One more on 8th grade Spanish
So, in keeping with my last 2 posts, I'm still thinking about my 8th grade Spanish class. As I mentioned, my teacher left us on Maternity leave for a month or 2. As a parent now, I find myself curious about how much time she took off, but at the time, all it meant to me was how long I'd have a substitute teacher.
And that is the point of today's post. The sub. Rather than the typical in-and-out one day-at-a-time substitute teachers, we needed a long term sub who could tackle the Spanish and French classes both for roughly 6 weeks, and keep us from just doing busy work.
The school failed to find one.
Instead, we got an aging soon-to-be senile woman prone to long discourses on tangents completely unrelated to the foreign languages we were studying. It was both painfully boring and incredibly liberating.
One day, she went on for well over 25 minutes of the 42 minute class talking about one time that she visited Brazil, and went to the Amazon Rain Forest to commune with nature. She was waxing poetic and reminiscing, and very obviously lost in her own memories. She talked for a long while about the beauty of the place, the flora, the fauna, the crime that was our people's tendency to slash and burn large areas of it. She spoke of her time there as a "religious awakening" - her exact words.
Fast forward 2 years.
I am a sophomore in high school, and now in my 3rd year of Spanish. (All I can remember now is "Las cucarachas entran, pero not pueden salir".) Our (different) Spanish teacher is out for a 3-day stint, recovering from some minor surgery, and again, we are in need of a substitute teacher. Guess who fills in? Yup. Tangent lady.
By the third day, the students have all grown restless. We need out of there, and we need it soon, and we do NOT want to work. We are prodding her and gently trying to coax her into new tangents and reminiscences, mostly to keep her from assigning us homework that day. People are trying to work in jumping off points into questions about the lesson, hoping she'll bite.
I, instead, went all out, and asked apropos of nothing, "Have you ever been to the Amazon Rain Forest, and, if so, have you ever experienced a religious awakening while there?" Verbatim, out of nowhere.
Half the students in the class stared at me openmouthed and dumbstruck, sure I'd be chastised for blatantly trying to waste all of our time. Instead, her face lit up like Broadway and she launched into a rambling discourse about tree frogs. Totally different and unrelated story to the first one BTW. I even remember Drew whats-his-name (he played the absent but omnipresent casting guy in our school's production of A Chorus Line the year before....) giving me the Wayne's World 'We're not worthy' bow a few times right then and there.
I was the subject of much reverence and awe in Spanish class for many weeks afterward. Alas, though, my short-lived popularity did not lead to any better dating prospects, which was really all I wanted anyway.
No worries,
Matt
And that is the point of today's post. The sub. Rather than the typical in-and-out one day-at-a-time substitute teachers, we needed a long term sub who could tackle the Spanish and French classes both for roughly 6 weeks, and keep us from just doing busy work.
The school failed to find one.
Instead, we got an aging soon-to-be senile woman prone to long discourses on tangents completely unrelated to the foreign languages we were studying. It was both painfully boring and incredibly liberating.
One day, she went on for well over 25 minutes of the 42 minute class talking about one time that she visited Brazil, and went to the Amazon Rain Forest to commune with nature. She was waxing poetic and reminiscing, and very obviously lost in her own memories. She talked for a long while about the beauty of the place, the flora, the fauna, the crime that was our people's tendency to slash and burn large areas of it. She spoke of her time there as a "religious awakening" - her exact words.
Fast forward 2 years.
I am a sophomore in high school, and now in my 3rd year of Spanish. (All I can remember now is "Las cucarachas entran, pero not pueden salir".) Our (different) Spanish teacher is out for a 3-day stint, recovering from some minor surgery, and again, we are in need of a substitute teacher. Guess who fills in? Yup. Tangent lady.
By the third day, the students have all grown restless. We need out of there, and we need it soon, and we do NOT want to work. We are prodding her and gently trying to coax her into new tangents and reminiscences, mostly to keep her from assigning us homework that day. People are trying to work in jumping off points into questions about the lesson, hoping she'll bite.
I, instead, went all out, and asked apropos of nothing, "Have you ever been to the Amazon Rain Forest, and, if so, have you ever experienced a religious awakening while there?" Verbatim, out of nowhere.
Half the students in the class stared at me openmouthed and dumbstruck, sure I'd be chastised for blatantly trying to waste all of our time. Instead, her face lit up like Broadway and she launched into a rambling discourse about tree frogs. Totally different and unrelated story to the first one BTW. I even remember Drew whats-his-name (he played the absent but omnipresent casting guy in our school's production of A Chorus Line the year before....) giving me the Wayne's World 'We're not worthy' bow a few times right then and there.
I was the subject of much reverence and awe in Spanish class for many weeks afterward. Alas, though, my short-lived popularity did not lead to any better dating prospects, which was really all I wanted anyway.
No worries,
Matt