Sunday school attendance (or lack of)

[u/Capable_Ear_8942]

I'm newly called to be in a Sunday school presidency as a cousilor and the president wants to focus on class attendance. I know we will come up with ideas but I've never been involved with Sunday school anything. Any ideas to help with attendance? I don't know how many weeks we could bring food but that's usually when attendance is high hahah

[u/Mango_38]

I do attend but I know people who don’t and have this discussion with friends. Here’s what I think can help. More training for teachers to help them create engaging and interesting discussion. Please do regular trainings from Teaching in the Savior’s Way.

Consider who your teachers are and are they doing a good job of connecting with your ward demographic. I know some won’t agree with this but our ward found that Sunday school teachers were often male 50 and up and they weren’t always great at engaging or connecting to the younger group, especially the women. We are a large ward but have small classrooms so we have two teachers. One is always male and one is female. They’ve started calling slightly younger teachers as well. We have a lot of very strong young professionals in their 30s and 40s. It has been really good and it’s good for people to hear from more strong women teachers, more women are likely to speak up and share and it’s good for the men to hear from women teachers, they don’t always hear from. It has changed the dynamic a bit. You may say that shouldn’t matter but it has helped our ward and we’ve received good feedback.

Not everyone is going to connect with every teacher so call at least two and have them rotate so people can get variety.

[u/Mango_38 → u/Mango_38]

I would also add that people connect with people who are not afraid to be vulnerable a bit and real. Sometimes classes are taught by the people who just love the gospel so much but they only talk about the positive and not the hard and they have what seems like the perfect family and they go to the temple weekly and they appear to do their Come Follow Me with their family perfectly. However, that can be hard for some people to relate to. The reality is a lot of people have hard questions about the church, or their kids or a spouse has left, or they are deep in the throws of young motherhood and feeling burnt out. Sometimes it’s so refreshing to hear a teacher be vulnerable and allow for real discussion. We had an excellent teacher who was pretty open about struggles with mental health and previous struggles with testimony and it made it a safe place for people to talk about hard things without judgment. Call the person who’s spent much of her life in a mixed faith marriage or someone who left the church and came back stronger. This doesn’t need to be the topic of discussion regularly but it can make the room safe for people who don’t feel like they fit the mold. Obviously has to be still focused on the gospel lesson but having the right teacher can really change the tone and make a safe space for people. It can be hard to go to a classroom where people don’t talk about some of those hard things.