Pintar con un Toque

I was assigned to teach the AP Spanish Language & Culture course at my high school this year. It’s easily the best period of the day for me—Fascinating curriculum, teaching and learning in nearly 100% Spanish, mature students, small class size, etc. 

The coolest thing, though, for me, is that I had six of these seven students three years ago in my level 2 classes when they were freshmen, and they were all memorable kids at that time, so to now have them as seniors, I get to see how they’ve grown over the past three years from the seeds we planted, and it’s like one last hurrah together before they ride off into the sunset.

I’m not sure if the feeling is mutual, but I absolutely love these kids. I look forward to seeing them every day and think about them often outside of work.

Anyway, I called this post Pintar con un Toque (the best translation of “Painting with a Twist” that I could figure) because in the photo that inspired the post, you can see Eva and Jordan, two students in the class, teaching the others (plus Cole, the student-teacher sharing my classroom this year) an art lesson in Spanish. It basically was a “Painting with a Twist” class, pero en español y sin vino.

But ahhhhhh!!! It was probably the best class period of the year for so many reasons: It was student-led, included a cultural component (brief presentation about Pablo Picasso), student talk was 100% Spanish, everyone was engaged, etc. etc. I enjoyed being a student for once, too.

Below is a picture from the beginning of the class period, as well as one of the paintings that we made.