I have many goals that I want to hit in order to become the best teacher I can. One of those goals I have been striving to hit is to learn Spanish semi-fluently.
I originally learned a bit of Spanish from my mom’s side, as there is some of my family that almost exclusively speaks Spanish. I only really learned enough to get by. I could talk about food, hi and goodbye, and asking where the bathrooms were. Despite this, it wasn’t much, and it was easy for me to forget if I didn’t visit my family for a long time.
However, as needed to graduate from high school, I needed two years of foreign language. I chose Spanish, as not only would it be nice to have when I was with family, but it is also useful in the real world, since more Spanish-speaking people are coming from the states and other countries. I took both of these classes when I was an underclassman, and I had a relative break around my Junior year.
However, as I learned of my aspirations of teaching, I learned that being bilingual would be an amazing skill to have as an educator. Starting my Senior year, I learned more Spanish through the kid I have been tutoring. He is from Guatemala, so he doesn’t know English fluently. Knowing some Spanish, I was able to converse with him easier than most teachers he had, which allowed me to help him with his math easier than most.
Because of this experience, I have learned more Spanish in general, as well as math terms that I didn’t know before my Senior year. Having this hands-on experience is helping me teach someone in Spanish, along with his personal learning style. It’s like hitting two birds with one stone. I help him with his math and English, he helps me with my teaching and Spanish.
I am also planning to minor in Spanish once I get into college. Hopefully these experiences allow more people to receive adequate teaching from me. I want to be able to bless every person I teach with a great experience, no matter what language they speak, so hopefully, by learning one of the second most spoken languages around me, I can reach as many people as I can.