I'm taking Spanish in the local community college. First of all, when I signed up for the class, I had a feeling they would be teaching the south american version. I don't know, something about the hispanic population here, and the border being just a few miles away.

No, our teacher is a native of Spain. So we are learning Espanol from Spain, not Mexico. Anyway, we got our third test back today, and before she handed them back she had to express her disappointment. The class didn't so as well as she would have liked, and she had to let us know. I think it might have something to do with the fact that she tells us all the time that the things we are learning are ‘muy facil’. This is followed closely by ‘don’t worry’. So, what are these kids going to do? The last thing on a kid’s mind is studying, and when a teacher tells him or her not to worry, they equate that with not having to study. She expects something different, because what she wants to tell them is ‘don’t worry, if you study hard you won’t have a problem.’ It’s true, if I study only half as much as I really want to, I do ok. This is not what they hear though, so they do poorly on the tests, and it’s going downhill.

So then she starts handing back the tests, and one of the students asks her if she is going to drop the test with the lowest grade. They do that, even at the university my chem. Professor did it. He also graded on a curve, but he justified it with hard tests and demanding homework. Anyway, the teacher looked at the student as if she were speaking Greek. She may as well have been, this lady is from Spain, and they just don’t do those things there. She has been in the states for only a few years, and I get the feeling this is one of her first teaching positions.

I assumed, after the other students explained how it was done in their other classes, that she would see it as ludicrous and tell them so. Nope, she thought about it, and being a softy at heart, told them she would think about it. I was surprised, I didn’t think she would get even that far. But no, she is already considering pandering to the students, much as her American counterparts have been doing for years.

That wasn’t all though. Toward the end of the class, she encouraged the students that did very poorly on the test to take the test home and rework it. If they did that and gave it back to her she would give credit to them. I just can’t believe this is happening.