resources for effective children's ministry
One of the best ways we are able to build up or support our teachers is by providing opportunities for teacher training because the more trained the volunteers are the more confident and effective they will be. The more confident and effective they are, the less they will experience burn out thus contributing to a solid and stable and genuinely effective volunteer teaching team for your Christian Education ministries. While there are some teacher training resources available, many of them have been around for a very long time and are not such effective resources as they once were, however; there is a new resource available with four complete training sessions. This resource is an excellent tool for training volunteers to be genuinely effective and we will take a look at it, but first lets look at ways we may be able to plan, promote and present training opportunities your volunteers will participate in.
I am sure many of us have planned and promoted training opportunities only to have a handful of teachers show up for the workshop. One of the reasons volunteers do not show up for training sessions is because they think they will be boring and the other reason is because they are busy. Let's look at the second reason first. Our volunteers are generally busy people - aren't we all! If we plan training opportunities for another evening in the week or on a Saturday we are bound to have only a few show up. If however, we plan our training opportunities for times when your volunteers will already be at church we are able to have a much more effective session with most if not all of your teachers. Plan your training opportunities for Sundays during Sunday School - have your youth or parents substitute teach the morning of your training to enable all your volunteers to attend the training. Consider offering breakfast before the session so your volunteers and their families will come and your training will start on time! Sunday and Wednesday evenings are another excellent time to offer training as most of your volunteers will already be at church during these times. When you look at planning your training opportunities, consider times when your volunteers will already be at church and plan your trainings for these times.
Now just as we want our volunteers to keep their classes interesting, relevant and fun for their kids, we need to keep our training opportunities interesting and relevant - and fun! Plan your trainings, be sure to provide refreshments, decorate the room according to the topic or season of the year and be sure to allow time for volunteers to visit with each other if at all possible. Keep your training times respectful of your volunteer's time by starting and ending on time and keep the class time moving by involving your volunteers activly in the training session.
As for resources for training - sometimes publishers will make available someone to come to your church to train your volunteers if you utilize their curriculum. As I mentioned, there are some training resources available - some are well done and others will need some help in making them a more effective tool for training your volunteers. In this issue, we will look at a new resource for training volunteers - "The Dirt on Learning Video Training Kit" by Thom and Joani Schultz, published by Group Publishing.
The Dirt On Learning Video Training Kit
Authors - Thom & Joani Schultz
Publisher - Group Publishing
This resource is an excellent tool for churches to utilize to help their volunteers become much more effective in their teaching children how to understand and apply God's Word to their everyday lives. It helps churches and volunteers understand the differences between teaching for understanding and application and just "teaching". There are four complete sessions with video, reproducible handouts, transparencies and complete directions for the person or persons leading the sessions covering topics such as: how to teach for understanding, how to recognize learner based classrooms and why they work, discipline in the classroom, active learning and the different types of learning just to mention a few.
Favorite Features:
- complete resource designed to be easy to use and understand
- video segments of interviews with kids make a powerful impact
- reproducible resources
- four sessions cover important information
- includes the book, "The Dirt On Learning" - excellent and useful book
- active and interactive sessions so volunteers really do learn
I highly recommend this training resource for all churches to utilize with all their volunteers - it will genuinely help volunteers to better understand how to teach for understanding and application and alert them to ineffective methods they may have been utilizing. This resource is also an excellent tool to utilize with the church leadership to help them understand the differences between teaching for understanding and application and just teaching the facts. I would also encourage it to be utilized with parents to help them better understand how to pass on a legacy of faith to their own children by teaching them in the home. Extremely well done Thom, Joani and Group!
Table of Contents
About The Children's Department - Volume 4, Edition 1 Copyright © Lynda Freeman Last Updated March 9, 2000 Web Page by Lynda Freeman Send an e-mail to Lynda at dfreemansr@earthlink.net
