Testing Days

Foro is no help with languages. His strength is his silence.

However, languages are my thing. I just finished two days of testing kids in English, and now it’s my turn in German. I signed up for a Goethe Institute exam which takes place today.

It’s funny how some of my students approach learning vs how I do. I want to speak correctly, and they (globally) don’t care. It’s just a thing they do for school. This year they were terrible with me, some of them even insulting, and the thing is, they don’t have to be there. They chose my school among other schools and offers that are available, but then they’re angry about what we’re asking them to do and how we ask them to do it. I sat there fuming all year going “but, but, but!” then wondering if I was becoming the old, out-of-touch schnuck that I would have hated at a kid.

I’m convinced, however, that I’m not. I could do my job better, or implicate the kids more effectively, or improve in a thousand other ways, but the principles of teaching and learning? Those I’m still attached to.

What the kids wanted was to be left alone, among themselves so that they could ignore each other and chat on their phones with other kids who were somewhere else. I’m exaggerating, of course, but not much. The thing is, the world is big and it’s getting hungrier; resources are starting to thin out in many places and when they do, the smart ones aren’t going to stick around and starve to death. When they do, these kids better be prepared to hold onto their places not because they were born here, not because they feel entitled to their position in the world, but because they have the intelligence, talent, and resources to figure out some plan to share what’s left in the most equitable way possible. For that they’re going to need a whole host of skills, and languages are going to be part of that.

Foro thinks that languages are sort of a waste of time. He would think that, as his mouth is sewn shut. His eternal cuteness speaks a thousand words, however, in every language in the world.