More on Teaching

I believe it's a good sign a teacher is doing something right when, after class is over, his students don't want to leave, but instead "hang out" with him, chatting about any fool thing that comes into their heads. I've had that experience several times this semester in my Russian 101 class. Tonight we focused on how good the old Soviet days were, and on Russian film, of which I know pathetically little. They dallied for nearly half an hour!

Did I mention I was teaching Russian this semester?

And loving it! I keep thinking, why didn't I go into this teaching of language thing from the very beginning? What made me choose history as my profession? Oh, yes, now I remember. Something elitist and smart-alecky about not wanting to study the hammer but use it. Ugh. I disgust myself. Still, I refuse to criticize myself for choices made in the distant past. I yam what I yam.

But I have come to realize that what I love most about teaching Russian is watching the evolution of the Russian-language speaker going on right before my eyes. More clearly than in a history course, it is possible to see my direct impact on the students. They might slaughter the pronunciation, they might butcher the spelling, but I am right there by their sides repeating, correcting, pronouncing, explaining, teaching, and they come out swinging, spouting words left and right, making a complete mess of it, but loving it, like children playing in the mud. I love the energy of that process.

The teaching of a foreign language carries with it a child-like quality. Learning a language is a form of play, not in a competitive sense, but in a creative sense. Each new word or grammatical concept is added to what is known before and increasingly numerous new combinations are possible. It's like doing a puzzle that will never be completed, never come to an end of pieces or combinations.

Teaching Russian this semester has also reawakened in me something that I have always deeply loved about learning a foreign language, and that is the secretive nature of the knowledge. When a person learns a foreign language, he passes through a kind of veil that will separate him forever from those who do not speak that language, pass into a chamber containing all those who do speak that language. There may be millions and millions of them, but they are an exclusive group, open only to those who have the time, effort, ear, and chutzpah to acquire the secret code.

And it's a membership with privileges. Tonight, for example, a colleague whom I have known for 10 years here at P.C., and with whom I have exchanged 10 words (more or less) in the course of that time, came up suddenly to my desk and began chattering about the fact that I teach the Russian 101 class--oh, are you the Russian teacher? (apparently she had just put 2 & 2 together). She said her husband was Russian (she's Latin American of some sort), she always wanted to learn Russian, was going to take my class when she heard about it, and that she would invite me and My Beloved over when all their Russian friends got together for poetry, music, and good food. Just like that, because I speak Russian, I'm in. How can you not love speaking another language?

And the fun continues, because I've been assigned to teach 102 next semester. I'm looking forward to it. Жду этого с нетерпением!