Los The X Men

My Spanish class is the best.  I know you're supposed to act cool and nonchalant, maybe even pretend the opposite is true, but I've never been cool.  In fact, I'm usually the antithesis of cool, which is not even uncool, it's dorky.  Not only do I not play it cool, I call attention to the fact that I like something by laughing (inappropriately) loud at a funny thing, belching after eating something particularly delicious, or blabbering on about a gadget or idea I find fascinating.  Or I write a blog about it.

My Spanish class is the best.  As I've said before, I thought this was going to be my crap class, the one I fell asleep in, the one I begrudgingly attended, the one I'd try to avoid whenever possible, the one I'd just have to fight my way through.  I was beyond nervous because it was also the first face-to-face class I've taken since going back to school, and I hate it when teachers make you work in groups and no one wants you to be in their group unless you're good-looking or popular.  Pressure!  On top of that, I'm, you know, not in my late teens or twenties.  I'm not even in my early 30s.  Nor am I a pretty girl or popular, and by popular I mean, like, people not like me.

I digress.  I was nervous and I already expected to dislike the class.

What a surprise, then, that not only is it suck-less, it's my favorite!

If someone tries to tell you all teachers are created equal, then you have my permission to punch that asshole in the face.  It's not true.  Again, it's the antithesis of true.  I've worked with some bad teachers, my kids have each had at least one bad teacher (or long-term substitute teacher), and my husband has had a few very bad teachers at KCC who weren't even masters in their given subject.  An English teacher, for example, especially one teaching 100, should, I don't know, be able to properly use punctuation, and maybe should spell words correctly.  Perhaps an English 100 teacher should not randomly use quotation marks and should avoid tossing apostrophes at plural nouns.

Here's a free fun fact for you: being a "teacher" doesn't mean that a person knows how to teach.

My Spanish teacher is a good teacher.  Thus far, anyway.  I usually save these kinds of things for my ratemyprofessor.com reviews, but why wait?  He seems to care about his students and actually gets to know them.  From the very first day of class, he helped create an environment that fostered a sense of community among us, the students.  He didn't treat us like just another batch of dummies he has to endure for however many weeks-- we were individuals with unique personalities.  The other stuff-- the classroom management stuff-- is pretty tight, too.  Assignments are clear and relevant, tests are challenging but fair, grades are given back in a reasonable amount of time, and feedback is constant.  He is able to read his class, knows when to kick ass and when to make nice.  Yes, I still dread being called on sometimes, but mostly because my brain feels disorganized or I feel unprepared.

And because of the edifying classroom environment, we, the students, have greatly benefitted.  At least, I know I benefit from it.  My classmates are awesome!  We're all pretty different from each other and we're all kind of weird (though some of us are weirder than others, I think), but it works.  It feels like community or family or, as Jeff puts it, a gang of superheroes.  It took a little bit of time, but we eventually began having weekly study groups-- daily sessions during the week of our final-- and those study groups kind of opened the door to getting better acquainted.  I mean, we've already learned the most random details about each other because of the weird nature of language classes (what's your name?  how old are you?  where are you from?  what do you like to do in your free time? Rinse and repeat), so it was only natural that the process would continue outside of class.

Which can only benefit our Spanish-acquiring pursuits.  I feel more comfortable making dumb mistakes among my fellow superheroes than in front of strangers, after all.  We can easily reach out to each other when we come across a pain in the ass sentence in our homework.  We help each other, we support each other, we encourage each other.  And maybe that wouldn't happen if the climate of the classroom wasn't so warm and come-as-you-are.  Maybe that wouldn't happen if we didn't feel SEEN.  I feel seen.  And valued.

My sixth grade teacher, Mrs. Abe, was the very first person I recall who taught me to take risks.  "Give me an answer," she would say, "even if you're not sure it's the right one."  It's a lesson that has shaped my life, no joke.  She was the first teacher I remember who encouraged her students to take chances and provided for them an environment in which they could feel safe to try.  It is something I try to bring to my own classes, and now that I find myself a student in a similar class, I can testify.  It works!

I'm not cool.  I like the subject, my teacher, my fellow superheroes.  I feel crazy lucky to be involved in this endeavor, this learning a foreign language with these guys and girls.  It's fun and fulfilling.  I feel like we are our own microcosm of awesomeness.  And that's a good thing since we spend two hours of every weekday afternoon together, conjugating verbs, memorizing vocabulary, and hoping profe doesn't call on us.

We've lost members of our gang along the way.  Some left us early, some at the end of the 101, but we've also gained new heroes at the onset of 102.  I miss them, for reals, and class isn't the same without them.  But for a thing to grow, it must also change, and I can embrace it or fight it.  I don't like fighting.

Here's to a growing gang of fledgling superhero dorks.

Exactly Where I'm At

Going back to school in my thirties has taught me a few things about myself.  I can be a good student.  High school taught me I can pull off being a mediocre student without lifting a finger, college out of high school taught me I can get good grades with my innate intelligence alone, but going to college as a 30-something year old woman has shown me I got study skills coming out of my butt and intelligence to spare.

Fs were commonplace for me in high school.  I loved not living up to my potential-- it was a lot of fun. I had friends who complete the square for me and who gave me notes for a book I didn't read but had to write a report on.  It's a wonder I passed at all, and I lived in perpetual fear that I was going to get kicked out.  No joke.  But it was fun.  I had fun.  And maybe that was short-sighted and myopic, and maybe I'm paying for that now.  I don't care.  I took classes I wanted and enjoyed them!  Novel idea, right?  I took drama twice, photography twice, and won an award at the LCC film festival for the PSA I wrote and edited in tv production.  I lay out in the middle of Konia field with my friends, ate sandwiches in Midkiff.

Since returning to college a couple years ago, I've been a model student with a 4.0 GPA.  That means I've earned As in all my classes, including the ones with which I have a rocky relationship, like Biology and Psychology.  I work hard, I push my way through classes like a bull, I wrestle difficult concepts and make them my bitch.  Because I get As and have a 4.0 GPA and this is what I've come to expect of myself.

This is my last semester at KCC, and I was all set with Ed classes, accelerated Spanish (101 and 102 in one semester!), and a geography lab.  Over the summer, I had a huge burst of confidence in the form of a superawesome English professor and decided I would stick my tongue out at Education and major instead in English.  I dropped my Ed classes and picked up Creative Writing.  I thought Spanish was going to be the problem child this semester, but I was wrong.  This English class is a tangled mess that I can't seem to navigate my way through, even though the assignments are straightforward and easily accomplished.  I spend hours working on a poem or short story, and by hours, I mean hours a day over a span of days, and still I get a grade I'm not happy with.  I bang my head repeatedly against the wall, and if you can believe it, have yet to attain an answer.  What's going on?

It's not so much that I expect to get all As on every assignment, but come on.  The mediocre grade I receive on a poem I put a lot of effort into really does not motivate me, especially when that grade is not accompanied by any notes.  There are no suggestions, no observations, just a number.  What does this number teach me?  That I can put a lot of effort into something, something I can kinda feel proud of, and then get shit on.

So, I'm lacking the ability to stick my middle finger at it today, and it's bumming me out.  It's not just the poem that I've received a weird grade on, but it's the most recent and right now, at the end of a long fucking week, I don't have the strength to protect my heart from the blow.  As an educator, I would never tell my students, "Hey, if you're having trouble reading now, you may as well give up.  You've tried to read this book three times already and you still don't know that word?  Loser."  And that's how this grade makes me feel right now.

Why am I telling you this?

Because I've decided I don't care.  I remember playing in the middle of Konia field with toys Lani Girl stole, people giving us confused looks because Konia field is only good for walking across.  I remember spending hours in Midkiff basement, sewing together our AIDS PSA.  I remember giving oral book reports to Dr. Whiting for Independent Reading and quoting poetry to Mr. Slagel in the halls of Konia.  School was fun!  Learning was fun! And I had teachers who also seemed to appreciate the fact that I enjoyed their subjects even if I didn't score the best grades or, you know, always complete the assignments.

I'm telling you this because instead of trying to write for my teacher so that I can get that fucking A, I'm going to keep writing for me.  Because I can't make him happy with my writing, and writing to try to suit him doesn't make me happy.  It's not that I don't think I can't learn anything from him-- there's much I can learn and I'm sure he's quite knowledgable and talented.  But it doesn't feel right to me.  I feel like I'm bending in uncomfortable ways simply to meet someone else's criteria only to fail at it.  It's depressing and ends with me hiding myself away in my dark room watching depressing movies about kids falling in love only to be torn apart by cancer.  And dying of cancer.  Because I don't necessarily want to be cheered up, I just need to remind myself that there are bigger problems out there.

I'm telling you this because I'm making a pledge to myself and to you.  From here on, I'll write to complete my assignments, but I'm going to do it my way.  I'm going to listen to my stomach and heart and whatever other body parts screaming at me.  I'm going to write for me.  And granted, that might not even be the best idea, I don't know, I'm no expert.  I just want to be happy and do what makes me happy.