Learning to learn again

Yo tengo clase de Español en Colegio Mat-Su, cada lunes y meircoles a las cinco de la tardes con Senora Schmidt.

I paid a little more than $700 plus textbook costs to learn how to write that sentence. Spanish I, a four-credit class, doesn’t go toward my pay scale; it doesn’t have the necessary ED prefix, nor is it upper division work. Initially, I signed up to learn grammar. I imagined needing to know grammar in order to learn a language would prompt me to understand how to teach it better. I also planned for it to help me reach my second language learners. The last laugh is on me, though, because I am not learning how to teach better, I am learning how to learn again.

To begin with, I came unprepared — not to mention late — to class. I hadn’t thought to purchase the textbook prior to the first class. So there I sat, looking over my neighbor’s shoulder, feverishly copying the homework questions onto the scratch paper I had found in my satchel with the borrowed pencil from same neighbor. That evening the bookstore informed me that they didn’t carry that particular book and I would have to order it online — about a two-week wait. That’s how I started my learning curve back into being a learner. Come prepared.

For just $34 more and two-day air, my textbook arrived on my porch. And that is when I learned about homework. I dutifully did the minimum required each evening the night before class (in bed, at the end of the day, with a cup of tea). Let me be the first to say learning a language does not happen through osmosis. Sleeping with the textbook did nothing for me when I was orally quizzed the following evening by the ebullient Señora Schmidt. “Hola! Emily! ¿Por qué tanta prisa en la clase?” Lesson number two about learning: You gotta be your homework.

Lesson three about being a learner: don’t miss class. I missed one class and before my very eyes I became Tiered 2 intervention material. A day late and a dollar short, I was swimming upstream against a Latin accent. I gave up. No tengo suerte. I thought about trying to refill my mechanical pencil with lead. I had no lead. Maybe there was a pencil sharpener in the room. I looked around. There was none. I surreptitiously checked my phone for important messages. There were none of those either. I flipped with an imagined urgency through my notebook of mysterious notes. What I was I thinking? I had no notes; I had been absent.

Then came midterms. My kitchen table looked like a seventh-grader’s locker. Misshapen papers, well-meaning flashcards stacked against not one but two notebooks full of more papers and other debris. I took my position to get set, get ready, go with my phone right next to me. Who knows? Maybe someone would need me. Two conjugations down, a game of “Words With Friends.” Two more conjugations, another game of “Words With Friends.” Possessive pronouns listed. A game of “Scrabble.” Days of the Week — oh look! A text! Three hours later, I had accomplished absolutely nothing. I hadn’t even won a game of “Words.”

Lesson four: Para estudiar es un trabajo. Unplug. Pay attention or pay the price.

What I thought would be an experience of how to teach grammar better and to develop a greater empathy for the second language learner has instead opened my eyes to this truism: learning is hard work. In our pressure to increase test scores and graduation rates, I think the education system forgets that. The learner has a position in all of this. It requires labor of mind, discipline of habit and concentration.

That is why this year I am asking my students to sit up a bit more. I am a bit less considerate of their lost pencils. I demand all eyes on me. I am asking them to do more than fill in the blanks, but also to do the “hard ones.” Because as a teacher trying to learn how to teach better, I am learning about what it takes to learn better.

It’s OK, I tell my students. No worries. Remember, if it isn’t hard — it’s probably not worth it. And, by the way, I add, you’re worth it. Mucho gusto!

Emily Forstner teaches Language Arts at Wasilla Middle School. She passed her mid-term.