instructor must be a person with record in your ward? Not always the case!

While not a "bug..."
Apparently, the chosen instructor must be a person with a record held in your ward, as the field does not accept input other than selecting names from your ward records.

Why? In our youth, some will not have records, and as such never could be listed as an instructor.

• One is living with grandparents, and unbaptized, due to parental restriction, but every bit as active otherwise as any of our youth, and will be participating in giving lessons.
• Two are from "dual families," or separated parents, and they spend every other week at their other parents ward, and we will never have their records.

Why not allow a "free form" option for the instructor as well so you can type in any name? We don't need to highlight that these youth are different.... I didn't see this as such an issue before the new youth curriculum suggests they will be teaching far more.

kisaac wrote:Why? In our youth, some will not have records, and as such never could be listed as an instructor.

Do those members have "out of unit" records? If they don't then creating them would provide multiple benefits, including having them appear on class rolls. Other threads concerned with leadership positions have indicated that such members need to be assigned a standard calling as well in order to have certain online permissions; it may be the case that this is a similar situation. But since you're talking about people who actually have callings as instructors, that shouldn't be a problem.

I don't know if that would help (perhaps LisaAn knows the answer), but it might be worth a try.

The list the Lesson gives you to pick from is the list of all the ward members, 12 and older, with records in the unit, regardless of calling.

Adding someone via the "out of unit" record method is your best bet. I'm reluctant to weigh in on whether "out of unit" members or members of record should be instructors or not.

As for members without records, the handbooks indicate that a person cannot have a calling if they don't have a record in the unit.

I'm sorry I made the observation in the Beta when really you are checking an imminent pre-release for bugs!
I don't see this as much of a problem, and certainly not a handbook issue. I'm not suggesting anyone will be given a calling as an instructor for a class who doesn't have a record.

I'm suggesting that in the future, it is likely that a youth without a record in our ward will be asked to give a youth lesson. These youth won't be called to be permanent instructors, they are simply assigned a lesson to give on any given week, just like their peers. My son gave the lesson Sunday in his quorum, with full local leadership approval. Of course, you would add their name as the instructor for that lesson for that week, if you could. I'm pointing out that you cannot, unless they have a record in the ward. How will you track what you've assigned to them now, as lesson schedules won't record their name? The old way...

aebrown's suggestion to have "out of unit" records or non-member records created may work for these youth, and I would encourage someone try it. It's just not my decision to make in our ward, and I don't have the ability to test it.

As a clerk I maybe able to be persuaded to make an non-member record for the youth who live with their grandparents, but that would only happen after a long discussion with the bishop. I would much rather make a child of record tied to the grandparents household. Provided the grandparents have custody and as long as the individual is active and planning on being baptized as soon as they able to make that decision on their own.

As for the others their record should be in the ward where their permanent place of residence is, if that's not your ward then they are only visitors.

Gary_Miller wrote:As for the others their record should be in the ward where their permanent place of residence is, if that's not your ward then they are only visitors.

Saving the location of membership records for another thread, I think being able to select a youth without requiring an out of unit record is beneficial, especially for those youth who alternate weeks with their custodial parent and whose actual membership records are kept in the other ward.

On the other hand, many of them who are truly active and attend every other week have been added as out of unit members anyway, so that they will show up on rolls and reports, and receive the care and attention they so desperately need during the half of their lives they spend as "visitors".

kisaac wrote:Apparently, the chosen instructor must be a person with a record held in your ward, as the field does not accept input other than selecting names from your ward records.

Yes, let me give another example. In our High Priests Group, we invited the Stake President (who, of course, is the President of our Quorum) to come teach a lesson to our Group. Since he is not a member of our ward, we could not include his name in the instructor field for the calendar item. While I love the idea of selecting from a list of known ward members for the instructor, it might be wise to set up a method for handling out-of-ward instructors.

I don't think the suggestion to create out of unit records will help with being able to select them as instructors in the online lesson schedule application. I believe that out of unit records stay in the local MLS only. That being said other benefits to the out of unit record have been highlighted here.