Pedagogical Milestones

So, we're about 3 weeks away from the close of the spring semester. Unless my mind completely shuts down before then, I will be able to say that I've reached the goal of teaching all my courses in Russian without major assistance from an oral translator (I did request one to correct me when my mistakes were really bad). This is a definite milestone and it definitely would not have been attained without the contributions of countless Russian-speaking language teachers, conversation partners, coworkers, preachers, congregants, supermarket and convenient store employees, willing-to-converse passersby, etc., not to mention all of the family members and supporters (financial and prayer) that make it possible for us to serve here in Ukraine. If you fit any of the above categories, I thank you from the depth of my being.

I should be encouraged by this, right? Well, I also recently attained another pedagogical milestone that seems to be taking the wind out of my Russian language sails. I actually taught something in my philosophy class last week that caused a student to respond, "and there's more proof that all blasphemies come from America." Last I checked, that kind of comment does not top the list of most-desired student reactions for most theological educators, at least not in our missions organization. Yes, there are countless reasons to disregard this student's comment. What I said wasn't that alarming and poses no major threat to any Evangelical tenets of the faith. Nonetheless, attaining this latter milestone at the same time as the former is definitely humbling and will help to ensure that I don't get all, you know, like that, about my long-awaited achievement of minimal fluency in Russian.