Just improvise.
I’ve done my share of improvising.
One day I took Hannah to Sunday School in Calgary, and there was no teacher. So I taught a Sunday School lesson, crafts and all. How did it go? Ask the kids. You remember the time I lost the song I was going to sing, and I did one I hadn’t practised.
Many years ago I was in Apatzingan, Mexico. I had only an hour to prepare a sermon. I sat down to get started, when someone came to tell me that we had misunderstood when the service was – it was now! Somehow the Lord got me through that one! At least that time it was in English (I was being translated).
Last week we were talking about some Christian history topics in conversation class. I brought in a timeline so that we could see some things in context. I was being asked about some numbers on my timeline, and I said they were just for a seminar I taught (2000 Years of Missions). "Oh, you should teach us!" Ha ha, sure. I don’t have nearly enough Spanish for such a thing. Maybe in a few years.
"No, really – you should teach us. What do you think?" "Sure, yeah, he should".
Yeah, hah hah… whatever you want.
You can see where this is going, can’t you? After all my joking affirmation, my teacher was making plans and asking what I needed and planning where we could do it. So this week, apparently, I have 8 hours of teaching time (2 hours each day- today, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday). After I’d said sure, whatever you want so many times, I wasn’t sure how to refuse.
Now, of course, I won’t really be teaching. I’ll be standing there introducing topics and asking how to say this and that. I’m the one who knows the least Spanish in the class, and of course I’ll need words that aren’t in the dictionary – names, places, terminology.
It’s ok, not only have I improvised before, I’ve also embarrassed myself before. Often. Daily. I’m used to it. And now I can do it for 8 solid hours. They teach conversation in this school – why don’t they have a course on keeping your mouth shut?
This post was inspired by a post by Andrew Comings in which he shared this video of Danish musician and comedian Victor Borge. Talk about improvisation. Borge was a brilliant musician, and could think fast even at 80 years old. Of course, he already knew the language – of music…
26 March 2007 @ 10:46 am
Oh my! Oh wow oh my. That’s CRAZY Jim! I hope you don’t mind, but I laughed out loud. What an opportunity, eh?
Wow.
I’m very curious to know how it all turns out. I’ll pray for you whenever I think of it!
AND that’s an amazing video. It reminded me of a story from team. We were doing an assembly somewhere, and the principal asked Keren if she would play “Oh Canada” for them to start the assembly off. She said, “sure”, but quickly realized that she didn’t know how to play our anthem. She sorta made it up as she went. Later on the principal thanked for that… interesting arrangement.
Ahhhh. Team…
Al
26 March 2007 @ 4:25 pm
Yes, that does sound quite similar. Keren’s pretty talented too – I could see her doing something like Borge when she’s 80. 🙂
26 March 2007 @ 10:37 pm
My uncle Mark Schultz (http://www.comimex.org/articulos/0042.htm) learned Spanish in a most unusual manner. He first worked at an orphanage in Tijuana. He would carry around a little notebook in his pocket, and he let the kids know that whenever tehy corrected his spanish (the first one to do it) would get a little tally mark by their name. At the end of a week (I think) he would then see who had the most tallys and they would get some small treat like a candy or something. Needless to say this pretty much assured that he was surrounded by willing volunteers just ready to correct his Spanish all the time. Fun, huh?
27 March 2007 @ 6:13 am
Sounds like fun all right. And kids are great because they speak at just the right level. 😉
22 June 2007 @ 8:18 am
Hey Jim
How did this end up? How was your “teaching” times?
(I couldn’t help but notice the simillarities between this post and the one talking about Canadians in conflict, and how they will smile and nod on the spot… 🙂
23 June 2007 @ 7:14 am
Oh, well, it went all right. I felt sorry for the poor teacher that had to listen to that stumbling Spanish for 8 hours or whatever it was, but it was an education for me, anyway. And that was the whole point, wasn’t it?