I was surprised to see that a Relief Society lesson was among the Top Ten Commented posts in 2009.  While Exponent Relief Society Lesson plans tend to get many views, they also tend to receive few comments in comparison to other kinds of posts.  Apparently, after Zenaida posted her lesson plan, Missionary Service: A Holy Calling, a Glorious Work, a commenter offered to share a Jeopardy game she had written to accompany the lesson.  Her offer was followed by a flurry of commenters leaving their email addresses and asking for a copy of the game and a similar surge of Exponent perma comments, reminding commenters that publicly sharing their email addresses is a very bad idea.  I haven’t seen anything like this in my five plus years on the blog, but just in case, what should you do if you have lesson plans you want to share with Exponent readers?

• Volunteer to write a guest lesson plan for our Relief Society or Young Women lesson series.  You can volunteer by posting a comment on this post or on our contact page and we will contact you and add you to the lesson plan schedule. (Your email address will be privately shared with us through the comment form.  No need to publicly share it in the comment.)
• You can also volunteer by expressing your willingness to guest write a lesson plan in our closed facebook group. Anyone willing to follow our civility guidelines is welcome to join the facebook group.
• Even if you are not on the volunteer lesson plan schedule, guest posts on any topic related to Mormonism or feminism, including lesson plans, are always welcome. You can simply submit your completed lesson plan as a guest post using our guest post submission form.  A perma will contact you after receiving your post through the form to let you know if it is accepted for publication.

Now, on to the other Top Ten Commented posts of 2009:

The two posts of 2009 that received the most readers comments were by blogger G, discussing her journey as a an unbelieving but participating Mormon. In you say that like it’s a BAD thing, G discussed how her perceptions of atheism changed after she became one.  In openly apostate church goer?, G discussed her plans to return to activity in the LDS Church, in spite of her unbelief.

The next most commented posts, by Caroline, explored some of the downsides of traditional Mormon family structures.  In Vulnerability: The Consequence of Choosing to Stay at Home?, Caroline opened up about the financial dependence and insecurity she felt as a stay-at-home mom, without her own source of income.  In Mormons and The Morality of Utilizing Public Assistance, Caroline discussed how some Mormon families, in an effort to obey counsel to not postpone child-rearing until after finishing college degrees and establishing careers, choose to finance their young families through public assistance. In another Top Ten Commented post, Caroline wonders Why the Directive to Not Postpone Families?

In two posts with many comments, Jessawhy discussed her journey into feminism.  In Coming out of the Feminist Closet, Jessawhy told us about her experience revealing her feminism to her local ward as she shared her testimony. In Crisis of Faith and Marriage: The Bait and Switch, Jessawhy discussed how her feminist awakening affected her marriage.

The most commented guest post of 2009, The Purity Myth, came from a high school teacher discussing the harmful comments an attractive 16-year-old student was receiving from male teachers and students alike who seemed concerned about policing her sexuality. Along the same lines, mraynes discussed the problems with modesty rhetoric in Modesty is in the Eye of the Beholder.