A lot to catch up on. I need to post my lesson plans in here.

As I think I mentioned, I’ve been taking a two-hour a day, five day a week Spanish intensive course. It’s, in theory, a great thing to do when you’re teaching, just as a therapist sees her own therapist. I learn about what to do and what not to do — at least for a learner like me — and I can more vividly understand what my own learners are going through.

A few things not to do: My teacher, while she speaks clearly, speaks very fast: a level beyond the grade she’s teaching. This was supposed to be a “Nivel Tres” class, which is pretty much low intermediate. I tested at exactly that level. Kim tested at a level 2, one guy is brand new at Spanish, and the others are at levels four, five and six. So she’s teaching rank beginners to fluent speakers, in one class that is supposed to be exactly at my level. Yet, since the fluent ones outnumber me, she not only speaks fast and races through the book. She may or may not explain the exercise, she never checks to make sure we understand the directions, she races us through them (at the pace of the faster learners) and often doesn’t even go back to check what we’ve done. She doesn’t assign homework, which would help. She never diverges from the book. I went to seven classes (and paid for 30) and stopped. If I find time, I can do the workbook on my own, without feeling humiliated. And since I’m in Mexico, I can hear and practice with native speakers outside of class.

I suspect that her mode of teaching is not her own prerogative. I’m guessing that a) she teaches a lot of classes and doesn’t have time to prepare anything beyond the book and b) that the curriculum is driven according to a tight time schedule. Sadly, it has made the experience a waste of time and money for me. For the first few classes I could keep up, but I was getting more and more lost with instructions as time past. Sometimes I’d ask a fellow student for help, but they weren’t very responsive — possibly because they, too, were rushing to stay apace.

I missed class on Wednesday because Elka had observed my class the day before and I was suddenly left with a greater workload because of how I wanted to process her feedback, and because I had to classes to plan for the next day, and because that had become a level more complex as I tried to integrate what she’d said with what I know about my students and what the curriculum demands.

The next day, though I continued to be very busy, I braved the deluge (and I’m not exaggerating; parts of DF were under six feet of water), walking and busing my way there and arriving with thoroughly sodden and cold jeans. I went to class. No one was there. I waited fifteen minutes. I left. The whole jaunt took a 1.5 hour bite out of my day.

Lesson: Get your students’ phone numbers or e-mail addresses in case of emergency. I’m covered at ABC because Magda is my go-between, but this is important to remember. In this case, it was the death knell for my participation in the class. Between an overjammed schedule and the bite the class took out of my day, its being right in the middle of the day, and its inability to address my needs, it became dispensable. And here I am: highly motivated to learn Spanish, and still she lost me. I would have made a way to continue if I felt I was benefiting, that I was respected and that I was seen. Yesterday on my way home, back through the rain after the non-class, I ran into one of my classmates, who told me that yesterday she had conducted the class completely differently because I wasn’t there. She went much faster. Finding out that I was holding the class back — even though it was technically designed for exactly my level — was upsetting.