A Tallahassee teacher dealing with a middle school experience

A new school year has begun here in Tallahassee, Florida. I found a teaching position at a middle school in the area. I teach Spanish to six, seventh and eight graders. Many of my students come from less than appropriate living environments, with broken households, guardians, instead of parents, issues of poverty, gangs, street living, and an unsupportive learning environment at home. Many of my students have not been taught courtesy, respect for others, how to study, and how to behave properly. I have my hands full, that is for sure. So do all the other dedicated, good, teachers that I am surrounded with. I always admire teachers. They do earn their salary, as they spend so much of their time, at home, and on weekends working for their students.

My job is to teach Spanish. I have done this well on many occasion, to both children and adults, as a private Spanish teacher, and in schools. I have six years of experience teaching Spanish at high schools, and several years of experience teaching English at language institutes in Mexico and Paraguay. I have been providing private Spanish lessons in Tallahassee, Florida, to all age groups since 1994. You can say that is my secret under the table job. I have turned non-Spanish speakers into fluent Spanish speakers, and have a sense of pride and joy in knowing that.

Now, my task is much harder, since I am in a classroom with children who probably would rather be out on the streets like their buddies, or with their buddies. I really don’t know. Only a few of my students truly care or appear to care about learning Spanish. I know middle school has its challenges in general as the children are going through the hormonal period of their physical lives, however, at this particular school, the kids are in general troubles, retarded, gangsters, nervous, or carry other mental, physical issues with them. These are not what I or others would call a normal group of children to teach to. I have seen much better behaved young people. I do understand that they come into the classroom with issues from a sorry, inferior home environment. I cannot blame them for the defects of their parents/caregivers. The adults pass their issues on to the children, and the children pay the ultimate price by not taking their education seriously.

Now, does all of this background mean that I do not go into the classroom with high expectations that at least some of the students will learn, and get something out of a foreign language education? No, not at all. I have much hope. There are good students. I praise them, and help to lead them on, although they are surrounded by wolves. What goes on in the limited thought processes of the wolves? Certainly, not the way of righteousness. It is not a story of wolves united with lambs. The lambs are conscientious learners, the wolves just don’t care.

I go into the Spanish classroom speaking Spanish, and giving new vocabulary to the class. The lambs will acquire the vocabulary, and participate, while the wolves play away their illogical behaviors and sink in their own crap. My lesson will continue, and those who can swim will make the A grades, and those who do not get it, because they purposely stay off task, will make the low end grades, and will not even walk ashamed of their sin: not wanting understanding; not getting knowledge; not reaching for wisdom. The book of Proverbs would be a good manual for the wolves to read.

Of course, the good students do not want to study, nor are able to adequately learn in a room with those who don’t want to learn. They don’t understand why we as teacher, cannot remove those disruptive ones from the class, either temporarily or permanently. I have had children ask me that question. I really don’t have an answer, but I can say, that in most societies around the world, there is separation between those who want to learn, and those who want to be rude, disruptive, and don’t care about learning.
We make children get an academic education, but of course, we know that not all children will grow up and use their academic educational experience. Hence, we have all those people working in vocations, the blue collar workers. In other societies, not everyone gets to have an standard education. Some do, some don’t. Some are just not academically inclined. Children are sent into a vocational tract, or an academic tract. American education is quite different from the rest of the world. We want, and expect all our children to be great readers, writer and intellectuals. This is not reality, of course. Just look around at society.

Having lived and taught in other countries, I know that respect, courtesy and honor go much further. Children behave much better in other parts of the world, in general. They have an environment in which honor is super important. If they misbehave, or show disrespect to their teachers, they are acting dishonorably, and that hurts the family reputation, or family name in the community. They have strong supportive families, but oh yes, I have to remember, that in the United States of America, many kids come from broken homes, and do not have family support. There is no sense of obligatioin of honor. Teachers are not given the high standing that they are in most other lands around the world. In the Spanish speaking world, in which I have personal experience, teachers are respected, honored members of the community, and are respectfully treated by the children. No nonsense, classroom disruptions, or disrespect, such as you find in American public schools. Children in many cultures go to school in nice looking uniforms. Here in Tallahassee, they go to school looking like you know what. They play “cool.” For some reason, it is hard to get Americans to accept uniforms for all their children.

The solution as I see it for American education:
1. Require business like uniforms with boys wearing ties.
2. Remove troubled, disruptive kids from class instead of integrating them in the classroom with the good, hardworking students.
3. Have tougher punishments for children who disrupt. Bring back biblical principles into the educattional system.
4. Give teachers more staff support, and less bureacratic paperwork to complete, so that teachers can focus on teaching. Get rid of these ESE forms, and other paperwork that in the big picture serve for nothing except to please certain demographic groups.
5. Keep class sizes small, so each student gets better attention. Students crave my attention, but I can’t help them adequately since I have to help other students too. I feel so bad for them. Each teacher should have another adult helper in the room, especially in a system that requires integration of children in the same room. I am reminded that classroom integration is a recent phenomenon in history. How many hard working students have come forward and said that they do most of their learning outside class on the computer, or through other means? I hear this all the time. They do not learn in such a diverse classroom. I could not when I was a student! I was mostly self-taught.
6. We need government programs, like a public works program that will shuffle the kids that ought not be in a traditional school environment, into a trade route, a vocational tract.

As a Tallahassee Spanish teacher, I will do all I can to get the children interested in another language. I believe and always will believe in the importance of foreign languages started at the elementary school level and continuing ever year to the last year of the formal educational program. Foreign language education serves to strengthen our first language use, makes us appreciate other people, and their way of communicating, and makes us able to communicate with a wider global demographic. I know that I can go to over 30 countries and communicate in Spanish very well with the people. I would like my students to have that confidence some day.