Things are making sense...well for today at least...

We had three new students join our class today. Gladys is from Paris, Sarah is a teacher from Vermont, and don't-know-his-name-yet-because-I-wasn't-in-the-room-when-he entered is from Korea. This was after losing three students from my original class. It is very interesting to see my teachers adjust to the needs of the new students. Keep in mind that when a new student enters Don Quijote, they have to take a written and oral comprehension test. Based on the results of the test, they are placed in a class.

We are in the middle of learning about the different forms of the subjunctive tense. I know exactly how it feels to just be plopped mid-stream into a lesson/concept that everyone else has been studying except for you. It is not the most comfortable feeling. Luckily we all know how it feels and the teachers are pretty good about testing to see how much the new students know without embarrassing them too much in class. As a teacher, I have always found it difficult when a new student enters my class after the school year has started. You have to determine the student's background knowledge, their strengths, weaknesses, etc. My teachers here at school have this happen to them on a weekly basis! (I can learn a lot from them.) Some students come to Don Quijote and stay for as little as week. Others of course will stay for months and will move to different levels of classes. There is one guy in my class that is from Switzerland. He didn't speak a word of Spanish before he came to the school. After 8 weeks, not only is he an excellent speaker, but he knows his Spanish grammar. He will be at the school another 6 weeks. Pretty impressive.

As I worked on my homework tonight, I began realizing that things are starting to "click." Unfortunately, it has taken a good two weeks to really begin to feel comfortable in class. I am sure this will change at some point tomorrow when I am asked to complete an in-class assignment and have to look around the classroom with a "what the what" look on my face. There is one thing I have decided and that is that I am going to continue with my Spanish studies. In the past two weeks I have been here, I am have grown immensely in regards to my auditory and oral ability to communicate in Spanish. I may not know all the grammatical rules, but I am able to get around it with what I do know. There have been several instances where I have wanted to respond to something that has happened in Spanish and not in English. I actually had to take a few seconds to think about what my English response would be. Those moments, though few, have really made me realize how beneficial an immersion program really is. There have been moments when I am typing this blog that I have almost written my response in Spanish...maybe that will be my next entry...just a free flowing response in Spanish and English.

The title of our blog is "Dancing in Spanish." I am not quite ready for the full-length dance, but my words are definitely choreographing themselves to the music of the language.