Southern Seminary

The room

The classroom

A small circle. No desks, no anything. Everybody has their scriptures, and we sit around and talk.

The room

Chairs in a circle, and that is nearly all of it. No desks. Nothing between anybody.

At one place on the circle there is a television, a little instructor desk, and a chair with an iPad on the desk. That is the teaching station — but notice where it is. It is on the circle, one seat among the others, not at the front of a room. There is no front of the room. A circle does not have one.

The classroom seating arrangement Chairs arranged in a single circle with no desks and nothing in the middle. At the top of the circle sits a television, a small instructor desk with an iPad, and the teacher's chair — occupying one position on the circle rather than standing in front of it. Every other position on the circle is a student chair. The card on screen iPad T nothing in the middle student chairs teacher, on the circle No desks. Everybody has their scriptures.
The whole arrangement. The screen is something the circle can glance at, not something it faces.

Why it is arranged that way

Because of the one thing that decides everything else on this site: you cannot tell students their testimony — they have to find it for themselves.

A room tells students what is about to happen before anyone says a word. Desks in rows facing a screen say: information is coming, face forward, receive it. That room makes a lecture almost inevitable, and a lecture is the one thing that cannot produce the result we are actually after.

A circle says something different. It says you are going to talk, to each other, and everyone can see everyone. The students look at the screen, and then they look at each other — and they talk back and forth. That second part is the lesson. The teacher is sitting in the circle at eye level, which makes listening the natural posture rather than presenting.

It is also why the middle stays empty. There is nothing to put there.

First we BRT

A circle only works if the people in it will talk. So the first thing that happens is not the lesson. We BRT for a little while — build a relationship of trust — spending time with the students before anything is taught.

It is worth being plain about what that is. It is not a warm-up activity, and it is not a technique for making the lesson go better. It is time spent on the students themselves, because at 6:20 in the morning a teenager is not going to say anything real to someone they do not yet trust. Every question on Card 2 asks them to say something real. The trust has to already be there or the question just sits in the room.

This is the ring of the framework, not one of the circles. Love Those You Teach is drawn around the other three principles precisely because it is not a step in a lesson plan — it is the condition that decides whether any of the rest lands. Elder Bednar's counsel from the in-service says the same thing from the other side: teaching is observing and listening, so we can discern what we should say. You cannot observe or listen to a room that has not decided you are safe.

What is in the room

  • Chairs, in one circle. No desks, no tables, nothing to hide behind or lean on.
  • A television at one position on the circle, showing the day's card.
  • A small instructor desk with a chair, at that same position.
  • An iPad on the desk, which drives the screen.
  • Scriptures. Everybody has their own, open, in their hands.

Some lessons ask for one more thing — a board with room to write around a drawing, a lamp and dimmable lights, a jigsaw puzzle with the lid hidden, a wall sturdy enough to lean against. Those are carried in for the day and named in the teacher notes on each lesson page.

How the screen gets used

One card at a time, and only while it is doing work. The deck is not a slideshow to be advanced through; it is four things to look at, each of which starts a conversation. The card holds the scripture references and the questions so nobody has to remember them — which frees the room to argue with the text instead of transcribing it.

The discussion norms are printed on the card itself, in the room, every day. What those are and why they are worded that way is its own page.

Still to be written

How the journal close actually runs in the last five minutes — whether it is silent, whether anyone reads aloud, and what happens to the journals afterwards.

See what goes on the screen →