Loading ...
`I am a student again and my head hurts. Or better: Sou estudante autra vez e doi-me a cabeca. Every now and then I have an experience that reminds me of what it feels like to be a student learning something that is utterly new.
Whether it is a science or a language, a set of skills or a way of thinking, there is new vocabulary to learn, new protocols to master, new rules for practices that are themselves novel and sometimes strange. Learning, real learning- the kind that changes how one understands oneself and acts in the world- is often not comfortable.
The reminder comes this time as a result of a week spent in an intensive language school in Lisbon. For three hours each morning in group class, three hours each afternoon in individual tutoring, and nearly three hours each evening in homework (trabalha de casa), I have been wrestling with the Portuguese language.
The wrestling starts early each morning as I walk to school bombarded by city sights and signs that are unfamiliar. (If a pasteleria sells pastry and a café sells coffee, does a farmacia sell farms??? (Don’t be silly, Barb, it’s pharmaceuticals.) My wrestling continues into the evening as I “relax “ by watching televisao- em Portugues, of course.
My head spins through the night in sleep that is disturbed by dreams of conjugations and irregular constructions.
As a teacher, it is easy to forget what it feels like to be a learner. I inhabit my role -and status- as an expert all too easily, quite comfortable with my knowledge and unquestioning of the trust that my students usually place in my guidance.
If I am not careful, this habitude is dangerous.
I can become impatient with the student who doe not understand the point I am making or overly harsh with the student who repeatedly asks, “What do you want?” with respect to some assignment.
It has become once again clear to me this week that when I react this way I do not encourage learning. This point was driven home to me because I was the worst student in my class this week!
Now, it is true that there were only three other students in the class- two professors of sociology from the University of Berlin (married to each other and visiting Portugal for the fourth time) and one young woman from Paris whose father is Portuguese -who did have a head start on me because of their prior experience, and because this was their second week at the language school. It was not hard to be the worst student in that company.
But no matter how much I told myself that I could learn and would learn, there were many moments when my self-doubt turned to real fear. My teacher, competent and kind in many ways, didn’t always help. She was frustrated at my inability to keep up conversationally with the other students.
Her response to my blank looks was veiled impatience and occasional not-quite-joking remarks about my look of terror when she called on me. She was right. I was terrorized. I didn’t want to be – or feel – inept. I didn’t want to disappoint.
I wanted to speak well. I did my trabalha de casa faithfully. But I have to admit my progress has been slow -a blow to my confidence but a boon for my humility.
Slow as it has been, I have progressed in large part because of my afternoon tutor who responded to my halting attempts at conversation much differently.
This teacher’s approach stands in sharp contrast to my morning teacher. She was unfailingly patient, encouraging me to try to speak and accepting what I said until I got a little momentum going, then gently correcting my grammar and reshaping my pronunciation.
When I got it right -it did happen occasionally- she did not make a big fuss or congratulate me. She just took me seriously and responded in conversation appropriately.
Sometimes I understood what she said to me, sometimes I did not, but I was thrilled to know that I had said something worth responding to.
No faux reinforcement is anywhere near as powerful as the recognition that you have hit the mark. I was motivated to speak again, and to listen more carefully.
What my afternoon teacher understands and my morning teacher may not is that any student can, and will, only learn when he or she is not stuck in the paralysis that accompanies the fear of looking and being “dumb.” Even talented and motivated students can find themselves in that position by virtue of circumstances beyond their own control.
This is a lesson worth remembering, one I will take with me. My students and I will struggle every day to understand each other but I promise to be patient with them -and myself.
Dr. Barb Stengel has been a member of the educational foundation since 1985. She writes “Uncommon Sense” for The Snapper.