The 7 Laws of the TeacherDr.

Howard Hendricks
God wants to use you as his catalyst (change agent)and as you let him
transform and renew your thinking, youll be ready for his use.
Teaching is causing. Causing people to learn. Learning is change.
Learning means a change in your thinking, a change in your feeling, and a
change in your behavior.
Your goal as a teacher is to develop lifelong learners. Inspire the students
to have a passion for learning, growing and transforming into the person
God wants them to be.
The 7 Laws of the Teacher:
1. The Law of the Teacher: If you stop growing today, you stop teaching
tomorrow.
2. The Law of Education: The way people learn determines how you teach.
3. The Law of Activity: Maximum learning is always the result of maximuminvolvement.
4. The Law of Communication: To truly impart information requires the
building of bridges.
5. The Law of the Heart: Teaching that has impact is not head to head, but
heart to heart.
6. The Law of Encouragement: Teaching tends to be most effective when the
learner is properly motivated.
7. The Law of Readiness: The teaching-learning process will be most
effective when both student and teacher are adequately prepared.
1. The Law of the Teacher: If you stop growing today, you stop teaching
tomorrow.
As a teacher I am primarily a learnera student among students. A
perpetual learner. Do you have a passion for studying and learning more
about Gods word? How have you changed lately? What have you learned
lately?
Ideas for developing a passion for learning, growing, transforming:
1. Maintain a consistent reading program. Churches today
desperately need more people who read.
2. Examine your teaching. "The unexamined life is not worth living."
Aristotle The unexamined teacher is not that great either. (Bill
Hybels example)

3. Luke 6:40 everyone who is fully trained will be like his teacher.
Does that principle represent an exciting prospect to youor a
frightening one?
Question: What good books have you read this year? What are some of
your favorite resources for preparing lessons? (Commentaries, websites,
books, etc?)
Question: What are some ways we can evaluate our impact and
effectiveness from the viewpoint of our class members?
1. The Law of Education: The way people learn determines how you teach.
It involves stimulating and directing the learners self-activitiesthats the
key expression. Tell the learner nothingand do nothing for himthat he
can learn or do for himself. (Give a man a fish)
Its not important what you do as a teacher, but what learners do as a
result of what you do.
Good teachers cant be focused on what they do but on what their
students are doing.
Our educational system today is primarily a system whereby teaching is
telling and testing is essentially a cramming meter. Teachers are interested
in how much a student can cram into his head and then regurgitate onto a
piece of paper. Thats not education. Real education is how the
information is applied to your life and how it changes you as a person.
3 Clear cut objectives for teaching:
Teach people how to think: the best teachers in your life
were probably those who planted seedsand youre still
reaping the harvest from them.
Teach people how to learn: create learners who will
perpetuate the learning process for the rest of their lives.
Teach people how to work: our goal as teachers is to develop
people who are self-directed, who are disciplined, who do
what they do because they choose to do it. Its far better to
have students leaving your class scratching their heads with
questions they think and talk about, and with problems
theyre eager to find solutions for in the next week ahead.
Question: What kind of teachers do you most enjoy learning from and
why?

1. The Law of Activity: Maximum learning is always the result of

maximum-involvement. That is true with one condition: the activity
must be meaningful.
Your task as a communicator is not to impress people, but to impact them;
not just to convince them, but to change them.
Chinese Proverb: I hear, and I forget. I see, and I remember. I do, and I
understand.
Psychologists tell us we have the potential of remembering only up to 10%
of what we hear. And thats potential, not actual.
If we add seeing to hearing, psychologists say our potential for
remembering goes up to 50%.
If we add doing to seeing and hearing psychologists say this combination
brings the percentage of memory up to 90%.
The name of the game in Christian education is not knowledgeits active
obedience.
Great teaching involves great questions. Most people learn best when they
communicate how the lesson applies to their situation and begin asking
questions that will lead to changed thinking and changed behavior.
True teaching then is not that which gives knowledge, but that which
stimulates students to gain it. (It is active rather than passive).
Question: How involvedreally involved, are your students in the
learning process? What are some ideas for promoting more class
involvement?
1. The Law of Communication: To truly impart information requires the
building of bridges.
The root word Communication means commonness or commonality.
Most people communicating, whether its in the pulpit or in a Bible study
class, are focused on the wrong end of the process. They are focusing
upon what they are doing as a communicator, as a sender, rather than on
what the student, the receiver is doing.
All communication has 3 essential components:
Thought (intellect): something I know
Feeling (emotion): something I feel
Action (volition): something Im doing
Most of us communicate the message with the intellectual component
only. We rely to heavily on words alone. We are weak in communicating
through emotional and volitional aspects.
Feedback is the final step in the communication process. If you miss it you
will miss it all. Find out what learners know, how they feel and what
theyre doing.

Ask the question: Tell me how you can apply this in your sphere of
influence?
1. The Law of the Heart: Teaching that has impact is not head to head, but
heart to heart.
Socrates summary of the essence of communication:
Ethos: charactercredibility of the teacher
Pathos: compassionhow the teacher arouses the passions of the
hearers
Logos: contentprovides reasons for the action you want your
learners to take
Learning means that a change is taking place in the mind, emotions and
will.
The greatest teachers are not necessarily the people up front with high
visibility. They are the people who have great heart. They communicate as
a total person, and they communicate to the total person of their hearers.
All learning begins at the feeling level. People accept what they feel
disposed to accept, and they reject what they feel disposed to reject.
Until the mind has been changed, the emotions have been changed and
the will has been changed, biblical teaching and learning has not taken
place.
How to be a teacher of impact:
Know your studentsYou can impress people at a distance. But
you can impact them only up close. The closer you are to them, the
greater and more permanent the impact.
Earn the right to be heardCredibility always precedes
communication.
Be willing to become vulnerable before your studentsLet them
know what you are struggling with.
1. The Law of Encouragement: Teaching tends to be most effective when
the learner is properly motivated.
Key word above is properTell the story about the kid in the youth
group who memorized 600 verses because of the great reward system and
then was caught stealing money from the church.
2 Levels of Motivation:
Extrinsicmotivation from without (external motivation)
Intrinsicmotivation from within (internal motivation)
Your task with all extrinsic motivation is to trigger intrinsic motivation.
Internal motivation leads to maturity (self starter).

You motivate people by correctly structuring their training experience.

Training involves 4 major stages:
Telling stage (we are usually strongest here)
Showing stageproviding a model
Controlled environment doingrole playing
Uncontrolled environment doingreal life action
Example: You dont learn to swim by reading books
Question: At any given moment in a typical SS class what percentage of
the learners present do you think are highly motivated to learn?
1. The Law of Readiness: The teaching-learning process will be most
effective when both student and teacher are adequately prepared.
One of the greatest problems for SS teachers is that their students come to
class cold.
3 Benefits for giving assignments:
They precipitate thinkingassignments are a mental warm up
They provide a foundation on which to buildquestions have
surfaced and curiosity is rising
They develop habits of independent studyencourages students to
be not simply under Gods word, but in it for themselves
What if your class wont do take home assignments? Do them in class
right at the beginning. Write a thought provoking question on the board
and then have them read through a selected text that sheds light on it.
BE UNPREDICTABLE (variety is good for learning): Studies have shown
that theres a direct correlation between predictability and impact. The
higher your predictability, the lower your impact. Conversely the lower
your predictability, the higher your impact.
The classic illustration for this concept is the life of Jesus Christ.
They could never figure him out. Jesus was far too unpredictable to
ever be boring.
Question: What are some things that your class does to prepare students
for the next lesson?
Question: What are some ways we can add a little variety to our class
lessons?
Conclusion: Your success in your calling as an effective teacher depends not
on your knowledge of these 7 lawsbut on you as a person, and most
strategically on your openness to Gods power in your life. The key is not what
you do for God but what you allow him to do through you.