An itinerant linguist

It's now week 5 of teaching and I have more or less got used to the routine of being at a different university teaching a different subject virtually every day. Sometimes I actually find myself teaching very similar lessons but for different subjects - not because I'm recycling the same tutorial for 11 different classes, but because it happens to be relevant!

Image © Images.com/Corbis

Thankfully, I am enjoying this period of being an itinerant teacher. In that sense, it's a bit like what Jesus was doing when he was bodily on earth - travelling around primarily to teach. Of course I can't claim divine powers of healing or exorcism (that would look interesting in my tutorials...), and Jesus' teaching priority was about the kingdom of God rather than grammar, academic writing, or semiotics (although he did talk about signs a lot...). But it reminds me that moving from place to place for work is ok - if it was good enough for Jesus, it's good enough for me! At least I have the same place to go home to each night.

There is a lot of temptation for me to be discontent in this role. Tenure is, of course, the holy grail of academia, and it would be nice to be 'secure' in a job that does not rely on students numbers and universities being in teaching session. Note I said 'nice', not 'essential'.

In my home group last week we worked through 1 Corinthians 4:1-13 together, and were reminded of the stark and often uncomfortable contrast between Jesus' leadership (and Paul's, following him) and the kind of leadership the world values. The world looks up to wealth, physical strength and attractiveness (or at least good grooming), nobility, worldly wisdom, reputation, stability, and distance from the 'dirty work' of manual labour. Jesus and his apostles were weak, held in disrepute, seemingly foolish, poorly dressed, homeless, and involved in manual labour.

I can see this period of unstable and almost mercenary work as an opportunity for humility and sacrificial service. It's not 'beneath me' to work as a casual tutor, especially if Jesus didn't consider it 'beneath him' to wash his disciples' feet. I can think of the exposure it gives me to students from a range of backgrounds whom I can love and encourage and point to Jesus, my Saviour and King, when the opportunities arise. And I can see it as an opportunity to be light and salt, encouraging colleagues who are walking the same uncertain path as casuals but who don't have a great heavenly King as their hope and strength.

Work is a verb (and a noun)

Teaching started in earnest at the three universities where I am teaching this semester. When my temporary full time contract finished last year I didn’t really know what work I would have this year, and I just hoped I could pick up enough tutoring to pay the bills. But in fact I have an abundance of classes to teach and in the end I had to turn some down. It’s just as Jesus said when he was speaking to the crowds and disciples on the mountain one day (Matthew 6:25-34; ESV):

²⁵ "Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? ²⁶ Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? ²⁷And which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life? ²⁸And why are you anxious about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin, ²⁹yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. ³⁰But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is alive and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith? ³¹Therefore do not be anxious, saying, 'What shall we eat?' or 'What shall we drink?' or 'What shall we wear?' ³²For the Gentiles seek after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them all. ³³But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.

³⁴ "Therefore do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble.

And he was right about each day having enough trouble for itself! First year students and new casual tutors will know how difficult it can be to negotiate admin, IT access and online learning systems at your new institution, and in my case I'm trying to negotiate them at 3 unis all with different systems! But I think I've got it all sorted now.

Yesterday I witnessed one of the greatest student epiphanies I've ever seen in one of my classes. This being the first lesson in a first year grammar course, I was trying to lay the foundations by introducing nouns, verbs and the like. I asked them to give me some examples from the text we were looking at, and then asked them to tell me how they were able to identify that is was a verb just from looking at the text. Was it a wild guess, or a feeling about the word, purely intuition, or some other way?

One student, who had earlier indicated that she was at a loss to understand the subject so far, said 'I think it was just that the rest of the sentence seemed to be about that word and so I thought it might be the verb'. Wow! I got really excited at that point and gave lots of encouragement.

And then I tried to build on her observation by make a transition to a more technical version of it, i.e. that each clause needs a verb and the verb is like a nucleus that all the other elements in the clause revolve around. But the other students wanted her to repeat her version because that was a bit more accessible! So I think I misjudged their readiness for technicality at that point.

Anyway, the thing that thrilled me was that I had an opportunity to show this student, who had said she was anxious about grammar and ‘couldn’t do it’, that actually she was able to ‘do it’. She seems to have even been able to ‘feel it’, and not only that but to articulate how she came to her conclusion. Exactly the kind of outcome I’m hoping for in my grammar classes!