Spanish Exam

Even though I was offered a preschool director position for next year, I still wanted to take the Spanish exam. The PLACE World Languages Spanish exam is an added endorsement to certify me to teach Spanish to K-12th grade students.

I registered for this exam in December and spent many hours shadowing the Spanish teacher when I wasn't substituting in other classes. I also found many instructors online that give private 1 hour Spanish lessons for only $7/hour. I have 4 instructors and they all helped me in different ways.

I have Mynor, from Guatemala, who would help me respond to difficult questions in Spanish. In our last class, he asked me, "How do you think your city will change in 50 years? Give 5 predictions." He spoke English and would help me if I struggled. He became a very good friend.

I have Alejandro from Peru, who speaks very good English, so he was able to explain Spanish Grammar in great detail for me. He was very serious and professional.

I also have Carlos and Yoly who are both from Venezuela. They have become good friends of mine. Yoly is a Mom and we would spend most of our time talking about our families and other life events in Spanish. Carlos is an older man who has a very contagious laugh. His classes were so fun. Neither of them knew a word of English.

I took a total of 78 classes between all of them in about 6 months.

The Spanish exam was at Jefferson County High School at 1pm on a Saturday. I missed all of my kids soccer games that day, even a game for Carly's team that I coach. I have some guilt for that. When I showed up to test, a girl told me that she had failed the test 4 times. That wasn't great for my self-esteem. Another girl walked in 20 minutes late and didn't leave her cell phone out of the classroom. We had to wait for her to take care of things, before we could take our test, which was annoying. We all kept saying that she shouldn't be a teacher, anyway.

The first part of the test was listening. They would say a real life situation in Spanish and we would respond. One question I remember was: "There is an emergency in your city when you are being asked to close all the windows and take cover. What do you think is happening?"

The second and third parts was correcting errors in Grammar and answering Latin America History questions. That was hard for me!

The speaking and writing parts were the ones that I was most nervous about, but they ended up being the easiest for me. The speaking part told me that a friend from Mexico was moving to the US for college. Tell him where he can buy furniture for his home. Tell him that there are sales in the newspaper for cheap furniture. There was a lady recording all of my speaking for 2 minutes. I had to write a letter requesting a grant for a yearlong study-abroad program for teachers. Tell them why they should choose you for the grant. Explain where you want to go and why you want to be chosen.

Overall, I think I did well on the Speaking, Writing, and Listening. But, I struggled with the history and grammar. I hope this is enough to pass the test, but I will not know until June 5th. I am a little worried, since many people have to retake this test.

This morning, I woke up to one of my Spanish instructors asking how my test went. She said that it sounds like I did great and she hopes I get a good result. If I do not did not pass, it just means that I need more practice. She thinks that I have made huge progress since we first started. Man! Learning a new language is one of the hardest things I have every had to do!