The title of the post is what one of the five-year-olds I teach said to me on Wednesday, looking confusedly at me and at the teacher. “Justin, hablas mal.” To this I did not reply, “Hey kid, you can’t speak English for shit, but I’m not teasing you.” Instead I told the kid that I didn’t speak Spanish, and thought to myself, “Hmmm, I really need to stop talking to these kids in Spanish.”

When I was in Argentina, there were several autistic kids who told me I spoke bad Spanish — and I mean, to them I do. I really don’t think my Spanish is all that bad, but I think I’m probably confusing these kids somewhat when I speak to them in Spanish, especially with poor grammar. With the older kids, it’s fine, but also less necessary; they speak better English. With the infantil classes, though, it’s impossible to just speak English to them, not when you’re asking them to do things. (It’s also forcing me to re-learn command forms, the imperative voice. The commands for vosotros are very different from the commands for Usted: Decidlo and Diganlo, for “Say it!”. In English, we only have one imperative conjugation, as far as I can think. Not so in Spanish. Oh, but don’t worry; we make up for it in irregularities.)

The kids I teach seem to like me, for the most part. Some of the girls in the four-year-olds class started chanting my name when I came in, and giggled when I looked at them. The older kids are more difficult, of course, but I haven’t really had to punish them yet, so I think they appreciate that. There’s one class where I’m probably going to have to, soon. Which is too bad; I’d rather not. Part of this is just that I’m in most of my classes with another teacher, as I’ve mentioned. And part of it is that I think they are interested in me — I don’t think I would say they respect me, but they’re not sure where to place me.

I’ve got to say, though, that in some of the classes of the late primary school, it’s impossible to keep the kids quiet. They quiet down when you ask them to, but only for seconds. It’s kind of funny, but of course it’s also bloody frustrating. I don’t yell much, and I don’t want to have to. The other day, I asked students to be quiet, and clapped my hands loudly. And one of the kids, who didn’t get it, started clapping too. And immediately realized that he wasn’t supposed to, blushed, and covered his face. It was pretty hilarious. (Not too embarrassing for him; the other kids didn’t get it either.)

The thing that’s kind of fun and kind of frustrating about teaching English is trying to figure out how to do new things, but continue to reinforce the old — it’s no use if you teach tons of vocabulary but don’t go over it. The problem is trying to figure out how to make the students use their words. I make them copy down the vocabulary, and I ask them to write definitions next to it, so I think next week I’m going to go over some stuff, and ask for sentences — have them spend fifteen minutes writing sentences. Then I’ll have to correct them, but that’ll be okay; better if they’re getting feedback, no? But it’s just hard since they’re not at a level where asking questions gets complete answers. Some of these kids follow pretty well, but many don’t even do that; almost none can speak competently in English.

I think I’d like teaching a lot more if I felt like my students were learning regularly, rather than at this slow pace. This is the same problem I had with working with autism, no? That the kids are improving at this infinitesimal rate.

I guess I like thinking about this as learning about learning. And from that lookout point, this is great.