I am employed as a Spanish teacher. I go in every day and do my best to teach them. In my short three years as a teacher getting students to know what I want them to know has been so hard.
Maybe it’s that my expectations are too high. Maybe they don’t know what I want them to know. Maybe they know but they just can’t LEARN it.
The thing is though, I don’t want students to KNOW Spanish. I don’t want to teach Spanish, I want to facilitate language acquisition. It’s not that my students don’t know what a subject, verb, or object is. But that’s not what I want them to KNOW.
I want students to know that from the moment they enter my class, they are in a space that is unlike anywhere else in the school. They should be able to tell that from the whole not having desks thing. I want them to know that they are in a a space where they can make a connection with an adult. I want them to know that the bull crap that they deal with outside of school can take at least a 52 minute break and they can just enjoy the company of other kind-hearted people. I want them to know that they can be silly. I want them to know that they can stretch their imagination.
Ultimately, I want them to know I care. And I am grateful for the vehicle that TCI has allowed me to have real conversations with students in Spanish.
I want them to know all those things. Being able to communicate in Spanish is just a byproduct.
Languageley 