Καιρός (Kairos) was the Greek god of opportunity. He was the god of favorable moments. He was the god of fortune.
According to the Greeks, he only had hair on the front of his head. This gave rise to the saying, “If you happen to see Kairos passing by in the street, grab him by the forelock. For, I swear, he has no hair on the back of his head.”
Or, as we would say, “Seize the opportunity.”
Not long ago, I saw Kairos coming. For over 25 years, I have watched for this moment. When Kairos came down my street, I grabbed his hair.
In March, I will move my family to Greece for several months. We will be back in America in July if all goes well.
I am moving to put myself through an intensive Greek language program. Though I can read and write in Greek, my pronunciation of the language stinks. To remedy the problem, I am going to go live in Greece.
There is a snag.
I run an online school. I need high-speed Internet.
My wife has already rented a place for us in Greece. The owner assures us that the home has high-speed Internet. I am skeptical.
I am hoping for the best, preparing for the worst.
Best case scenario, I will be able to teach live from Greece. Nothing will change.
Worst case scenario, I will be not able to teach live from Greece. My students will grow angry with me. Everyone will drop out of class. My online language school will fail. And, on my birthday, which will take place while we are over there, the locals will roll a giant wooden horse up to the door of the house we have rented.
My guess is, reality will land somewhere halfway between the worst case scenario and the best case scenario.
I have no doubt that I will be able to continue blogging, continue answering emails, and continue creating explanatory videos.
I am worried that the Internet will not be strong enough for my online classes. This has caused plenty of mental strain.
I believe I have stumbled upon a solution.
First of all, I am going to attempt to teach from Greece. If the Internet is strong enough, nothing will change. My online students will log in as they always do, and off we will go. It will be the middle of the night, or ridiculously early in the morning for me. But, I am used to that.
Still, I need a backup plan in place. So, here is what I am going to do. During the month of January, and part of the month of February, I am going to pre-record the classes I will be teaching from Greece. I am seriously considering opening these sessions to any of my current students who feel like showing up.
I will move to Greece about 10 weeks before the school year officially ends. This means that I need to pre-record 10 weeks of classes. I will be teaching these classes, with or without students on Thursdays, and some Saturdays during the months of January and February. Let me know if you are interested in attending. I am going to teach the classes either way. Just not sure if I will open the classes to current students.
To make sure there is no disruption at all in the education of my students, I have also been writing tests and quizzes for my site. That is basically how I have spent Christmas break. So far, I have written about 3,500 sentences in Latin. I am hoping my fingers last. Already, they are about half an inch shorter than they were when I started.
These days, I personally grade the work of most of my students. If everything collapses while I am overseas, my site will grade their work. For a while, the tests and quizzes were not working. The developers and I solved the problem. They work now.
Third, I am encouraging all of my students to check out the Latin app, http://linguachet.com/. With this app, students can practice all those annoying Latin endings until they have mastered them. The app will also keep track of student progress and grades.
Finally, if students get tired of waiting on me, they (or their parents) can self-grade. Though I have never made my notes available before, I am about to. I plan to open all of the notes I have made responding to Latin homework for the last five years. I am not yet sure how I am going to do this. A simple pdf would be about 500 pages thick. Still trying to figure out how to get these notes into the hands of my students, but, it is coming.
If all goes according to plan, nothing much will change.
However, if all collapses, a backup plan will be in place.
Either way, I have a Greek god by the hair. I refuse to let go.
