Spanish Lunch

We're at the end of the school year.  Everyone has taken the final.  They are graded, and the grades are entered.  We're winding down, and really, the kids are ready to be done.  I want to start off this post by thanking all the students and parents for pushing me to be an even better teacher.  It's been a good year, and that's on you as much as it's on me.

As it's the end of the year, I don't have anything content related to share, per se...  But I wanted to give a shout out to some students who have been helping me out.

If you remember the beginning of the year, one of the big topics of our class was culture.  We listed 10 ingredients of culture: food, dress, religion, language, customs, etc...  You get the idea.  The past nine weeks, I've invited some of my students who are fluent in Spanish to help me learn.  Any student who was fluent, or was interested in learning Spanish (and had 3rd lunch) was invited to have lunch with me.

The rules (though they were sometimes broken) were that they could only speak Spanish unless I asked them for a translation.  I had to speak Spanish as much as I could, and English when I couldn't.

I invited students who weren't fluent as well.  But I didn't want them to just show up with no intent to learn.  They had to prove they were trying to learn as well.  I've been using the free app, Duolingo.  It's not perfect, but it's really helped as well.  Alas, only a couple students started to learn, and they quickly dropped out.  No hard feelings though, we're all busy.

Still, in a class where we discussed culture, language, loss of language, and increasing human capital, I thought it was worth sharing that I'm trying to practice what I preach.

If you want extra credit for reading and discussing the blog, tell me if you've ever considered learning another language.  Are you planning on taking one next year?  How do you plan on continuing to increase your human capital over the summer?  Write your responses on a scrap of paper, and have the adult you read and discussed with sign the paper.

Put your name, date, and hour on it.  Turn it in tomorrow or Thursday.