About six weeks ago, I got two requests to teach -- literally, within a day or two of each other.

One of them didn't pan out; the other one did.

The first request I got was from Steve Mallard at Tennessee Technology Center at Shelbyville, who wanted me to teach a two-night mini-course on blogging and social networking. That course would have been held earlier this month.

TTCS promoted the class as part of its normal fall schedule advertisement in the T-G, but that was at the bottom of a long list of courses and it didn't list the name of the instructor. I thought about calling attention to the class in the newspaper, or on my blog at the T-G web site, but at the time we had just gotten a really snide letter to the editor which made mocking reference to my annual series of mission-trip stories. As a result I was a little sensitive about seeming to promote myself in the newspaper.

Anyway, no one signed up for the blogging class, and so it was cancelled.

Just a few days after I first heard from Steve, Tom Wright from Smyrna asked me to teach a basic United Methodist lay speaking course. A lay speaker, in the Methodist vernacular, is someone who isn't an ordained minister but is available to preach or participate in other such ministries, for example to fill in for a pastor who is ill or on vacation. I've been a United Methodist lay speaker for some years now, and last summer I preached at the big annual gathering that governs United Methodist churches in Middle Tennessee.

In the past, the layspeaking class has been taught over a weekend or on two consecutive Saturdays. But the Powers That Be are trying out a new model, in which the course will be taught on Wednesday nights as part of the host church's usual routine of activities. This will allow classes to be held at several different locations, so that almost everyone has a class available in their home county.

I was asked to teach the class for Bedford County. It took a few weeks to work out the schedule and location, but it's now set to start Oct. 8 at Scott's Chapel United Methodist Church. it will run for 10 Wednesday nights, not including the week of Thanksgiving, at 6 p.m.

We're still accepting students, but the Rev. Robin Kimbrough has already signed up four students from Scott's Chapel, so at least I know this class is going to to go forward.

This will be a new experience for me. I've done a little bit of teaching on my mission trips. I taught a week-long creative writing workshop for special needs children on the Cumberland Plateau for several years as part of Mountain T.O.P. (Tennessee Outreach Project), and I have taught cottage industry workshops such as soapmaking on several of my foreign mission trips. I even taught a day of English classes in 2007 as part of a teacher-appreciation week event, and I wrote about the experience for the newspaper. But this will probably be the biggest thing I've ever done in terms of teaching, and the first time I've really worked with a standard curriculum.

I come from a family of educators; my father is a retired teacher and principal, I have a cousin who's superintendent of the Montgomery County School System, and I have a sister-in-law who's head of the English department at her college.

Even so, I hope I'm up to the challenge.

-- John I. Carney is city editor of the Times-Gazette and covers county government and other topics. His home page is lakeneuron.com.