Bible class teachers are often volunteers with little experience in classroom management skills. The temptation is often to allow children to behave in any way they wish in order to insure they enjoy attending Bible class. Unfortunately, this often leads to chaos, making it difficult, if not impossible, for your Bible students to learn what you wanted to teach them.
In order for your students to get the most from your Bible lessons, they need to trust you. This makes them feel safe and they can relax and learn. Trust can also encourage them to open up and ask the important questions they have. Did you know that one of the ways children and teens learn whether or not to trust adults is through how they handle boundaries?
When adults set fair boundaries for behavior, implement them consistently and fairly and give natural consequences for rebellion, young people learn they can trust those adults to keep them safe, act in their best interest and do what they say they will do. If you fail to have boundaries, enforce them or give consequences, your students learn you cannot be fully trusted. If you also promise things, but don’t deliver, misrepresent things, use logical fallacies, etc. you can undermine student trust so badly, they can’t really learn much at all from you.
Your students need you to be trustworthy. Make the changes needed for them to feel like they can indeed trust you. It will make your Bible class that much more effective.