yeah I know you did not ask!
Something triggered this memory today, I am not sure what.
Several years ago I started my Spanish learning journey by taking a night class at the local community college. I did this for 3 reasons. First, I did have a desire to learn the language. Secondly, I was in St. Louis working a programming contract with Edward Jones. I knew absolutely no one in town. I thought this might be a good way to meet people, and it certainly was a better way to spend my evenings than sitting home watching TV.
At the first class meeting of my first Spanish class, the teacher did what a lot of teachers do in this situation. She went around the classroom asking people to introduce themselves and tell why they were taking Spanish.
The reader might need to know that at my heart I am a bit of a smart aleck, and I have been told on more than one occasion that my “sense of humor” is exceeding dry. That is foreshadowing in case you do not recognize it.
The Spanish teacher came around to me. I introduced myself. I then proceeded to add that the reason I was taking Spanish was because the voices in my head were speaking in Spanish and I wanted to know what they were saying. To me this was knee slapping funny, but it was greeted with dead silence in a room of 25 souls. The teacher looked at me with a panicked expression on her face and quickly moved on to the next student. It still makes me grin when I think about it.
Just as an aside, I did not find taking courses at the community college a good way to learn a language. At least at St. Louis Community College in the adult education section they have a 10 week program whereby you meet once a week for 2 hours. The teacher to student ratio is somewhere around 20 to 30 to 1. It decreases as you take more advanced courses. The problems are several, but primarily it is the 10 weeks between courses. If you took all three sessions, fall, spring and summer, you would have 30 weeks of classes with much time in between. 2 hours a week to learn a language is better than nothing, but not much. There is little to no coordination between the Spanish teachers on the course content. There is very little opportunity to actually speak the language in the classroom. Frequently the teacher is not a teaching professional, but a native speaker of the language. The native part is good, but there needs to be some degree of education on the teaching method. I could go on. I took most of the Spanish courses they offered, but in retrospect it was not a good use of my learning time.
