“ON BEING ASKED TO TEACH SOME CLASSES AND BEING IN OVER MY HEAD”
Have you ever felt—at the same time—great joy and great fear? If so, you will understand the following e mail that I just sent to my twelve-step sponsor. It consists of a report (“No violations,” in this case) and my affirmation for the day (in bold print).
“Dear Bob,
No violations.
Today, by God’s grace and with God’s help, I am consistency in doing triage and doing what I can do, rather than the perfect stuff that I wish I could do.
The affirmation requires a bit of unpacking, I think.
This past Friday, I got an e mail from the dean at Cincinnati Christian, asking me if I would be interested in teaching some classes. They involved helping students (master level and perhaps also undergrad) to understand a bit about Hebrew and Greek by means of software. Of course, I was tremendously thrilled with this, and said of course.
I met with the dean yesterday, and while I am still thrilled, there are some problems, none of which are unsolvable. However, in the interest of getting current (as well as in the interest of unpacking the affirmation), I will list them. Then, I will solve them as best I can, one at a time.
- The undergrad course begins on August 27 of this year!
- I am using Accordance software applications, rather than BibleWorks. I am fairly used to BibleWorks, but not Accordance. However, I have downloaded Accordance onto my computer already, and am beginning the learn it.
- There is a very rough draft a syllabus, but I’m going have to develop my own in a hurry.
- I have not read the only book that is required for the course.
- I’m scared.
This is the sort of class that I have dreamed about teaching. I can do this, and do it well. However, I need to be consistency—not just consistent, but consistency!
However, consistency is not perfection, and I need to do a good job of triage on what I can do in the length of time I have to do it, with my current understanding of the Bible and technology, and with the students I have.
Perhaps the fifth thing that I listed above is the most important: I’m scared. I plan to let fear drive me in a good direction and at an appropriate pace, but only God is capable of leading me to be a really good instructor. That is because God Himself is the most “teacherly” of teachers.”
(You might also want to read another post I wrote, “DTEB, “IN OVER MY HEAD”. It would appear that I feel overwhelmed quite a bit of the time!)
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