Test me on what exactly?

I want to share an interesting moment of insight from my final Español Gramática class for the summer.

I took another test on Friday. I’m not taking these español classes for college credit, so I don’t have to take the tests, but I thought that it would be interesting to see how far I had come over the three weeks. Before I tell you the results; a little background on the morning that had preceded the test.

I was feeling pretty run down on Friday morning and, instead of going to Unitnter, I skipped my first hour, bought a newspaper, and sat down at Starbucks. I was very proud of how well I did reading the paper, including almost total comprehension of an article about Obama’s speech regarding American students learning a second language. While there, I also spent a great deal of time speaking, en español, with my amiga Pao, who a Starbucks barista. We had a great conversation and I left for school very excited about learning Spanish!

Well, four hours later I took the test and, for the second week in a row, I didn’t do very well. Preteríto and imprefecto verb conjugation became an alphabet soup in my mind and I was only able to squeeze 53 words from my brain for my 100-word-essay. The test was done and I left the room to get some fresh air. There I was, on my last day of class, in the middle of México, feeling really, really, really bad about my prospects of learning Spanish.

Bad? About Spanish? But I was feeling so good! What happened?

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I started thinking about my language classes in grade school. When I was in the 7th grade I was thrilled at the prospect of spending the year learning Spanish. But then I found that, despite my best efforts, the class was difficult. I addition, I was terrified by those headphones that allowed the teacher to ease drop on me as I was playing my part, along with the rest of the class, in a pre-recorded conversation. I got frustrated and as the class became more difficult I noticed that, even though I was studying and trying my best, I was not getting the “good grade” I was used to as an A student. By the time we got back from Christmas Break I had basically checked out, and after only one year I “quit” Spanish for the rest of my school career. Too bad, because I really wanted to learn Spanish.

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Forward 18 years or so and here I am, in Cuernavaca, Mexico. Again, class is tough and it’s easy to get frustrated. But, I’ve been around the block a few times and I know a couple things that I wish I would have known during elementary and high school, when my entire life depended on good grades, rather than life experience.

First, I know that just because it’s me who doesn’t understand something, I’m not necessarily the one with the problem. I know there’s a big difference between leading a student in the educational process and simply reciting knowledge. Reciting knowledge lacks the ability to listen (which create dialog), and in addition it lacks an understanding of how the student is to put new knowledge into context in the “real world”.

Second, I know from experience that knowledge and language, be it Spanish, music, math, literature, or whatever, is nothing if it remains in the world of the classroom. Knowing how to conjugate 200 verbs in imperfect tense is not my goal. My goal is to have a more "well rounded" life (as my parents said when I was a kid) and be able to communicate with more of the world. If we can communicate, we can share our life experiences, and hopefully that brings something positive to the world.

If sharing life experience where the test, I’d receive straight A's very semester.

Thanks for reading. What do you think? Any similar experience in your life? Drop me a note.

Hope you’re doing well Chicago, Detroit and parts unknown. Let’s talk soon.

Hasta luego,
Jason