Lecture Bible

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I have what I call my ‘regular’ Bible, which is a cheap Bible that is a mess of dogears, stains, highlighting, pen & pencil notes, stickytabs, tape. It’s good for study, but lousy for class: full of distractions. To avoid teaching from its encrusted pages, for years I’ve simply printed out the verses I need for a given class in the order I’ll use them. That’s fine, but then I teach from a piece of paper instead of the Bible; it’s not the same for 6th-graders. They need to see The Book Itself be held; pages turned; words read.

This year I’ve dropped  paper printouts and have a second Bible, the Lecture Bible, for class. It’s the same as the Regular Bible, but new, i.e., a new copy of the same NAB edition. I only mark in it what will be used in class. Here it is opened to Isaiah 53, part of the Isaiah-through-Malachi classes:

First, notice the numbered stickytabs at the top: those are the passages for this class, numbered in the order that I’ll refer to them. If I fumble around more than 5 seconds to get to the next passage, the kids start to zone out, hence the idiot-proof numbers. There are 10 total tabs for this class; I arrange them so I can see the next number if possible. Tabs at the bottom are from prior classes; I will reuse them at least once. In the meantime they are out of the way, but can still be referred to.
Also see how tidy this page is: highlighting is limited to exactly what I’ll be reading during class. Only what’s relevant, and what we have time for. This page in the Regular Bible is a mess: good for preparation, bad for class.
With these numbered stickytabs on clean pages I’ll have at least one full 55-minute period of smooth teaching and discussion, and if we run over (as we did this year), we simply continue in the next period.
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About Christian LeBlanc

Christian LeBlanc is a revert whose pre-Vatican II childhood was spent in South Louisiana, where he marinated in a Catholic universe and acquired a Catholic imagination. During his middle school years in South Carolina, Christian was catechized under the benevolent dictatorship of Sister Mary Alphonsus, who frequently admonished him using the nickname "Little Pagan." After four years of teaching Adult Ed and RCIA, he returned to Sr. Alphonsus' old classroom to teach Catechism himself. This is his eighth year of teaching sixth grade. Married to Janet, the LeBlancs have five children and two grandsons. Christian and Janet belong to St. Mary's Parish in Greenville, South Carolina. In affectionate tribute to Sr. Alphonsus, his column is entitled "Little Pagans."

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