Spanish is not easy. There’s so much involved in learning a language that I completely forgot about. By the time you’re a senior and at the end of the Spanish major, you’re not really focusing so much on the tedious, grammar things – it’s all big-picture, comprehension-level stuff. I completely forgot about learning things like the stem of a verb and different endings; trying to wrap my head around subject agreement.

The reason I mention this is because I am in the Spanish STEP (secondary teacher education) program, working on getting my license to teach Spanish in high school. I’m currently doing my pre-practicum with a Spanish 1 class at Northampton High School. I go in 2-3 times a week and help out in the class while also teaching some “mini-lessons”. Most of these students have never had an encounter with the Spanish language until this class – and what’s more is that a large majority of them aren’t even interested in the class; they’re just there because it’s required by the school.

I mean, I can’t blame them. Learning Spanish from scratch is really not the most exciting thing. You’re learning all of this dry grammar and vocabulary; it’s hard to make that kind of stuff fun. Trust me – I’ve tried. They’re freshmen who are forced to be at school at 7:30 AM in a class that they didn’t necessarily want to take. It’s hard to get excited under those conditions. But with Spanish becoming increasingly important in the US, we need people taking Spanish classes and learning the language – and this is where it all starts. If students aren’t having a good experience in their introductory course, how are they going to feel inspired to continue?

So again, I go back to my initial statement: Spanish is hard. And I think that students and teachers alike need to recognize that. I completely forgot! I started learning Spanish in elementary school. I had a foundation by the time I was in middle school (so before it became cool to hate school). I didn’t learn Spanish the way they’re learning it. But I need to understand – and any of you who are planning on teaching – that learning the fundamentals for Spanish is not easy and it’s not the most colorful curriculum. It’s our jobs, then, to find out how Spanish can be taught in a way that’s effective but also exciting.

In my mini-lessons I’ve taken to making a lot of interactive and diverse activities (this is where I’m going to give a quick shoutout to SPAN-597J: Foreign Language Teaching Methodology. AMAZING class for anyone who wants to teach!!). While some of them definitely aren’t the most exciting, the students definitely seem to be more attentive when I’m doing them I think because it’s just a break from the normal bookwork. It’s so exciting to see them work together to produce some really great work.

So I just want to say that if anyone is planning on teaching, understand that 1) teaching is not easy, especially with freshmen. They don’t hate you – they’re annoying with everyone 2) learning Spanish is not as easy as we remember it being 3) activities can be fun and effective – you just have to learn to think outside the box. I was so, incredibly nervous starting with my pre-practicum but it gets so much easier and it starts to feel a lot more natural. Teaching is so rewarding, even with the high schoolers who are always going to test you. I’m so excited to start my practicum and really dive into teaching. It’s just important to maintain perspective – each student is unique and has different experiences; we don’t all learn the same.