute instead.

Seminary left its mark on our house -- literally. There's a dark line on one wall where chairs got bumped up against it, day after day for seven school years.

We also learned to make some rules. For instance, nobody was allowed to sit on the couch -- it was too soft and too deep, and hardly anybody was able to get through seminary awake while sitting there.

Now, after eight years as stake Relief Society president, Kristine is back teaching -- just in time for our youngest. This gives us a perfect record -- we never had to drive our kids anywhere before 6 in the morning.

And since I was never the teacher, I mostly saw the seminary kids when I stayed up working (or not working) really late the night before.

There were adventures -- like when the sprinkler system reset itself and came on right when a big bunch of the kids were walking to the front door.

Or the time Geoffrey groggily punched the wrong code into the alarm system and summoned the police. Not a SWAT team, despite how the legend has grown.

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And as a very young child, our youngest used to sneak down and sit at the foot of the stairs, just out of sight, listening to the lessons. A seminary spy. Now she gets to be in the room.

This year it's New Testament -- and Kristine was relieved that this time around the Church Educational System (CES) manuals don't try to "harmonize" the gospels.

It's just too confusing to keep skipping from book to book in the New Testament. Much better to take the gospels in order, one at a time, so everyone can read straight through the New Testament and stay right with the rest of the class.

The class began again as it always does, with a review of the plan of salvation, so that everything in the scripture can be viewed through that lens.

Kristine has always given her classes a "quiz" at the end of that first week, consisting of each student drawing their own graphic rendition of the stages of the plan.

She keeps them -- so it was fun for her to pull out examples from a decade ago just to show what's possible. Jon Lewis, for instance, now a senior in high school, got to see his older brother Jason's drawing.

(Our youngest daughter would have seen what her older brother and sister drew, but apparently they took theirs with them when they left home.)

Fortunately, the assignment does not depend on artistic talent (though you aren't penalized for it, either). These are graphics, not art, and you can use labels if the art doesn't communicate the full idea.

A lot of kids had fun with spirit prison. One drew and labeled his high school to represent the concept. Paradise, of course, was represented by more than one tropical island.

Most drew planet Earth to represent mortality, "where," as Kristine said, "we all live."

Well, this year, Augustine Cortes, remembering a song that says where "we all live," represented mortality on his drawing with a yellow submarine.

(And in the priests quorum class the next Sunday, when I was talking about marriage and said, "That's what it's all about," it conjured up a song even older than "Yellow Submarine." I challenge anyone to make a coherent medley out of that combination of tunes.)

I'm not going to get mystical and talk about the "spirit" that these faithful teenagers bring to our home. Our feelings are entirely subjective, the direct result of having them here.

When I look at our living room, chairs arranged for seminary class, I see my home through their eyes, or as I imagine they see it.

Because they study the gospel here, our home is a place of learning.

Because they pray here, they experience our home as a house of prayer.

Because they sing a hymn each day, it's a house of song.

Because they come so early and reshape their lives so they can take part in seminary, it's a place of righteous sacrifice.

Because they laugh together and help each other understand and provide rides for each other, because there are waiting parents at our kitchen table for the 50 minutes of class, and because they are kind, it is a house of love.

Those ideas would never appear in a real-estate listing. It doesn't add a dime to the cash value of our house.

But our house never feels so much like home to me as when the seminary students come.

The first lesson every year. . .

The first lesson of every seminary year is a lesson on the Plan of Salvation. The reason that this lesson is first is that it gives the students an over-all perspective on what they will be learning that year. When I taught this lesson last year, I was pleasantly surprised last year how much the students already knew. So, this year I drew the diagram on a poster board but I left off all of the labels. I handed the students markers and asked them to come up and fill into the diagram. It was shocking that the class completed the entire diagram with little help and in under five minutes. I then had a student read a story from Bishop H. Burke Peterson. The story can be found as part of lesson one in the Family Home Evening Manual.

"My parents and grandparents were born and raised in Utah. However, my mother and father began their married life in Phoenix, Arizona. That is where my three brothers and I were raised. Almost every summer my father and mother would take all of us to Utah ... to enjoy the association with our cousins and other relatives. "... One spring before school was out I asked my father if I could go to Salt Lake City to work and then return to Phoenix at the end of the summer to be with my family and begin school again. After thinking it over, my parents decided it would be fine. When school was out in May, Dad took me with him to the [bus station] and, since I had no money of my own as yet, bought me a ticket to Salt Lake City. I was somewhat taken back when I found out that he had purchased for me a one-way ticket instead of a round trip. He said he would take the responsibility to see that I arrived in Salt Lake City but it would be up to me to do what was necessary while I was there to purchase the ticket for a return home to Phoenix at the end of the summer. As you can imagine, I was most anxious to come back home after my work experience as I had burning in my memory the happy experiences we had always enjoyed in our home. I enjoyed the association with and loved my three brothers and was most happy and comfortable being with my parents. "When I arrived in Salt Lake City I immediately set about to find work. This I was able to accomplish, and as soon as my first paycheck was given to me, guess what I did. First I paid my tithing, and then I took the rest of the money to the bus depot downtown in Salt Lake City and purchased a return trip ticket to Phoenix. I wanted to be sure that when summer was over there would be nothing to stand in the way of my returning home. I loved my home very much. For the rest of the summer I was particularly mindful of taking good care of myself and doing everything necessary to insure my return home to Phoenix. More than anything else I wanted to enjoy again the experience of being with my family. We all had an experience similar to this long ago before we came to this earth. We were in a gathering where we were being instructed by our Father in heaven concerning the earth he had prepared for us. ... He let us know that the decision to come here would be ours, and if this was our wish, he would see to it that we arrived into this mortal experience safely. Like the experience I had in Phoenix as a boy, our Father in heaven would provide a one-way ticket for us. Whether or not we returned again to him at the end of our mortal experience on earth would depend upon the things we did while we were here" ("Return Trip Ticket Home," New Era, Apr. 1974, 5)

We talked about leaving home and about the desire to go back. I love the idea of a one-way ticket so I made tickets up on the computer with a quote from H. Burke Peterson’s story.

It was a great object lesson and at the end of the lesson, I gave the students a ticket and a milky way bar to remember that they need a purchase their one-“way” ticket home. By the way, I don’t have kids but I think this would make a great family home evening lesson.

Ice Breakers and Seating Charts

The first day of seminary after going over expectations and class rules, I handed out a get-to-know you sheet that looked surprising like the one word tag I posted on my blog (Thank goodness for blogging). I made some age appropriate changes and I passed out the list of questions: 1. Where is your cell phone?, 2. Your Hair? 3. Your mother? and I added at the bottom 29. Your scripture study?, 30. Your alarm clock? and I asked the students to respond to the questions by only using one word. The responses were hilarious and it was a great way to get to know the students better. It was fun to do an ice breaker that made the kids think even at 6 in the morning.

I have 6 girls and 6 boys in my class and instead of assigning seats; I decided to allow my students to sit anywhere they want to sit as long as the pattern is boy-girl-boy-girl. It is entertaining to watch the seating shuffle. The girls usually arrived first so one by one the boys had to decide which girl they will sit next to. It is priceless. I really should not find it as funny as I do because when I go to single adult events, I actually have to participate in the shuffle. Somethings never change.

Two Weeks In. . .

Two weeks into seminary and boy am I glad to be back! I know that I complained and moaned about accepting the calling again and that I had a really bad attitude during the month of August. (I apologize to all of you who had to listen to me whine). It wasn’t that I didn’t love teaching but with everything else going on in my life, it just seemed like too much and I was too tired. Well, I have to repent because I have a new group of students, a new book of scripture to teach, and basically as Patti LaBelle would say, “I Got a New Attitude.” You may ask what would make me change my attitude so quickly.

For me, seminary forces me to prioritize my life. How I spend my time determines not only what kind of teacher I am but also determines how sleep deprived I am. Since I was in high school, I have had the same conversation with some of my friends. How do you create and maintain balance in your life? Is there room for the priorities as well as room for the levities of life? I have decided that I think there is room but it boils down to constantly shifting and re-evaluating one's life. In church a few weeks ago, my friend spoke of her mother and she said and I am paraphrasing, "Family Home Evening, scripture study, prayer, temple attendance were not things my mother found time to do in her life, they were the foundations of her life." So often I find myself finding time to do things that should be nonnegotiable items.

Seminary brings a focus back to my life and that focus helps me work on those foundation items. Daily I go to teach the gospel but daily I feel that I am the one that is taught. We always talk about “likening the scriptures unto ourselves” and seriously the best way for me to do this is to figure out how I can relate the gospel principles to the lives of my students and in turn, I apply them to my own life. I am also excited because I worked out a schedule where I only teach Tues, Wednesday, and Thursdays. I am exhausted for those three days but it allows me to have some of a life and some recovery time. Here is to week 3!

My Seminary Room

This post is long overdue as is a thank you to my friend Jennifer who came and helped me put together my seminary room. I was a bit overwhelmed before seminary started this year and it was so helpful to have someone show up and just help me get through it. After we finished the room we went to this amazing and seriously I mean amazing restaurant called Cava. This restaurant has made it on my top 5 restaurants in the DC Metro area. If you come and visit, we should go to Cava. Thanks Jennifer- I really could not have done it without you.

1 week

My life is completely changing in 1 week. No more late nights writing amazing blog posts. No more paperbacks. No more weekday parties or movies. Seminary starts in 1 week and even though I am excited to be teaching again, I am dreading the exhaustion that comes with it. Last year I really did not know what I was getting myself into but this year I can't hide from it. My eyes have been open and there is no pretending that teaching early morning seminary does not completely change your life. Last year, I taught the Old Testament and I loved it and I am looking forward to teaching the New Testament this year. I have a smaller class this year (13 students, I had 18 last year) and I already know most of my students so that will make things easier.

Here are some pictures of my seminary room last year. This week is going to be crazy as I try and take care of all my work work and still prepare for seminary. If I blog less in the future- don't be a hater, I just needed my sleep.

My early morning sunrise and cold cereal for those student who came on time. This only lasted a few months.

My timeline of the dispensations.

Scripture Power board. Amazing quotes.

Assigned seating- very important!

This was one of our activities. The students spit into groups and each group taught a piece of the Plan of Salvation with visual aids. They did a great job.

Here are some pictures of my class from last year. I love these guys.
This is the reason that I am willing to give up my late nights and my weekday movies:)