Teaching Moments

It is not often people get the opportunity to share their gifts with other folks from a far away land. We are blessed to have several team members who have professional knowledge and experiences to help teach the courses being taught here at Southern Philippine Methodist College.

Kathie Luther, who teaches at Mayde Creek High School, was asked to give several lessons for an English class. The board members of the school require all courses to be taught in English, yet Acting Director Janet McCarty freely admits the biggest barrier at the school is language. English is a priority for several reasons primarily because it is the language of world commerce. And while the national language is Tagalog there are several local dialects, so even among Filipinos, they may have English in common, even though they might not be familiar with the dialects from the north or southern islands. Kathie had brushed up before delivering her lesson noting that in English we learn the rhythm of Subject Verb Object, in Tagalog it’s different, it’s verb subject object. Another of the God moments. Her husband Dave shared with us, it was the first time he ever had seen his wife teach in a classroom environment, and yes his eyes welled up.

Dr. Ed who continues to provide physicals for his students, took off his “white coat” and gave a 3 hour lecture on the history of religion. Dr. Ed and his wife Nell have visited more than 82 countries over the years. His lecture began with the “Fertile Crescent” and took the students through the beginnings of Judaism through to the birth of Christ. Another lecture is tomorrow. By the way let me rant about compatibility as it relates to computers. This is not a Philippine problem, it’s universal. Ed brought his flash drive with him for the PowerPoint presentation. While it plays fine on my laptop, the MAC wouldn’t connect with the Epson projector even though it said it would. Hey Apple and Microsoft, what is up? Eli Whitney overcame the problem of interchangeable parts in the 19th century. C’mon computer geeks, like hello, let’s keep to just one standard. Am I asking too much? We went through three computers before one of the local Pastor’s came up with a system which finally could run the program.

Thank-you for letting me get that off my chest. I feel better now. I did conduct a lesson for the journalism class which lasted nearly 3 hours tonight. The journalism teacher told me before the class I might have trouble getting the students to ask questions, so I was kind of concerned I might have to “tap dance” through the lecture. I’m happy to tell you the students had all kinds of questions, and very good ones at that. The nice part is the teacher invited a local newspaper reporter to come to hear me and afterwards he addressed the class briefly supporting all the advice I shared.

Carleton Cole