megan123ut

I feel for you! Sometimes it is amazing how many different places/ideas people can have in the church and when they collide, I had an institute teacher that referred to it as "polishing." How do you polish rocks? You tumble them and crash them into each other. And who are the rocks? Often other members of the church.... I believe following the handbook is always a good policy, but I have to say that strict interpretation seems a bit like looking beyond the mark... Maybe do a quick check of your counselors, teachers, singing leader to see how it's working for them. And if everyone agrees it is working well, I wouldn't see any reason to change.

Yes, you and I are definitely on the same page. My husband is the bishopric counselor over primary and that was how he explained it should work when the primary president was called. THEN the Stake Primary President came to do training and told her he was wrong. If a teacher doesn't show up, she should send them with another class because then at least they are getting a lesson that was prepared in advance. My husband even asked the stake primary president in person because he thought the ward primary president must have misunderstood. However, I think you just have to look at the results. It's not unusual for all but 1 or 2 teachers to not show up in our ward. A few years ago when I was primary president in the same ward we rarely had teachers not show up and certainly not multiple teachers each week. I've observed it with many primary presidents in multiple wards and the results have been consistent. Dump a class on another teacher because their teacher didn't show and the teachers think it's no big deal not to show up; pull a substitute and it doesn't happen very often.

Two to three times a month I end up teaching all of the primary kids from 6 to 12 because the other teachers don't show up. It is really bothering me!! Our primary has a few challenges - we have a smaller primary and more than half of our kids are really inconsistent attenders. Some are on every other week schedules with divorced parents, some are semi-active. I teach the older Valiant class - boys and girls combined, the 9, 10, and 11 year olds. My class has 15 kids that come at least once a quarter. It's all over the board, though. Some weeks I have 2. Some weeks I have 10 or 12. The other primary classes are similar. The class just below mine is the CTR 7 and Valiant 8 kids in one class. They have a husband-wife couple teaching their class. They are gone a lot. Sometimes they text me the morning of, sometimes they just don't show. However, there are a lot of sibling pairs that are split by the two classes and having them combined is a LOT more trouble than just the age range. The class below that (CTR 6) has a few kids but my daughter is the only one that is there every single week. So, whenever her teacher doesn't show up they send her with me. I don't mind having her if it's just her - and the alternative to send her with the class younger than hers puts her with a sibling and that causes problems. This past Sunday I had all 3 classes. It was only 5 kids combined, though, so I wasn't too worried about it. I spent a little bit of time during sharing time (yes, our class time is last, don't even get me started on how much our primary presidency does NOT follow the handbook) modifying my lesson to work for the different age range and number of kids. Then just as our class started, they brought in a 6-year-old that had just showed up. I work really hard to prepare fun, engaging lessons. We were learning about Simon Peter and I had graphic novel templates from 7 stories from the scriptures about him. Scriptures under each panel so each child was supposed to take a story, read the scriptures that went with it, draw the story, and then explain it to the class. The kids from my class did it in 10 minutes. I tried to help the other kids but it took almost the entire time. I was frustrated because I felt like I planned a quality, engaging lesson just to have the kids from my class sit there for 20 minutes waiting for everyone else to finish. Didn't get to most of the stuff I wanted to. So, help me out here. Do I just need to be more flexible? I've been a primary president before so I really do understand how hard it is when teachers don't show. My way of handling it,though, was to go ask for a volunteer in Relief Society and hand them a lesson manual. It wasn't ever hard to find a volunteer, it kept the classes separate, kept them learning from their own manual, and had a side benefit that I didn't have very many no show teachers. For some reason, teachers don't think anything of missing if another teacher has to pick up their slack but knowing someone will be pulled out of relief society makes it harder for them to feel good about just flaking out.