LESSON VIII.—THE TEACHING PROCESS—APPROACH.
A second needful step in the teaching process is approach: not the approach of teacher to pupil simply, but of the teacher to the lesson in the act of teaching. This can therefore be no part of the teacher’s preparation. For this step there is no uniform law. Each teacher’s approach must be his own. What is successful with one will not be with another. An exact copying of methods will be of no avail unless circumstances are exactly alike.
Approach may occupy a large or small portion of the time allotted for teaching. A teacher may be twenty-nine minutes of his half hour making his approach, and in the remaining one minute flash the lesson straight into the center of the pupil’s soul. A teacher may reach his lesson in one minute and spend the whole remaining time in pressing it home to his pupil’s hearts.
Imagine a Sunday-school hour. Picture: A new teacher for the first time with a class. Boys—six; age, fourteen years; unconverted; one dull, one stubborn, one restless, the rest mischievous. Opening exercises finished; lesson read; superintendent announces “Thirty minutes for the lesson.” The teacher alone with the class; four things press on that teacher with a mighty force:
1. Self I. Untaught in teaching, and the center for a circumference of eyes.
2. Need. The power of the word must was never felt before so fully. Here is a lesson to be taught, and the thoughts in the teacher’s mind can only shape themselves into these two words: “I must.”
3. Immediateness. Now. Minutes become small eternities, while the cordon of eyes draws closer. “I must now, at once, teach this lesson,” but
4. How? After all it becomes a mere question of knowledge. There are three elements which enter in to make the answer—
1. How to prepare for the lesson work, making necessary a study of the (a) necessity, (b) nature, and (c) methods of preparation.
2. How to plan the conduct of the lesson, a step which costs (a) earnest thought, (b) fixed purpose, (c) persistent effort, and (d) patient prayer.