Benjamin Franklin once said, “By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail.”

And Abraham Lincoln said, “Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe.”

This is the seventh and final in a series of posts on The Seven Laws of the Teacher by Howard Hendricks. These posts are not just for vocational teachers. They’re for all of us. Regardless of our job titles, we all influence and teach the children God brings into our lives.

Previous posts in this series include:

• The Law of the Teacher: “If you stop growing today, you stop teaching tomorrow.”
• The Law of Education: “The way people learn determines how you teach.”
• The Law of Activity: “Maximum learning is always the result of maximum involvement.”
• The Law of Communication: “To truly impart information requires the building of bridges.”
• The Law of the Heart: “Teaching that impacts is not head to head, but heart to heart.”
• The Law of Encouragement: “Teaching tends to be most effective when the learner is properly motivated.”

Our final law is the Law of Readiness:

“The teaching-learning process will be most effective when both student and teacher are adequately prepared.”

Most teachers begin their class/session prepared to share all they’ve learned about the subject. But whether it’s a Sunday school class or a public school class, the students are often walking in cold. They have no clue about the material. By the time the teacher has shared information and the learners are finally getting interested, even to the point of asking questions, the time is up and the class is over. And they all start again with a new lesson for the next session.

The same thing often happens at home.

Hendricks suggested a new “starting” time. Don’t start the topic at the beginning of the class. Rather provide assignments so the students can begin the session prepared to learn.

Assignments provide benefits such as:

• providing an introduction so the student can begin considering the information
• providing a basic foundation on which the teacher can build
• encouraging independent study habits which the student will need throughout life

So a Sunday school class on the gospel of John could begin with a reading assignment the week before, along with a few questions to prime the pump.

With a little preparation, students have already begun to learn before you begin teaching them!

How do you prepare to teach?
How do you help the children in your life to be ready to learn?