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Work-around ideas for TFOT lessons- make it an event?

Posted: Fri May 25, 2012 11:30 am
by kisaac
Has anyone used an "event" to enter the Teachings for our Time(s) lessons?

Ward leadership enters TFOT lessons as "event" for the fourth Sundays, specifying in the title of the event that it is a TFOT lesson, with the lesson talk reference, like this:[INDENT]"Teachings for our Time lesson for RS and Priesthood: Found at (give talk reference.)"
[/INDENT]Making sure to indicate it will replace only the HP, EQ and RS lessons on that fourth Sunday when creating it.

Benefit: The three organizations, HP, EQ and RS, won't have to each receive a paper list of the schedules from the ward leaders, and then enter each lesson separately into their own individual lesson schedules. A ward leader enters each months lesson once as an event, and it will "appear" on the correct week on all three calendars. Other lessons (primary, YM & YW) for that week will be unaffected.

Possible issues:
  1. Of course, an event cannot have an instructors name associated with it, so the TFOT lesson would not show any instructor.
  2. Organization leaders couldn't "overwrite" (move or re-schedule) it, as only an admin calling could change events. (In some wards, this might be perceived more as a benefit!)
  3. If the organization has already made their schedule, doing this would overwrite whatever lesson they have input for each fourth week.

Any other ideas about this process?

For future versions, I hope a TFOT's schedule, input by ward leadership, and that can be applied to multiple class schedules is adopted, and with link ability!

Just combine all adult classes into one schedule

Posted: Sun Jun 03, 2012 6:31 pm
by eweight
I was struggling with this same issue but realized any calendar can be edited. So I just changed the High Priest calendar to be named High Priests, Elders & Relief Society and then only have to enter the TFOT lesson once. Our ward coordiates all these auxilliaries lessons so it works out fine.

Instructors can then just be noted for each group.

Posted: Mon Jun 04, 2012 12:35 pm
by kisaac
Welcome to the forum! That idea hadn't occurred to me. Thank you for the option.

Posted: Mon Jun 04, 2012 2:14 pm
by mevans
I'm using that method for Sunday School: all Gospel Doctrine (adults and youth) share 1 schedule. I hadn't thought about doing that for EQ/HP/RS (I'm SS pres, so I'm not actively working with those schedules). That's a great idea. However, if you do that, which organization do you put it under?

Also, what occasionally happens in our ward is that one of EQ/HP/RS might have a different lesson. For example, on Mother's Day, RS did something special.

In these cases, we might need another solution to get differing schedules updated. I've seen some other discussion about this problem:

Posted: Mon Jun 04, 2012 2:24 pm
by russellhltn
mevans wrote:I proposed having a master schedule that can be shared by multiple classes. (hmm...can't seem to find my own post:confused:)

Is it this one?

Posted: Mon Jun 04, 2012 4:51 pm
by ggllbb
One possible downside to combining schedules for RS/HP/EQ is that in many wards, the first week lesson may not be the same for all the auxiliaries. The auxiliary leader can be given the responsibility for selecting the topic for that day. For example, I have seen a High Priests group focus on home teaching on that Sunday. Or an Elders Quorum might have a special lesson on performing ordinances. In my unit, the first Sunday lessons are generally the same for all, but not always.

Posted: Mon Jun 04, 2012 8:04 pm
by kisaac
I guess another downside to combining multiple classes into one schedule is the lack of ability to specify the instructor, as only one is allowed in the field....but you can't do that if you specified it as an event anyway.