Help! Worst class ever....


LilyBelle00
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My husband has just received his very first calling in the church. He's now a primary teacher. We go to a very small branch and there are only a couple of kids in his class. All boys. :eek:

I'm not sure exactly what the ages are but they are old enough to have been baptized and know better.

My husband sat in with the former teacher today. He said that for the entire hour, all the boys did was jump up and down hitting each other and yelling. The teacher just kept looking up and saying "sit down and stop it". When the teacher would ask a question they would answer with nasty comments and jokes. He held up a picture of one of the prophets and asked if they knew who he was and one of the boys said "his name is fart face" and the other boys said "no, his name is turd face". What in the world do you do with that??? There were even worse things said that I'm embarrassed to even type. Things said about Heavenly Father and Jesus.....

This is my husband's very first calling and we've only recently started being active again. I feel like we were doing so well and really growing in the church but I'm really scared this is going to change things. I know that I would absolutely dread going to church and dealing with that.

Any ideas on how to deal with kids that have no respect for anything?

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Invite a parent to come sit in each week. He's going to have to be stern but at the same time with love. I know that's hard but it can be done.

It's possible they've been allowed to do this for so long it's what they know and know that they've been able to get away with it.

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Teach them respect by doing it.

Don't say "sit down and stop it". That's speaking to a child on a child's level.

I would pause, look at them in the eye and say "That's not appropriate. Please listen and be still".

It's a strong exercise in personal patience. The pause is for me... not them. It's for me to sit there and breathe before speaking.

If they are speaking ill of pictures of church leaders, I would turn the pictures over while correcting them. It may help to divert their focus away from the picture and more on my words of correcting them.

If it is still getting out of hand, I would pause and just ask them "What am I doing here?" "Why are you here?"

I would share testimony: "I spent quite a bit of time to put this lesson together because I have a TESTIMONY of this. I know that... and I want YOU to know that. Now, I'd like to share with you more about this... but I can't do it if you aren't behaving well, listening and showing respect for sacred things."

If they are in cub scouts (they are boys, but branches might not have cub scout packs), I would reiterate the Cub Scout promise:

I promise to do my best, to do my duty to God and my Country, To help other people and to obey the law of the pack.

Isn't doing your duty to God is to listen and learn what God wants us to learn? Isn't listening a way to help other people?

When all else is failing, you simply stop and wait. Breathe. Let them do what they are doing... but you are quiet and simply watching them. You'll resume when they are sitting down and listening.

I admit that I'm not a primary teacher, but I am a cubmaster and assistant Webelos leader with 5 active 10-year old boys in a classroom setting. These are the things that I do to help teach and try to do some semblance of order.

It doesn't always work, but these are the things that I do.

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I had a single boy in a good size 5 year old class very much like that. No wonder they gave me the class since I didnt know about him. No one else would teach it.

He climbed on the chairs and would not sit down plus all the other types of things mentioned. He drew the rest of the kids into bickering etc as well.

Next time they came to class there were no chairs. I brought lots of pillows so he could not climb on anything. He was very upset and begged for the chairs back. I told the class chairs were for kids who could be reverent and listen in class. When the class proved that was the case we would bring in chairs again.

After about 3 classes without chairs I told them they could have chairs on a trial basis. If they relapsed the chairs would go. After that I was amazed how well they behaved. I was told later that they never had problems with him again. Now I give credit to inspiration and not so sure it would work for everyone. The trick is to listen to inspiration and do what you are inspired to do.

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I taught 10 year olds for a year. One of the boys had Down Syndrome. I loved that kid. But he liked to strip his clothes off in class.

Wow. At least my husband won't have those problems.

I really hope that it works outs. I think teaching a primary class is usually a great first calling but I'm so worried about this for him. I think I'm more worried than he is right now so I'm trying not to say much about it. The old teacher is going to teach next Sunday's lesson and then it will be husband's class after that.

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I had a single boy in a good size 5 year old class very much like that. No wonder they gave me the class since I didnt know about him. No one else would teach it.

He climbed on the chairs and would not sit down plus all the other types of things mentioned. He drew the rest of the kids into bickering etc as well.

Next time they came to class there were no chairs. I brought lots of pillows so he could not climb on anything. He was very upset and begged for the chairs back. I told the class chairs were for kids who could be reverent and listen in class. When the class proved that was the case we would bring in chairs again.

After about 3 classes without chairs I told them they could have chairs on a trial basis. If they relapsed the chairs would go. After that I was amazed how well they behaved. I was told later that they never had problems with him again. Now I give credit to inspiration and not so sure it would work for everyone. The trick is to listen to inspiration and do what you are inspired to do.

I'm surprised they didn't have a pillow fight! (Well, that's what I would've done in my primary years!) :D

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There are some helpful materials in lds.org like this one.

And there's some resources from other primary teachers sharing their experiences with difficult children like this one.

Hope this helps. I love Primary. I haven't been to Relief Society for years and I'm perfectly okay with that.

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  • 2 weeks later...

This Sunday was my husband's first time teaching this class! :)

It went.....ok.

He said that they weren't as bad as they were the time he sat in with the other teacher. Oddly enough, he said the worst part was at the beginning of class when he tried to have a little "get to know you" moment with them. He thought it would be nice to build a little rapport with them and he's a pretty cool guy (in a band, plays basketball on weekends) but they were completely uninterested and just sat there hitting each other and goofing off.

During the lesson they actually listened fairly well and actually answered some questions. One of them even had his scriptures out and read along. There were a couple of problems though.

He did get a bit strict with them a few times. He moved their chairs apart and one of the boys tried moving it back. Jeremy (husband) grabbed the chair and said no, the boy said "but I want it over there" and Jeremy said "well, I want it here and I'm the teacher." So the boy left it.

There was another time when the boys started goofing off and calling each other gross names. Jeremy said he had to put his head down for a minute and take a deep breath because he could feel himself losing his temper. Then he stood up (he's 6'3) and said sternly "Those words you are saying do not belong in church. You have all week to get this stuff out but when you are in the house of The Lord, you need to show some respect." He said they did settle down after that.

The last thing that happened was when they could hear the relief society getting ready to say closing prayer (they were behind a partition thing) and one of the boys suddenly let out a screechy loud yell and started laughing. I think he did lose his temper a little bit at that because he used his "quiet yell" voice. You with children probably know what that is, lol. He just said "no! They are about to have a prayer and you need to show some respect!"

Anyway, what do you think? Things he could have done better? I could tell he was exhausted afterwards.

Edited by LilyBelle00
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I would suggest finding a way to release some of the engery before the actual teaching starts - maybe singing one of the action songs from the primary song book. I am currently covering my branch's primary while we wait for a new president and teacher to be called and doing an extended sharing time rather than sharing time and then sunday school classes because of the age range of the children and me being in there on my own. Anyway I find that if they are starting to get really antsy half way through sharing time if they have a chance to release that energy they settle back down and are fine for the rest of the time we have - I usually do this by have 2 mins of "wriggle time" I let them be active for a few mins (they can run around the room - we shake out their arms and legs etc) and then they have to sit back down and behave for the rest of primary. It might be unusual but for my situation it works :)

The other thing your husband could do - is invite one of the primary presidency in and instead of doing the regular lesson sit down with the boys and create what we called at summer camp "Promises to keep" which were camp rules by another name. But we allowed the girls to come up with these promises themselves (with guidance and sometimes using a process of "guided discovery"). As each promise is devised it is written on flip chart paper and when finished all the girls signed it. This gave them ownership over the rules and they followed them better than if we were sit down and tell them what they could and couldn't do! It worked really well even for the most hyper groups.

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I always say, Primary is not a babysitting service.* If there are children who seem to have problems adapting to the class or they're out of hand and very disruptive, call the parents. Let them sit with them and see if their behavior changes.

*When I was called to Primary many moons ago, there was this little boy (around 2) who was still in diapers. As I was teaching the class, I realized he did "number 2" so this is how the convo went when I called his mom:

Mom: Hey, everything is okay with Justin?

Me: Oh yes :), I just came to let you know he needs a diaper change.

Mom: Oh...wait...wait! *runs back inside the classroom, returns and gives me a diaper*

Me: *looking at the diaper*

Mom: *looking at the diaper*

Me: *looking at the mom*

Mom: *looking at me*

ODD SILENCE....

Me: Ohhhhhh!!! Yes! Huggies make the best diapers!:D (*handing over diaper back to HER)

Mom: :huh:

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I've found that when I allow children a chance to "release some energy"... well, they're perpetual motion macines! They just keep going and going and going.

I think it's better to start off with the right kind of tone that you want to have throughout the class.

Again, I'm not a primary teacher. I'm in cub scouts. And when we get started, we do the pledge of allegiance, prayer, scout oath & law. And I'm quick and precise about it too. It gets their attention.

Now, primary isn't cub scouts. But the idea just came to me that you could start each class with everyone reciting an article of faith together? They're going to memorize them anyway, right? Why not use them as a way to direct focus and bring a spirit of "it's time to listen"?

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