Poco loco

Today I volunteered for an hour at an after-school program for kids that is connected to my language school. The director put me into the class where middle school kids are learning English. The teacher was very welcoming and glad to have me there, native speaker that I am. The kids were shy at first, but soon warmed up and showed themselves to be the funny, bright, and squirrelly kids I remember from my days long ago as a middle school teacher. As the phrase goes here, they were poco loco.

What struck me was how little they knew. The assignment was two-fold: (1) write down the English sounds of the letters of the alphabet, and (2) come up with words that begin with each letter of the alphabet. Only a couple of the 12 or so kids got all the sounds right and they all struggled with having any words at all. The teacher did a whole class brainstorm, which was a good idea, but individually almost everyone had trouble. I first moved around, then just sat down and the kids started coming to me for help. I was the expert!

They were funny making the sounds of the words, smacked and nudged each other as they tried to get my attention, and were delighted when I gave them a word. I always spoke to them in Spanish about the meaning of the word and even acted some out. I had to spell each word, which I did with the Spanish pronunications, but they got mixed up thinking I was giving them the English pronunications.We laughed a lot and so did the teacher. And… I learned some Spanish from them! It was a gas, all the way around.

Seeing the kids struggle with the simplest of things in another language reminded me of me. I’m not at zero like they are, but interacting with native speakers is very demanding and I’m constantly aware of what I don’t know and can’t say. This learning of another language is no easy task, at any age.