Level IV

The Level IV class is in the middle of the day.  These students are a very different skill level from those who help me begin the morning and end the afternoon.  Luckily their abilities are similar to those of many of the students I just taught in the Bronx.  It’s a small class and a small room.  We have ten students every day.  They are mostly in their 20’s, but a few are 30, 40, and 50, and there is even a 12 year old boy from Colombia.  His family is visiting for a month.  He already learns a lot at a private school, so he is very confident, and most of the material comes more easily to him, which is a normal trend in foreign language study.

Whenever I ask them about culture shock, they eventually bring up the food in America, and all of the fat and sugar.  You can definitely eat healthy here, you just have to make some careful choices.  The boy had initially said that food in his home country was better, but then admitted that the fast food and sweets here are so delicious, even if it isn’t the healthiest food.  He appears to be a wiser, more confident and quicker learner than his peers, but he reveals his age when he talks about riding unicorns, dinosaurs eating people's faces, and visiting pony land in his answers to grammar questions.

We have a ten minute break between the two hours, so I went to the vending machine to get some chips, as I’d forgotten to bring my usual granola bar.  The boy was already there, about to buy a snack.  The day before he’d had Oreo's, and I’d challenged him to read the ingredients to see if he knew any words.  He knew a few.  We evaluated his choices beforehand today.  He’d wanted Skittles before I’d gotten there, and even paid for them, but they had gotten stuck in the machine.  He eventually settled on vanilla sandwich cookies.  I once again challenged him to read the ingredients and see how many words he knew.  It was sort of a joke, because a native speaker wouldn’t know those words either.  He can eat all the delicious food he wants.  So can the rest of us, but he’s only 12, and he’s learning a new language in a room full of adults.  He’s got time.  I envy his bright future, because he already seems so far ahead of me when I was his age.  Then again, when we returned to class, I realized that I was much happier to be standing and leading the class instead of squirming in my seat.