You’ve been called as a teacher. But is it really your job to talk for twenty or more minutes? Does talking alone produce learning?

Perhaps a better title you informally have is “Learning Facilitator.”

But what does it take to get people to participate more fully in the learning experience each Sunday?

These are thre three skills that shift a class from “teacher talks, class listens” into a genuine discussion environment:

1. Redirecting instead of answering — becoming a traffic cop, not an oracle.
When someone offers an answer, the instinct is to affirm it and move on (“Great point!”) — which quietly makes the teacher the judge of every comment and the hub of every exchange. A more powerful move is redirecting: “What do others think about what Sarah just said?” or “Does that connect to what Tom mentioned earlier?” This shifts the energy from teacher-to-student (spokes) to student-to-student (a web), which is what actually makes learners experience a discussion rather than a Q&A with the teacher.