English as a Second Language

I had the pleasure of subbing in an ESL (English as a Second Language) classroom the other day. I wasn't sure what to expect. Despite my two years of high school Spanish and two semesters of college Spanish, I have never felt confident in conversing in that language and it has been a VERY long time. But this experience turned out to be so neat. There were two paras in the room who helped me get the lesson plan figured out and who helped a lot with the kids as well. One was a native Spanish speaker so that was obviously helpful! I saw kiddos of all ages, from kindergarten to Seniors. And all ability levels too. Some were much better at English than others and could translate for me, but all were fairly limited in their English proficiency, of course, and my profound lack of Spanish proficiency made for an interesting day! I thought it was different to see kids struggling with English words and pronunciations when I'm so used to it being the other way, kids struggling with Spanish words and pronunciations. At one point a fourth grade boy asked if we liked deer meat. The para said yes and asked if he liked moose meat. None of them knew the word moose, so we acted it out. One girl drew a picture on the board (a pretty good one too) and we said yes a moose. Then they could come up with their word for it. At another point in the day a different teacher came in to speak with the Spanish speaking para. They began their conversation completely in Spanish and I had no idea what they were talking about. Once in a while English words were thrown in. Eventually one of the ladies began speaking all in English while the other stayed in Spanglish. In the end they were both speaking English. How cool is that! I told many of the students how smart they are that they can (or will be able to) speak two languages. Later, a class of high schoolers all wanted to know my age and we had a fun conversation with me attempting to ask and answer questions in Spanish. You know, the basic stuff that you do every day in Spanish class. I was pretty weak and they giggled at me. But we got our points across and even with our lack of communication skills we enjoyed one another's company. I am excited because I get to go back to this classroom for two days in April so I will get to see them all again. I'd better hone my Spanish a little bit before I go back!