Prologue: How Do You Say "Avocado"? 1988-89
After a month or so of random substituting jobs - almost all of them at the high school I’d graduated from just four years prior - I got a wonderful opportunity. A teacher in the foreign language department was going to go out on leave for the rest of the school year - more than a semester left to go in the year - and they needed a long-term, stable sub (“interim sub” it was called). The substitute coordinator approached me about the possibility - was I interested? Um, YES!!! I’d enjoyed the subbing up to that point, but the idea of being “the teacher”… I’d be doing all the lesson planning, grading, for “my” classes and students, for the rest of the year… was so exciting. I’d also be making more money, which was a nice perk - interim subs are paid the same rate as a first year teacher, although they don’t receive benefits.
I met with the foreign language department chair, who wanted to assess my skill set and readiness. The teacher going out was primarily a French teacher… and I spoke no French… but they’d switched around some teaching assignments in the department, so that instead I’d get five sections all of Spanish I. Although I wasn’t fluent in Spanish, I’d studied it for six years in high school and college, and so I was pretty good. And this was Spanish I - Hola, como estas? Hablo-hablas-habla-hablamos-hablan - that kind of stuff. I knew I could do it.
And so, they gave me the chance.
I was floating on air. Now I had a my own gradebook, my own students, my own lesson planning book.
I was figuring it out as I went along - the curriculum, the lesson development, and the class management. It wasn’t great, by any means, but it was manageable. I was taking the education classes at night that I’d been lacking for permanent certification ever since dropping my education major in college. That was helping in real-time with crafting some lessons that had a chance at working.
I managed to stay at least one lesson ahead of the students, which was helpful for my confidence. My prior experience - and natural inclination toward - lots of planning-planning-planning meant that I overplanned the days, with more content than I’d ever actually fit in, in one 50 minute class. By default, that helped me with classroom management, because it kept the kids busy.
One of the things I hadn’t planned for - COULDN’T plan for, in fact - was that no matter how much planning you do, you can’t make a plan to manage the natural curiosity of human beings. Today, I thank GOD that most of the time we haven’t managed to kill the natural curiosity of kids - but that year, I admit, it posed a bit of a challenge. I’d be in the middle of a well-planned lesson teaching the conjugation of the verb “comer” (“to eat”) along with some well-placed nouns to be eaten, and up went the hand. “Yes, Kim?” “Ms. Johnson, how do you say ‘avocado’ in Spanish?”
“Avocado” was not in the lesson plan. “Avocado” was not any one of the twelve different tasty delight nouns that were either in the chapter or on my list of activities. And “avocado” was not a food I enjoyed at the time (though I greatly appreciate it now), and my non-Spanish-fluent self didn’t automatically know how to say “avocado” in Spanish.
To this day, I’ll never know what inspired my response. The Jeanette of the time was one who, when thrown a curveball she hadn’t planned for, would typically respond by doing her best approximation of an animal, frozen when caught in the act of doing something they shouldn’t be doing. The Jeanette of now, reassured by the confidence that comes with age that she doesn’t in fact have to know everything, would have admitted she didn’t know and would have invited some exploration to find out.
That day, unwilling to be the first Jeanette and not yet equipped to be the second Jeanette, I did what I think was the next best thing… I improvised.
“That is a FANTASTIC question, Kim, and I love your curiosity. I’ll tell you what… I will give FIVE extra credit points to every student who can come in tomorrow knowing how to say ‘avocado’ in Spanish.”
Reminder: this was in 1988… before there were computers in classrooms, or access to the internet, or googling.
That night, at home, there I was… frantically searching my English-to-Spanish dictionary… how the hell do you say "avocado” in Spanish?
(The answer, by the way, is most commonly either aguacate or palta, depending on the country in which you’re speaking of these delicious fruits).
I think back on that experience, and I realize that a lucky confluence of conditions helped to make it an experience that didn’t kick my butt, eat me up, and spit me back out. Because goodness knows I wasn’t actually well-prepared to be successful in the classroom. But several things worked in my favor:
I was teaching in a really good school, with (generally) really well-behaved kids. I had very few behavioral challenges to deal with… and which I’d have been VERY ill-equipped to handle, if I’d faced them.
Some of the students I knew personally - remember, this was the high school I’d graduated from four years prior, and since my younger sister was five years younger than I, some of these kids knew my sister as their friend. As a result, they went out of their way to be helpful and cooperative, even when I was flailing.
I had incredibly supportive colleagues. They wanted a JPT graduate to succeed. They also, none of them, wanted to teach Spanish I. :) So they helped me be successful- they loaned me lesson plans, tests & quizzes, and most of all … their insights.
Although I wasn’t fluent in Spanish, as an English major I was reasonably expert in the English language, grammar, etc. At the same time, though, my biggest “gift” with the English language was that I could take grammatical terms and, rather than focus on the terms themselves, I knew how to give concrete, helpful examples (ask me some day to explain to you how to know when to use “I” vs “me” in a “He gave the gift to Suzie and….” type of scenario, and I’ll teach you a trick you’ll never forget). That was enormously helpful in trying to help kids understand some of the basics of language construction in a language they didn’t know, when they often couldn’t understand those basics in their own native language. I saw kids get better at grammar not only in Spanish, but even in English
… and that was not only gratifying and confidence-boosting, it was a huge jumping off point for my NEXT teaching experience.