the red-penned bandit rides

Whoa. I hadn't taught a basic college Spanish class in a long time, and after Week One I'm realizing how much I'd forgotten about it, and how much my teaching has changed in the intervening semesters.

The good things: for example, how empowering it is to learn a foreign language right at the beginning. How uproariously the students laugh at even the silliest jokes, just because they're so delighted they can understand them. How excited they get the first time they create a really good sentence, and just sit there staring at it and saying it over in their heads. Ella come pan tostado a las ocho de la mañana. Ella come pan tostado a las ocho de la mañana. It's like the first time a child draws a perfect circle with a compass and begins to fathom the consequences of this discovery. It's exciting to be with them at that moment.

The bad things, too, though, which we're just beginning to work through: I'd forgotten how slowly a group of 27 students progresses as opposed to smaller, more advanced classes. I'd forgotten what it was like to work with 19- and 20-year-olds instead of 21- and 23-year-olds. There's a palpable resistance to adulthood among my students that I must overcome, a desire to let me do the thinking for them and a tendency to blame me when things go wrong. As I gain experience as a college teacher, I increasingly feel that I wasn't hired to teach Spanish: instead, my job is to teach critical thinking and accountability. Spanish is merely my chosen medium for imparting those more important lessons.

Examples: Day two. A student approaches me after class and says, well, I don't think I can handle this class if it's going to be all in Spanish. You see, we don't speak Spanish, which is why we're in this class, so you can't speak it to us all the time. I remind her what I told students on Day one (in English, no less): the only time you should worry about not understanding what I say to you in Spanish is a.) if you don't understand the concepts, or b.) if you don't understand what's expected of you. Yes, she says, but. Do you understand the concepts? I ask. Yes, but. Do you understand what I expect you to do? Yes, but. But? She has no answer. It gets easier, I tell her, and I think you'll be surprised how quickly. She understands the conversation is over, but is not satisfied with my answer.

Day three. I ask students to open the book to page 156. I write 1-5-6 on the board in case they haven't understood. We do an activity, the instructions for which are written-- in English -- on page 156. Read the instructions, I say. Ready? Let's begin. Wait -- what are we doing? I hear. I pick up my book and point to the exercise. Number one, I say. A student raises her hand and answers. Number two...and I call on a student. I have no idea what we're doing, he says. Page 156? I ask. Yes, he says. Activity five? I ask. Yes, he answers again. Number two? Yeah, he says, I don't know the answer. I don't know how to say it in Spanish. Even though his partner's book (he has a partner because he has forgotten his own book) is open in front of him, open to the vocabulary list, which we studied on Day two and which contains -- he knows it contains -- the answer. His eyes plead with me to call on someone else. I am unrelenting. Look it up, I say. Forty painful, silent seconds later, he has the right answer, and I praise the bejezus out of him. What page are we on? someone says. I have answered that question verbally and in writing, I say, and I will not waste your classmates' time further by answering it again.

(Day four, by the way, and the "I-don't-know" student sits up front, smiles, and raises his hand for every answer.)

Day four. I collect the homework. Oh, I forgot my workbook. Can I turn it in on Monday instead? Nope, I say. We didn't have to do number 14, did we? Cause it requires an audio file. So you didn't mean we had to do that one, right? What page is it on? I ask. 32. What does the calendar say to do for today? It says do page 32, but. But? She processes this for a moment, then raises her hand again. Excuse me? But I don't think it's fair? For you to assign audio activities when we don't know where the audio files are? Okay, I say, except the syllabus tells you where to find the audio files. You have the syllabus, right? Yes, but. But?

Red, who is a nurse and, consequently, extraordinarily wise when it comes to human behavior, says day three is always the worst. Chart it, she told me, and I intend to. This time around, that theory certainly seems to hold. Today was better; people came prepared, paid more attention and did their own thinking, for the most part. There's certainly always a faction of the class that seems grateful when you hold their classmates responsible for their own work. They're used to hanging time in a class where the lazy, the petulant and the incompetent are coddled, a stream of exceptions being created to accommodate them, and feel respected when the teacher refuses to pander to the stragglers. Today, they were downright patient and themselves gestured to help the stragglers keep up.

I know it's only a matter of time before a handful of these students decide I don't like them, and that's why they're unsuccessful in my class. This amuses me and frustrates me at the same time, because if they knew how little my personal feelings about them have to do with their grade, they would be forced, through unparalleled creative flights of fancy, to blame the university, Microsoft Excel, or the Spanish language...or, as a last resort, to accept responsibility for their own poor performance. But I really feel that to give them the grade they think they deserve for being a nice, charming guy, or Puerto Rican, or because they busted ass over the last two weeks, or even to repeat the page number for the umpteenth time, is to do them a huge disservice. If we hold their hands like this in college, tell me, exactly when and where do we prepare them for the so-called real world?