I feel that Spanish class is...

This Friday marks the end of the 2nd trimester with my students. I honestly can't believe that in just under 4 months, my first job will be over. This year has flown by! I guess times flies when you're having fun, right? As a wrap-up to the 2nd trimester, I had my students fill out a self-reflection about how much Spanish they have learned, how their behavior is in class, and what they think about Spanish class. I told them they could write whatever they want, as long as they give a reason and are nice. They could write boring as long as they justified their response. You know, the whole "constructive criticism" thing. Here are some of their responses...

- I think Spanish is fun and a little boring because I like making books but don't care for the tests.
- I think Spanish is kind of fun because sometimes it's fun and sometimes it's not.
- I feel Spanish is boring because we have to talk in Spanish.
- I feel Spanish is fun because we play fun games and have a fun teacher.
- I feel Spanish is fun because I like to learn a new language.
- I think Spanish is awesome! :) Because I think it's fun to learn a new language and Mrs. Zhang is awesome because she is so nice.
- I feel Spanish is interesting because the words are really weird and hard to spell.
- I think Spanish BORING! I think that because why do we need to learn Spanish, it is useless! I'm not going to go to Mexico and speak Spanish! We need to be learning Chinese because we're going to be out in the world on our own, we don't need Spanish.


Overall, the majority of the comments agreed that Spanish is fun. However, that last comment I wrote about Spanish being BORING....? That was the first paper I read. It doesn't make me sad that they think Spanish is boring.... what hurts me is that they wrote it LARGE and in all CAPS with a giant exclamation point. I wrote a note back to that student saying "You might not think Spanish is useful now but you never know when you'll need it. A lot of Americans need to use Spanish in their everyday lives, so you may need to use it even in Illinois." I'm not going to confront this student about it; I'm just going to let the note do it's job. My husband tells me to take everything with a grain of salt since they are elementary students but it still hurt a little. I was expecting most of the comments/reasoning that I got, but that one threw me for a loop. I do need to remember though that the vast majority of the papers had nothing but positive words to say. I can't please everyone all the time so I am just going to push that comment out of my head.