I know if the translation makes sense when I look at Renata’s face. Is she nodding and smiling that radiant, happy willingness to tackle a new assignment I have given her? Or is she giving me this:
nada. The lovely statue of a teenage single mother from Mexico who stays in school for the sake of her son, her
hijo, Mateo, but who is getting no meaningful words from Google Translate at this moment.
Or maybe it is because of my American accent, and not Google’s fault at all. I used to think I had an ear for accents. Now I follow every attempt to speak her language with a grimace and “That’s really bad Spanish. . . .”
She is the only Spanish-only student I have, which indicates how small my school is. There are under fifty students in the whole high school. I teach them all.
Renata, of course, isn’t the only one who knows Spanish. There’s a bilingual Mexican-American kid, Paulo. He talks to Renata in Spanish to make sure she understands her assignments. She laughs at him and corrects his sloppy Spanish, so sometimes he just shakes his head when I ask him for help. “She’ll make fun of me!” In another class there are caucasian kids taking Spanish as a foreign language. I lean on them to interpret for me, too. In still another English class (I have Renata in three classes, bless our souls), I seat Renata near a Mexican-American girl, Maria, and the new kid, a boy named Jose who contradicts me when I say I would like to visit his native El Salvador. “No, you wouldn’t. You do not want to go there.”
Jose’s English is better than Renata’s, but not as good as Paulo’s or Maria’s. There are pauses as he thinks of a word. Anything beginning with “sp” becomes “esp”—“Espending money,” “Listening to Espotify.” Anything beginning with “st” becomes “est”—“Climbing estairs,” “Esteering the car.” He’s plenty bright, so my lessons on subordinating conjunctions and comma splices help his writing noticeably. Part of me wishes Renata would progress as quickly in learning English. But I remember how long it takes—years—for a language learner to become fluent.
In the meantime, I buy a Spanish/English dictionary with classroom supply funds. I use Google Translate to prepare texts for her. I make her practice English phrases out loud: “May I please use the bathroom?” and (as she holds her water bottle up for a visual), “May I please get water?” Slowly, slowly, she is learning.
I have taken only one professional development class on teaching English as a second language. Over the years as a teacher, I’ve observed in dual-immersion classes, participated in a week-long Summer Spanish Institute, and provided differentiation for all kinds of learners in my high school English classes, no matter their native language. That's my training. But I want to learn more. I want to help kids more.
Sometimes it’s tough caring this much, trying this hard. There are days when I don’t get materials prepared for Renata’s classes before the day begins. There are times when Renata is tired, her brown eyes glazed over because she can’t keep up with the conversation in the classroom, or she’d rather be with her son, or she just doesn’t care today. It’s then that I invite her to join me at the computer as I fire up Google Translate, not to give her a new assignment or to translate a short story for her to read. Just to ask her in her own language, “How are you doing today? How is your son?” She wakes right up, smiles appreciatively, and types her response.
If my Spanish were better, I could ask these important, unimportant questions in a real conversation. Since I’m a beginner, I am glad to live in the digital age, when I can instantly communicate with my English-learner without a human translator.
Of course I want Renata to pass her three English classes. More importantly, I want her to know that I care about her. If not for building relationships with students like her, the teaching life would be bleak for many of us in the trenches. Because of the students, I thank God for the extra labor, for the time lost to translating, for the words lost in translation. For the chance to be unforgettable to an English learner.
Names have been changed.
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