Today the Spanish teacher in my classroom was at an off-campus workshop so Miss Meghan filled in for español. Usually, when I lead Spanish class, I do it in English and only say Spanish words when absolutely necessary. This is mostly because I know that I make mistakes in Spanish and I know that I have an accent, which somehow makes me feel like less of an authority figure. And when I am standing in front of 23 kids, I need to emit authority.
I have no idea what happened today, but when it was time for Spanish class, Spanish came rolling off my tongue. So I went with it. I even scolded the children for their notoriously bad behavior in Spanish class compared to their English class. Which is unacceptable, I told them, because it's your native language.
The most difficult part of the class was when I had to give a Spanish spelling test. This test isn't just words, but complete sentences. To top it off, my students are learning the letter j, which is a tricky sound for an English speaker. And of course, nearly half of the words had a j. For example:
Julieta tiene un conejo. (Julia has a rabbit.)
La abeja me pico el ojo. (The bee stung my eye.)
This morning, I practiced with a Peruvian friend so she could correct my pronunciation. At the end of our practice session, she said it sounded great (major confidence boost!).
I glanced at the tests and they all seemed to do fairly well, thankfully the mistakes they made didn't appear to come from my accent.
Hopefully, this Spanish roll will continue at my hair appointment this evening. I want to change my cut so I can no longer walk in a say, "The same!" I've been brushing up on my haircut vocabulary and I trust my stylist enough to know that we will somehow meet in the middle.
