Kathy K. Clayton wrote:
Tasting an Apple is Better Than Talking About It
The goal of authentic engagement to promote learning might be illustrated by a lesson about an apple. A parent or teacher who wanted her children or students to learn about an apple could simply stand before them and offer a well-researched, carefully prepared presentation documenting the characteristics about an apple. Likely, her children would leave the lesson with more information than they had arrived with. She could also show them a picture of an apple. Those children would likely know more still for having engaged visually with the subject. The adult might increase the breadth of the sensory perception by actually handing an apple to the children to see, feel, smell, and touch. But best of all the teacher or parent who expects to make a lasting impression upon her children could be prepared with samples of a real apple, maybe several different types of apples, and offer tastes of them all. Those fully engaged learners would leave the experience knowing the subject personally because they had been invited to make it their own.
Psychological research demonstrates that people are more likely to behave their way into thinking than they are to think their way into behaving. Put simply, if we smile, we will actually be happier; if we whistle a happy tune, we will be less afraid, and if we count our blessings we will feel greater gratitude. Or as Lectures on Faith state, “Faith is [a] principle of action.”2 We receive a testimony of truth and grow in faith as we live the gospel. Learning and becoming happen best by doing because “if any man will do His will, he shall know of the doctrine” (John 7:17). I sang “I Know That My Redeemer Lives,” and as I sang those lyrics, their truthfulness became my personal testimony. The message became my own as I did something with it. The doing afforded the Spirit the occasion to seal it upon my heart and promote my knowing and remembering.
Heavenly Teaching is Blessedly Interactive
Parents and teachers of all varieties, both in homes and in more formal classrooms, can learn from the compelling example of the best teacher, our Father in Heaven. We will all benefit from the giant participatory visual aid He designed as the perfect classroom for mortality: the earth. Since a testimony of the Savior is the most critical acquisition for mortal life, he has carefully crafted a mortal experience to surround and engage us with compelling interactive evidence of Him. Elizabeth Barrett Browning has aptly written, “Earth’s crammed with heaven. / And every common bush afire with God; / But only he who sees takes his shoes off; / The rest sit around it and pluck blackberries.”3 There is nothing casual or accidental about our surroundings or experience on earth. “All things. . . are made to bear record of me, both things which are temporal and things which are spiritual; things which are in the heavens above, and things which are on the earth, and things which are under the earth, both above and beneath: all things bear record of me (Moses 6:63). As we eat, breathe, observe and thoroughly and inevitably engage in mortality, we are actively participating in an experience that testifies of Jesus Christ and invites us to profoundly know Him. Our goal should be to create homes and classrooms that serve as similar hands on learning laboratories of faith.
The Temple and the Sacrament serve as interactive teaching models as well. . . .~ Kathy K. Clayton, Teaching to Build Faith and Faithfulness (Deseret Book, Salt Lake City) 2-4
