When I first got into high school, I was completely lost in Spanish. I had Spanish 2 for my last class of the day, right after lunch. I don’t know how anyone ever expected me to be able to function, full of food and exhaustion with a teacher who refused to speak English. The class was beyond difficult because even though I was pretty good at book work, I was downright lousy and Spanish conversational skills. I went to my teacher a few weeks into the class and I told him that I was going to pass his class but I wasn’t going to learn to speak Spanish if I continued on as I was going. He said to me that if it was more important to me that I learn Spanish than it was for me to get a good grade then he could help. After that, I began going to his tutoring session after school where he usually helped people do their homework. With me, tutoring was very different. He would walk up to me and speak only in Spanish, asking questions that I had to answer using the words and concepts he had taught me. I didn’t always speak correctly and I’m positive that poor Mr. Pacheco was slightly irritated that I couldn’t always get speaking down despite acing every assignment and test. However, as the year went by, Mr. Pacheco realized how he could teach me to speak Spanish. He came up to during one of the tutoring sessions and said “Stop thinking before you speak and just say it.” It took me a week to figure out what he meant and 3 weeks to put his advice into practice. I remember I went to the tutoring session that day and when my teacher asked me a question I had to answer, I spoke without a second’s hesitation. The question was “What career would you like to have?” I answered “I like animals.” I didn’t answer his question but Mr. Pacheco looked like I had found the cure for cancer. From that day on I answered the questions and found that I didn’t need to overthink my answer, I just needed to answer the question how I saw fit. It was at this moment that I was able to overcome my block in the Spanish language.
