By Georgina Palencia.

A few months ago, Robert, a model Canadian student, told me: I’m leaving my therapist, the Spanish classes are more efficient for me. Robert is a geophysicist, manager of an oil affairs company and passionate about languages. He takes classes twice a week, one of them is a group class  and the other is private.

What did Robert see, and even his own therapist, who agreed that the Spanish classes were helping him release stress and giving him thoughts clarity? According to them, by making an effort to express in Spanish the circumstances that bring him down, and  his emotions,  by putting the linguistic structures in each place, they leveraged  the correct place of the emotional structure. Quite a discovery for me.

I will clarify something. In private classes, as a teacher and as academic leader of @spanishperfecto, I promote a clear plan, with a literary, auditory or visual resource  to exploit the conversation. It is current and controversial, and naturally  has some linguistic focus.

I don’t approve of conversation or private classes having no plan or easily deviating from their original goals. However, I confess in conversation classes, I am open to the student imposing their need for conversation; because we know that the stronger the motivation to speak, the more fluid, and even correct, the expression will be.

This is how a class can go from being about a topic of global interest to being about a very personal and even intimate topic.

But when does the student manage to have the confidence with a Spanish teacher to make his class a personal therapy, and also practice Spanish feeling that her focus is not the language but its interaction tool? When the teacher has some qualities, qualities that coincide between being a good listener and a good teacher.

I have created a kind of decalogue, nothing pretentious. It is a sequence, a chain of values ​​of a good teacher.

• A good teacher promotes speech, not only exposes and concentrates on his ideas. He creates any strategy and excuse for his students to speak. Speaking is one of the skills that is aimed at without giving it the crucial space in each encounter from the beginning.
• A good teacher is interested in what his students express. He shows his interest through many codes. He gestures, he comments. He is not satisfied with an answer; one answer leads to another question and thus creates a chain of speech.
• A good teacher asks and knows what and how to ask. Some time ago I read an article called: Ask well so they answer you well, and there were glorious keys on the subject, but nothing more than the title already teaches us a lesson. We become experts at asking questions. Questions that our students are always able to answer comfortably. We do not ask questions to make them fail or feel incapable. We ask them questions with the structures, the vocabulary that they can understand and respond to. When a student doesn’t understand a question, we should ask ourselves: Is it the right question? I know of teachers who repeat questions or say them more slowly or raise the volume of their voice. I do not rule out  that the student can answer, but perhaps we are not asking the most appropriate question.
• A good teacher knows how to listen. The evidence of his interest, in addition to being genuine, must be strategic. Listening carefully recognizes progress and needs reinforcement.
• A good teacher must be patient. I have seen teachers who, faced with a student’s need for a word, rush to complete the sentence. I am not saying that we cannot do it to get our student out of a void, sometimes suffocating and lonely, but that it is not anxiety, impatience, that guides the destiny of the student’s idea and phrase.
• A good teacher does not judge. While he listens patiently, form and content, he does not point out errors, neither of conduct nor of expression. He is empathetic and friendly. Judging inhibits silences, and even promotes fear and lies; two enemies of free and genuine expression that should be aspired to in a language class.
• A good teacher welcomes mistakes. Just as making mistakes is part of life, it is also part of the process of putting a language into action. As much as students know the regular and irregular conjugations of verbs, they will fail to use them. They may have all the information about object pronouns and will confuse direct with indirect. Is this really a bug? This is information for the teacher, about what to reinforce and practice more. That is what you must make your student understand, but first understand it.
• A good teacher celebrates the process and not the product. Many times I tell my students after an answer or a participation: Perfect! I do not say correct if it is not correct, but I say perfect, because it is perfect. At the heart of my sentence there is a substantive difference that sometime, if necessary, I will let you know. Although the sentence is not correct, it can be perfect if it is on the right path to being correct.
• A good teacher gives concrete linguistic and communicative feedback. During the meeting and especially at the end of the meeting the teacher should give concrete feedback. The student aspires to concrete reinforcement and progress. The teacher can take note of some peculiarities that you want to review with him. Nothing that intimidates you, but everything that motivates you to recognize the meeting was productive and valuable.
• A good teacher sets homework, that’s right. Actions outside of class, as well as outside of therapy, are essential for progress. So, the student must come out with new challenges, and those challenges should be assessed in their next session.

Is it true or not that teachers and therapists have shared qualities?

👇🏼

If you are a Spanish teacher and you are reading  this, do you identify yourself? If you are a Spanish student, do you see your teacher reflected?

In my dual role as teacher/therapist, I am familiar with the pressures of the oil industry, the exploits to promote and maintain simultaneous love affairs, the hardships of immigrants from Australia or China, the indecision in choosing a career, heartbreak, non-binary relationships, child loss, bullying, and much more. Real topics, reasons for speaking, the best excuses to later intervene tactically in the purification of relative phrases, past contrasts or uses of the subjunctive.

As you see, although a Spanish class is not serious therapy, because the atmosphere is relaxed and even humorous, it is a seriously a therapy.

😁