Learning Through Imitation

I’m not always sure what to do with the apostle Paul. The man had some chutzpah. Example? Acts 16, which I was listening to the other evening. After he and Silas sang in prison all night and then were told they could leave, he got a bit uppity. “They beat us publicly without a trial, even though we are Roman citizens, and threw us into prison. And now do they want to get rid of us quietly? No! Let them come themselves and escort us out.” Well, then.

It reminded me of when he was annoyed at people in the Galatian church wrongly insisting that gentile converts needed to be circumcised. “As for those agitators, I wish they would go the whole way and emasculate themselves!” I mean, dude . . .

After reading the scripture lesson in Sunday School yesterday morning (the end of Philippians 3), our teachers paused to ask if we had any initial reaction to the passage. And my reaction? Paul sounds arrogant. Maybe the original tone and intent doesn’t come across well in our translations, but it sounds like he’s saying, “We’re mature believers – but some of you aren’t. Y’all just need to imitate me. Do what I do, and you’ll be fine.” Even our teachers admitted that if we heard someone say something like that from the pulpit today, we’d probably start looking for another church.

However, as the morning went on, I found God bringing to mind things I’ve learned as a teacher about imitation. Specifically, as a drama teacher (although I’ve come to realize that a lot of what I do as an English teacher is based on the same principle).

Every once in a very rare while, I have a kid in a drama class who is simply a natural. They need very little direction from me – they already have a good sense of how they need to deliver a line and physically portray their character. (The best clue I usually have to the presence of one of those gems is when I don’t need to remind them to maintain their character when they are not talking. They just do it. In their gut, they know.)

But most kids need to be taught such things – staying in character, effective line delivery, physicality on the stage. And I’ve learned over the years that the best way to do that, surprisingly enough, is through having them directly mimic me. When there is a scene they are struggling with, I show them exactly how I want them to stand, how to gesture, how to say the line, everything. I have found that most kids cannot translate what they hear from me into action; they have to feel it in their body first. Just telling a student to slow down usually does NOT do the trick. (With particularly fast speakers, I have them say the line with me, at my speed, and watch their eyes start to bug out by the time we’re done. “Dang, Ms. Kandt – that was painful!!” Yep. THAT slow, sweetie.) After copying my examples for a show or two, they eventually internalize the ideas and start applying the skills on their own to new roles in new shows. And they often come up with characterizations much better than I would have.

The same principle applies in teaching writing, to a degree. I’m a Grammar Diva, and my middle school students leave their three years with me knowing grammar well. And what I’ve found is, knowing the grammar of how ideas go together into sentences – doing exercise after exercise practicing all the different ways ideas can go together into sentences – gives them more fluency in putting ideas together into sentences well. After doing piles of worksheets playing with these sentence structures, most kids are able to apply them very naturally to their own writing. They feel it “in their bones” now.

Imitation can be a good teaching technique. A lot of people don’t like to hear that; it rubs against their preference for everyone doing their own thing and finding their unique voice. But the thing is, they do find their unique voice and style eventually. I felt affirmed in my approach when I read that this was how Renaissance artists like Michelangelo were trained; they spent hours copying the paintings of the masters, stroke for stroke. Only then did they have the skills to effectively put their own visions onto the canvas.

So maybe that’s the kind of imitation Paul is asking for here. Maybe he knew telling people how to live in Christ wouldn’t do the trick; they needed to see it done and copy that . . . to feel in their bones how it feels when it’s done right. Maybe.

It’s a thought anyway. (But I still think if he’d been in my 7^th grade class, I’d have been calling him on his attitude. Don’t give me that kinda lip, boy . . .)