Testing My Confidence on Day One!

Source: http://wifflegif.com/

This week, McGraw-Hill Education posted my guest blog, Feeling Like a Fraud as a Teacher: Reconciling with Your Abilities and Gaining Confidence in Your Own Teaching. In the blog, I disclosed some of my insecurities as a Spanish teacher and shared how I overcame them.

On today, the first day of school for teachers, my confidence was hilariously put to the test.

Our school's new Spanish teacher lived in Japan for seven years. When a colleague introduced him another teacher who speaks English, Spanish and Japanese (yes, we have kick-butt teachers at our school!), the new teacher greeted her in Spanish, then started going!

I'd been anxious to hear the new teacher's Chilean accent, but my mouth dropped when he started speaking. In my head I was thinking: Oh, crap! I can't understand a thing he's saying! This is NOT going to go well for me!

Turns out he was speaking Japanese!  Whew! Who knew Japanese could sound anything like Spanish?

We all had a good laugh at my expense.

(And yes, by the way, I can understand his Spanish!)


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