mwLTC Leadership Challenge at Naperville (by Anita Neal)

James Stacey is a senior in high school and this is his fourth year participating in Leadership/Mentoring Challenge, Lindsey Miller is a sophomore in high school and this is her second year participating in Leadership/Mentoring Challenge and Bryce is a sophomore in high school and this is his first year participating in Mentoring Challenge.  These three high school students are working with separate teams of junior students preparing them to participate in the LTC Bible Bowl event.

Our class sessions are between 1 ½ and 2 hours long.  We typically read through the chapter, talk about it a bit and then have the students (including James, Lindsey & Bryce) answer the questions in their study guide.  When they finish, we have them correct their answers by looking them up in the Bible.  When everyone is finished, we go around the class taking turns answering the questions aloud, and talking about any questions that were answered incorrectly.  Last year we had only one class of eight kids and James, Lindsey and one our coaches took turns reading the Bible passages, making sure that the kids understood what was read and going over the questions after everyone finished their quiz.  After covering the material that we have scheduled for that week, James, Lindsey and a coach took turns quizzing the other students on prior chapter questions and playing hang man with a phrase from our book of study.

This year we have 16 kids signed up for Bible Bowl plus two second graders that just can’t wait to be old enough to participate in LTC - they know that they can’t participate in Indianapolis next year.  We’ve split the class into 4 different groups.  Lindsey is working with the two second graders and three third graders, James is working with four fourth graders and Bryce is working with three fourth graders.  James, Lindsey & Bryce are in complete control of their classes (they are the coaches for all of our junior teams this year) and I wander in and out to see how it’s going and make sure they don’t need any help.  This year we are also giving each student a crossword puzzle over the material that was covered that day, and Lindsey picked out the words and wrote the clues for the first four crossword puzzles covering the first 11 chapters of Genesis.  The kids do their puzzles at home and Lindsey collects them the next week to grade them.

David Stacey and I have coached Bible Bowl for several years now and have tried many different approaches.  James & Lindsey have participated in Bible Bowl for all of those years and have thus been through our learning curve.  They really want to make it fun for the younger kids, but they know that their mission is to teach the kids what they need to know to do well in Indianapolis.  They are very good about asking the kids if they understand what certain words mean and I’ve been very impressed at how patient they are in answering all the questions the younger kids ask.  I’m also very impressed with how the younger students have accepted them as teachers and look to them for answers to their questions.  David & I have been ‘mentoring’ James, Lindsey and now Bryce talking about their ‘mission’ and what works and what doesn’t and we have been very impressed with how receptive and coachable they have been.  They really have shown true leadership in how they have accepted the responsibility of training our younger Bible Bowl students.

Thank you for providing our older students with this challenge and opportunity.