Hello, fellow teachers. When I first began teaching, it seemed like the general advice when it came to answering challenging questions was to be ready to answer them, but don't bring them up.

For instance, early on in my career, I found out that a film was coming out on the Mountain Meadows massacre, and I wanted to help my students.

So I spent the summer reading

several books on the subject and came to the classroom ready to explain and defend the church.

The movie completely bombed and nobody watched it. So no questions ever came up, so I never

spoke to my students about it. However, in the last few years, there's been some great counsel

from church leaders about being proactive and helping students navigate difficult issues.

I remember attending a meeting with the late Elder M. Russell Ballard, where he shared

this council with us.

Gone are the days when a student asked an honest question and a teacher responded,

don't worry about it.

Gone are the days when a student raised a sincere concern and a teacher bore his or her testimony

as a response intended to avoid the issue.

Gone are the days when students were protected from people who attacked the church.

Fortunately, the Lord provided this timely and timeless counsel to you teachers.

And as all have not faith, seek ye diligently and teach one another

the words of wisdom. Yea, seek ye out of the best books, words of wisdom, seek learning

even by study and also by faith.

Rather than dismissing questions,

Elder Ballard asks us to engage with these difficult questions.

In fact, later on in the talk, he used an interesting analogy

to describe the role of the teacher

...