The 5 Biggest Sunday School Mistakes

We know that as a Sunday school teacher, you are a unique type of person who understands the complexity of being both a leader and a friend, but all teachers make mistakes.  We have outlined the five biggest mistakes that will take your classroom from being a space for love, learning, and fellowship, to a place of frustration, negativity, and oppression.

We know that you are doing everything you can to make your sessions enjoyable and fruitful for your students, so we encourage you to read through the mistakes listed below.  With each mistake there are several suggestions about how you can improve your classroom so that it becomes more like the space you imagined it would be.

If you see yourself reflected in these five important mistakes, ask some simple questions to get your class back on track.  “Why am I doing what I am doing?”  “What about my tactics is working, and what is not working?”  “How can I change my own behavior and attitudes to achieve the environment I wish to create?”  These questions may be all you need to get your classroom and your teaching style back on track.  Everyone makes mistakes.  Take the time here to learn how to fix them!

Sunday School Mistake #1. Too Focused… Too Serious

One major mistake that Sunday School teachers make is taking themselves and their classes too seriously

One major mistake that teachers make is to take themselves and their classes too seriously.  Often, teachers focus only on the lesson throughout their sessions, and while the lesson is the most important part of the session, having fun is also allowed!  If teachers focus too much on the serious, faith-filled side of Sunday school, students are bound to become bored of lessons and their attendance will drop off.

When they do come, they will be rowdy, unproductive, and unhelpful.  This will stop you from doing your job as a teacher, because you will have created an environment not conducive to growth and education.

Sunday school is a serious place and one where students can learn a great amount about their lives as children as God and about Christianity in general, but it also needs to be a place for fun.  Students are kids as well, and even the most well-behaved, mature students need to let off steam now and then.

While your lesson should be focused on Christian principle and values, students need to understand that Sunday school is a safe place that they can learn while they relax.

To create a safe space where students feel comfortable, make it clear to your students at the beginning of your sessions that Sunday school is supposed to be a place of learning and fun mixed together.  Tell your students that you will have a lesson each week that will be the focus of the session, but let them know that there will be fun activities that go along with each lesson, and that you hope they will make suggestions and help make the sessions enjoyable.

Remind them that Christianity isn’t a boring or useless life-style but one that can combine moral living with regular life and produce normal, fun-loving people just like themselves.  Just as Christian living does not mean trading fun for faith, nor does Sunday school.  This should be an important part of your Sunday school lessons.

Also, taking yourself too seriously can hurt the dynamic in your sessions.  Keep in mind the audience that you are speaking to.  While most teachers know a great deal about Bible theology and are comfortable discussing Christian principles with a group of their peers, remember that your audience is a group of children, some with very little exposure to Christian thought before your classroom.  For that reason, simply speaking the words is not enough to get them to understand.

You must be able to loosen up yourself and find different ways to explain things, or else your students will feel overwhelmed.  Tailor your lessons to your students and be prepared to explain things several different ways; all of those ways should be something they can relate to.

Sunday School Mistake #2. Inconsistency

The second major mistake Sunday school teachers make is inconsistency.  One minute, you’re in control and rewarding your students, the next, you feel overwhelmed and forced to threaten them with punish-ment.  Your nerves are fried and you do not know how to balance your role as leader and teacher with discipliner and peace keeper.  Because young people so often go from happy to rowdy in the blink of an eye, it is important for teachers to set out guidelines for their own behavior for dealing with problems.

Before your classes begin, sit down for a while and make a plan for discipline in your classroom.  You should have different ideas for different discipline problems.  For misbehaving, for example, one reac-tion could be to ask the student quietly, directly to that student, to please follow directions and pay attention.

Quickly explain that the student’s actions affect everyone in the classroom and that he/she is a distraction.  Let him/her know what the next punishment will be.  Obviously, you will often have multiple students acting up during an activity, so the one-on-one discussion is not always appropriate.  However, for those students who seem to be a continual problem or who you think may be displaying these problem behaviors as a sign that something else is wrong, the one-on-one tactic may be best.

When you have devised your plan for discipline in the classroom, let all your students know what you plan is.  They do not need to know every detail, but let them know that you take your job as their teacher seriously and that it is your responsibility to keep things running smoothly.  Inform them of your system of consequences, based on different infractions, and make sure that students know that misbehavior is a choice.  Students need to understand that their behavior and their actions are a reflection of their deci-sions, and they need to be willing to accept any consequences that come from their choices.

Now that students know of your plan, do everything in your power to stick to your plan.  If you treat some kids more gently than others, other students will notice and use it against you if you try to discipline them later.  Once you have made a decision on how to handle punishment, maintain that plan unless you see clear evidence that it is ineffective.

Discipline is hard, and certainly the least-fun aspect of a teaching job, but it essential to running a successful room that promotes learning and values.  Through this experience you can also teach students how to discipline effectively without being too harsh or over-ly cruel, an important lesson they will carry with them for life.

If you find yourself making threats or giving warnings that you do not follow through on, sit down again, alone, to think about why you are not following through.  Is the punishment not effective for the students/situation?  What is causing you to change your mind at the last second?  Does the punishment need to be changed, or just your approach to discipline?

What would motivate to follow through on your threats?  If you find it necessary to change the punishment, devise a new plan that you feel you can commit to.  When you answer these questions for yourself, it should give you a better idea of what has gone wrong and how to fix it next time.

Click here to check out Sunday School mistakes – part 2. And if you’d like to get more free Sunday School teaching tips, ideas, and activities, please visit my free Sunday School video page.