[Marilyn]

With regard to the lesson plans, we have some really good material to use. We get a teacher's manual and student workbooks with some good ideas for songs, drills, games, etc. each week to reinforce each lesson, along with visuals to illustrate each lesson. However, you have to take the ideas and turn them into useful materials. Either using poster board, construction paper, printing things from clip art on the computer, etc. When I work up a weeks lesson, I put all the materials and prepared visuals in a page protector with the lesson number printed on it. When I'm finished teaching it, I put all the things that I've prepared back in the page protector and into a prepared binder. At the end of the quarter, there are 13 lessons with all the material in a binder ready to teach it next time. This is what I left behind.

And, no, most of the other teachers are not so organized. They do not keep the materials together. Every 4 years, the material repeats, and I guess they figure someone else will be teaching it in 4 years. We are just starting a new rotation, and my 4 years of binders is beginning it's repeat, and I'm in a different class.

There is some of the leftover material left in storage areas in some of the classrooms and in the teacher's workroom. We hope to have a workday soon to get it all together and figure out just what we do have and what we need to buy to make it all complete and useable.

We have a lot of really good Bible teachers with lots of wonderful ideas. We just need to capture them and make them useable for the future.