Page 11 - Teaching Principles and Methods Student Textbook short

The power of prayer is so great it has the power to defeat the devil and his power over us. He wants to
destroy us, but God wants to bring us closer to Him. Prayer is our tool to win that battle. Prayer gives us
the strength and the faith to finish the race victorious.

If you really want to become a great teacher, the path is on your knees.

7. Always look for ways to improve your teaching skills.

After the lesson is over, some people will come up and thank you for the lesson. They
may even tell you they learned something. Others just leave without saying anything.
So how do you know how you did? How do you know that the class was effective?
How can you find out from the students what they did not like or what was boring?
Without this information, you will never be able to improve your teaching skills.

You might want to give your class a short quiz the next week about last week’s lesson.
Ask them the main idea of the lesson. Ask them if they altered their life style based on what was taught.
Ask them what they liked and did not like about the lesson. With this information, you may see areas
where you need to make some changes.

Teachers may develop what educators call “tics.” Normally a tic is something the teacher does or says
that distracts from the lesson. I used to twirl my buttons on my shirt while teaching. One day a button
came loose and flew through the air and hit a student on the top of his head. I stopped and said, “How
did that happen?” The class universally told me that throughout the lesson I twirled my buttons every
week and it was somewhat distracting. I had no idea I was doing that.

Another tic is saying “umm” between sentences or using the same word over and over
again. In California in the US, a certain type of talk was born called “valley talk.” A person
that talks that way may sound something like this:

“I, like, went to the store, like, yesterday. I was, like, looking for some hot dog buns. Can
you, like, believe it? Like, they sell 10 hot dog buns in a wrapper. Like, when you, like, buy hot dogs,
they, like, come in a package of 8. Like, what am I supposed to do with, like, two extra buns?”

Notice the use the word, “like” over and over again. It literally drives me nuts to hear people talk that
way. And they don’t even notice it!

A pastor can do this in prayers. Our youth pastor used to say God’s name in every sentence. His prayers
went something like this….

“God, we love you, God. And God, we know you love us too, Jehovah. So God, we, God, love you
because, God, you first loved us, God. And Jehovah God, we also know, God, that you take care of us,
God, every day. God we thank you for that, God and on and on….”

Pretty soon I started counting the number of times he would say God’s name in a prayer. I remember
once, in a 3 minute prayer, he said His name about 86 times. Doesn’t he think God knows who he is
praying to? Can you imagine if he were talking to you and said your name 86 times in three minutes.
You would think the guy was crazy!

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