By Rachel Veal

In the rush of Sunday morning--trying to get the kids and yourself ready, breakfast in hand to eat on the way--you grab your Sunday school material and rehearse the morning’s lesson in your head on the way to church. Eight eager children walk through the door where you wait to share Jesus’ love. Then you realize…there are not enough crayons, your assistant is not coming, you have left your Bible at home.

We’ve all been there. We are ready to go, the children seem excited, and all of a sudden there is an unexpected reaction or maybe worse--maybe there is a disaster. It is times like these we may want to laugh to keep from crying or just close our eyes to escape. Still, if we manage to open our eyes, we might see a beautiful place from which to connect with our students. What is this place? It is a teachable moment. And although chaos does not have to erupt for teachable moments to occur, it is often when things don’t happen as we planned that they do.

It is no secret that plans often fall through (Prov 19:21; Isa 55:8). But just because our plans disintegrate does not mean our lesson has to. Much like in any other crisis, our response can escalate the chaos or bring calm. There are three things to remember when we find that our plans are not being fulfilled as we expected: Stop and Look, Listen, and Learn.

Stop and Look

In any crisis (and even non-emergency situations) you want to evaluate your surroundings and circumstances. You don’t keep driving if your tire blows out--you wait for a safe place to stop and figure out the next step. So it is when working with children. If your plan “blows out,” pause and look at what is happening around you.

Ask yourself a few questions as you observe the children: Why has this happened? What are they doing? Are they talking, quiet, still, or moving? Look at your location in the classroom. Maybe this is not the best place for your current plans, but it could become an ideal place for a different activity. For example, once I gave a group of children scarves so they could dance to the kids praise songs I had picked out. However, it was late summer and the air had not been turned on--it was hot. So, after about thirty seconds of rapid movement, we collapsed into heat-induced slumps on the floor while the praise music hummed on in the background. Trying to get the kids back up and dancing would have been fruitless. My kids were still and quiet, but I could hear the murmur of impatience in their voices. We could not continue as planned, but we could move to another room or sit in a circle and fan the scarves (to create an air flow) as we finished singing our songs. Considering your location gives you an opportunity to interrupt the current chaos to move the children to a better spot or to change the activity to better suit where you are.

Listen

Listen to the children. What are they saying or not saying? What is it that they need? If you listen closely, they’ll tell you without your having to ask. Kids can be pretty vocal--we have all heard the much-used “I’m bored,” “I’m tired of this,” or “When are we going home?” Although it may feel like it, their words are not necessarily a judgment of us, but an expression of their needs as best as they can voice them. Sometimes what they are saying simply is that they are tired or hungry or restless. Do you need to give them a break from a quiet activity with an opportunity to share or move? Consider how you can change your current activity to respond to what the children are expressing.

Sometimes, you may just need to re-explain, remind them of the instructions, draw a connection with their lives, or re-phrase a question. Some kids may just need a motivator--for you to be excited about their picture or answer or the spend some time focusing on something “cool” in the lesson (e.g., Jesus spit in the dirt and made it into mud). Some children may grow quiet and say nothing--these children may need some alone time or one-on-one attention.

Listening also means responding to the questions that may not have anything to do with your lesson. Once, out of the blue, a child in class asked me, “How do you get to heaven?” This was not in my plans and was unrelated to what we were discussing, but to her it was relevant. At that moment the plans shifted from whatever we were doing to conversation about how to get to heaven. Everyone listened, and other questions followed. I would not trade that morning for any smoothly conducted lesson in the world.

Learn

Now that you have stopped trying to continue through the roadblock, looked at the place around you, and listened for the needs in your room, you can continue with the learning. You can move forward, aware of what your children need and how to help meet that need. Maybe you just need to alter your activity from tossing a ball to rolling it, to move to another location, or to have a quick snack before you move on with your lesson. There might be another part of the lesson that piqued the children’s interest or a question that arises that needs more attention than what you had initially planned to give it.

Once you see the teachable moment in a storm, it becomes a life preserver. Many times the unexpected moments in our classroom and life can offer an unexpected platform where real, meaningful learning can take place. Isn’t it amazing how God does for us far better than we had imagined for ourselves? (Eph 3:19-21).

Plans are essential to being successful in the classroom. In fact, you may even begin planning and looking for teachable moments (without the disaster). You might be shocked to see how something as simple as passing out snacks can become a teachable moment. However a teachable moment occurs--supposed or by surprise--it truly can create a connection between teacher and child. Whether it be from going about the activity of our daily lives or teaching Sunday school, that is what learning is really all about--making connections.