News on Primary Class/Sharing Time Changes

Great clarifications. Regarding the lack of full sharing time lessons, one of my next projects will be to index the helps in the friend and list them by topic for leaders. That way we can all have access to the best "official" helps. It will rule. If any of you are interested in helping, let me know. The are between 500 and 2000 to index by my guess. I'm fast, but not THAT fast!

Well, the Primary class names have always been confusing to me, and I was raised in the Church.... I personally think (**CHURCH POLICY ACCORDING TO JENNY SPECULATION ALERT**) the reason for the class name change was the difficulty in translating the instructions for each class into a foreign language. I think it's just easier to say on January 1: "Today you are 7, go to CTR 7" rather than "Today you are 7, but you'll be going to CTR 8. Why? Because you're turning 8 this year."

As for class presentations, (**MORE SPECULATION**) I expect it's a training/stewardship issue. Primary leaders are trained to follow the "rules" like get your lessons from the Friend, how to supplement appropriately, how long to take, etc., where class teachers may not be. In many of the wards in which I've served, newer members who may never have attended Primary are assigned to be class teachers. There are many reasons for this (encourage attendance, easy lessons to teach, strengthen knowledge of gospel principles...), but it also means these less-experienced Primary teachers may not have the training or experience the Primary General Presidency would prefer them to have for teaching these types of lessons.

From a strictly stewardship perspective, a classroom teacher has the stewardship and inspiration to teach those in his/her classroom, not the entire Primary. Primary leaders -- on the other hand -- do have stewardship over the entire Primary.

Further, requiring a class teacher to be responsible for a Sharing Time lesson takes her/him away from weekly lesson time and messes with the curriculum. Preparing for the lesson requires the teachers to skip lessons in their manuals or double up lesson preparation, which could cause a gap in learning for the student. And there's always the time/money/effort factor.

Personally, again I think it's great; I DESPISED giving the Sharing Time lesson when I taught Primary. If it bugs you, just give it a few years and another Primary General President will just change the whole thing anyway! :D

To clarify, Primary class members may still be used in presentations. It's just the Primary presidency who'll be leading the lesson rather than the Sunday teachers.

The explanation of the Primary curriculum is at the Primary FAQ here:
http://lds.org/pa/display/0,17884,7701-1,00.html

Just scroll down to the table.

CTR 7 is still in the CTR A manual. The curriculum changes after children are baptized to a scriptural Rather than conceptual emphasis.

CTR 8 should have been taught out of the CTR A-B manuals, too, or at least that's what we did when I taught that class.