Spanish Class

Now, that I'm Profesora Aakhus - I'm remembering all the Spanish classes I had from high school to college... and most of my memories are FANTASTIC.  One thing I forgot - it's the struggle.  I forget how learning a language is SO gosh darn difficult. 

At Moorhead State, we had such a fun little group.  I always looked forward to my Spanish classes. Things changed though, when half of the group went to Puerto Rico, like over Christmas break or something, or a semester?  Some of those travelers decided that they were better than those of us who hadn't traveled to Spanish speaking countries yet.  In my clique of friends,   there was this beautiful girl with long, blond hair. Erin was very tall.   Her eyelashes were just so gwarsh darn long.  And she was just so nice.  Erin stuttered, so at times, Spanish was incredibly hard for her.  Luckily, our group of friends tried our best to help her forget it.

I  hadn't noticed the other clique started laughing more and talking amongst themselves whenever we would answer.

  One day, Erin turned to me, "They are laughing at my stutter."

"No..."  I exclaimed.  "No way.  They're just not paying attention in class. They're just being rude to our profesor."

But little by little, I started noticing the laugh whenever she answered out loud.

I could not believe I was actually in a college course.

"Erin, they're making fun of all of us... watch." 

Whenever I answered a question, I noticed the giggle too.

"See?  It's not just you."

We pointed it out to the rest of our group.  And little by little half of the room was against the other half of the room. Some those girls weren't the ring leaders - but they sat in the outer circle laughing at whatever was being said. 

I remember hoping with all my heart that none of those jerks would become teachers. But sadly, I know they did.

I'm sure we all know there are teachers in the midst who aren't so kind....  The ones who rig homecoming courts.  The ones who ask their students to correct each other's papers and make students call out their poor scores.The ones who make fun of other teachers to students in their classroom.  Ouch.

There isn't any sort of standardized test to weed those out now, is there?