Blogs

Blogs

Thank the Teachers!

How will you thank the teachers?

It’s still that time of year. Another Sunday Church school year is about to end. There will be programs to recognize the achievements of the children. They will receive certificates, pins, and gifts. Students who will go off to college might receive a larger gift bag or toolkit for their dorms, a Bible, an icon, a prayer book.

What about the teachers? How will you acknowledge that from September to mid-May, around 35 weeks, their gift of time to the parish has been huge. They have been prepared lessons, organized projects and events, remained in contact with students and parents, attended meetings and seminars, read books, prayed for their students.

Church leaders should not take the teachers for granted. They are “major donors” to the parish. They might have been “pressured” to teach, but once they accepted, they have been there week after week. They spent time with their students, saw their faces, celebrated name days and birthdays, all to help them grow in their knowledge of the Orthodox Faith and Way of Life.

Some people dismiss the work of the teacher in the parish, saying things like, “It’s just Sunday school. No big deal.” And they wonder why they have a difficult time recruiting teachers. Some people say that the only requirement to be a teacher in a parish is a “warm body,” (I’ve heard that said about clergy too!). And they wonder why teachers get “burned out.”

In their book, The Other 80 Percent, authors Scott Thumma and Warren Bird note the following about church volunteers. “Any church that wants to strengthen its volunteer efforts should engage in regular training sessions and mentoring, rotate its leadership of groups, reflect its member diversity in committees, and offer public acknowledgement, reward, and recognition of volunteers.” Parishes that do this are twice as likely to be described as “spiritually vital.”

What to do?

Public recognition. Invite the teachers to come before the congregation, to receive a small gift, and tie it with huge thanks. Pray over them and bless them and their ministry. Include photos and biographies in parish newsletters and bulletin boards. Post photo displays on the parish television, power point style, in the parish fellowship hall. Post them online.

Regular training and mentoring. Use a buddy system of teachers. Pair up an experienced teacher with a novice, not in the same classroom, but a mentor. Offer regular training sessions, to study issues of faith and education. Encourage attendance at and financially support their participation in seminars.

Place some time limits and rotate. Teach for a few years in one grade, then take a break or move to a different dimension of the program, then return to a new grad or a new ministry altogether. Find new ways for teachers and others serve in the program, from finding small, manageable tasks, to utilizing new and other talents and skills of teachers.

Above all, huge thank you’s to the teachers!