WIDE-ANGLE TEACHING
How to reach the spectrum of people who attend your classes.
Roberta Hestenes
October 1, 1991
Those who dream of being effective communicators run into an immediate obstacle: the people they teach are so different. Not everyone learns alike. Each person has different needs, questions, and ways of absorbing information. This challenge is addressed by Roberta Hestenes, who along with Howard Hendricks and Earl Palmer co-authored Mastering Teaching, the latest volume in the Mastering Ministry series, co-published by Multnomah Press and Christianity Today, Inc. This article is an excerpt.
John lays floor tiles for a living. He's not much of a reader, but he's eager to learn, and he's looking for something from the class I'm about to teach.
Peter is a lawyer-driven, compulsive, and a bit of a snob. He is a reader, and a skeptical one at that. In fact, he's vowed that if this class doesn't grab him, he probably won't bother with another.
Joanne's husband left her a few months ago, and now she's trying to support herself and her two children on a clerk's salary at J.C. Penney. This is the first job she has had in twenty-five years. She doesn't think she's capable of anything better, and she feels absolutely powerless.
Michael owns his own small corporation; he's pretty much in charge of his time. He talks flippantly about time pressures and taxes, but he knows he's got it good. But he's feeling a vague sense of guilt about what to do with himself outside of his job.
These people and more sit before me as I'm about to begin a church school class. Only some vague attraction to the topic, a Bible study on the Book of Romans, binds them together. For a brief moment, I despair: Each of these people comes with unique concerns and unique situations. How can I possibly communicate with all of them?
This great diversity is one of the most ...
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