Hablamos español.

Today started another round of Spanish classes. (With me as the teacher, in case you missed the previous post where I shared this information.)

I had such a stellar group last time, and they all wanted to continue right away. Claire is not doing her Level 2 class until August, so we started up a Level 1.5, a bit of a bridge class between Levels 1 and 2, hopefully a place where the students can get more comfortable actually using what they already know.

Too often with language learning, based on what I've seen and experienced first-hand, you learn a new topic, you might even understand it completely, but you stop using it when you go on to the next topic. By the time your daily-life Spanish has caught up to what you learned in class you're no longer confident in using certain skills. I'm hoping this 1.5 takes care of that a little bit for them by giving them another five weeks of studying and using what they know, rather than crowding the brain with too many new topics.

With the help of a couple of students spreading the word, I also managed to fill another Level 1 class, so it's a nice full morning of Spanish work.

With each class I teach, I get better at finding mistakes, better at hearing the errors as they occur rather than having to think about it. Teaching yoga taught me that the best way to learn something is to teach it to someone else, and these classes are driving that point home. They're making me study more, and look up things that I'm not sure about (whereas a non-teacher me might just say, "ehhh").

And it's so much fun. I remember being a high school student, watching a teacher lose control of her classroom and thinking I never wanted to be a teacher. But I've always loved teaching fitness and yoga, and now I love teaching Spanish. I think the age level of the students might have something to do with it.