last day of seminary

The last day was actually 2 weeks ago, but a lot has happened since then.

During the last semester the students had been earning seminary dollars (We had green Moroni 10's, blue Nephi 100's and gold Mormon 500's) by doing various assignments and participating in class. The idea was to have an auction on the last day of class where they could use their money to bid on items donated by the parents. Students had amassed anywhere between a few hundred and several thousands of seminary dollars each. I turned over the organization and conduct of the auction to a sister in the 1st ward, and she and her young adult daughter (home from BYU) did a great job of running it. My job was to be the banker.

Several interesting outcomes:
1. We had over 30 items donated. So with 19 in the class, this meant we had enough for everyone to get something, no matter how much money they had (the 1st round, a cooperative effort), and then enough for a 2nd round where the sky was the limit on the bidding.
2. The parents were very generous--there were lots of gift cards to stores, movies, video rentals, etc., plus a fair amount of instant gratification stuff like candy and doughnuts.
3. There were several items that the students wanted saved for the end, esteeming them as highly desirable items. The most popular were $15 iTUNES music cards and a 4 pound jar of Jelly Belly candies. I never would have guessed the Jelly Belly's would have been that popular.
4. At the end, there was a great bidding war between two groups of students who started pooling their resources over the Jelly Belly's, which were finally sold to the first group that could correctly count out $8000. The same thing happened with the final iTUNES card that went for $14000.

Here is a picture of our two auctioneers and the two hottest items:

Although this all sounds quite materialistic, the end result was quite positive. It was interesting to see the combination of competition and cooperation that developed as the auction progressed. Initially people held on to their own money, but then started wanting to help each other out. Another reason for the success of this activity was the additional depth of adult presence. Over the course of the year I learned the very positive effect it had on my student's attention span and behavior when I invited their parents in to share their testimonies of the Book of Mormon. By the end, every student had had at least one of their parents come in, and many had both. I'll remember that should I every have the opportunity to teach seminary again. By the way, Bishop Lower told me today that they would NOT be asking me to teach next year. One of my more memorable church asignments!