Reflections On A Long And Blessed Life No. 48: College Teaching

I was surprised that immediately upon receiving my Master’s Degree I was asked to teach a summer course at Concordia Teachers College, River Forest, IL ( now Concordia University: Chicago) I accepted the request and thoroughly enjoyed teaching the course entitled The Use of Tests and Measurements in Lutheran Elementary Schools. The students were  all principals. They brought good questions and a variety of good insights. One much unanticipated result of this class was that I met the remarkable and capable principal of St. Lorenz Lutheran School in Frankenmuth Michigan: Mr. Walter Bleke.  Twelve years after my teaching him in this class it was Mr. Bleke who played a  big role in me becoming Superintendent of Lutheran Schools for the Michigan District and then four years later (again with his influence ) the head of Parish Education for The Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod

My college teaching then continued at Hong Kong College in that British Crown Colony.and at Concordia Seminary and The Lutheran Theological Seminary there. I taught Christian Education, General Psychology and Pastoral Theology. While not of essence to the content of the courses my strongest  memories relate to the language used in teaching. At first I taught in English with sentence by sentence interpretation  into Cantonese by Mr. Isaac Ma and Dr. Andrew Chiu. Both of them were outstanding interpreters and of incredible help in my teaching. The saddest and most embarrassing feature of my teaching is the  General Psychology course  I taught at LutheranTheological  Seminary in the Cantonese language. I spent hours in preparation and made it only with the wonderful assistance of Pr. Daniel Lee Wing Ching. Yet-even with his assistance my Cantonese was terrible. I messed up many of the tones of that language and must have said many incomprehensible things. The only text books available were translations from Russian and were all pure behaviorism in point of  view. Yet those students did not mock me (at least not to my face). They stuck in there with me and I hope even learned one little insight which later on helped them in their ministry.

Strangely enough my memory of  teaching at Hong Kong College has  an unusual twist. I had one student who resisted everything I said, often in a rather belligerent manner. I was told that he was a strong Communist supporter who was there to  expose the failure of the Christian witness. He endured me and I hung  in there with him. Some time later I learned that he had not only become a Christian but had decided to become a Lutheran pastor.

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Upon reflection I am deeply aware of the critical role that college/university professors play in the lives of students and in society. I am now blessed to have had a brother-in-law and a daughter who have been college teachers and currently have a son-in-law and son who are full-time college profs. These are honorable and worthy professions indeed. They are influencers and shapers of minds and of our world. I am grateful that for short periods of my career I was briefly numbered among them.