Why My Son’s Spanish Teacher Is the Weirdest One He’s Ever Had
My son got in the car after the second week of middle school and said, “Mom, we have the weirdest Spanish teacher.” He didn’t say “bad.” He said weird, with a puzzled smile. I did what a parent does: I nodded and filed it in the back of my mind. A few weeks later, when parents were invited to sit in on classes, I found out what “weird” meant.
The classroom didn’t look like a language classroom. There was no vocabulary list on the board. Sra. Reyes had a canvas grocery bag on her desk and a pair of old sunglasses. She said “Hola” to the class, put on the sunglasses, and announced, “Soy una estrella de cine.” She posed like a movie star. The class laughed. She walked around the room tapping her chest, saying it over and over. “Soy una estrella de cine. Soy una estrella de cine.” Then she pulled a child-sized apron from the bag and tied it over her sweater. “Ahora soy la cocinera.” She stirred an invisible pot. “Cocino, cocino, cocino.” She pointed to the apron. “¿Quién soy?” The kid next to me whispered, “Cooker?” She heard him. “Sí, cocinera. In Spanish.”
It looked like chaos if you were used to textbooks. But after fifteen minutes, I saw a pattern. She gave the students a stream of Spanish, but she made sure every word had a clue. The sunglasses. The apron. The stirring motion. She repeated the same phrases over and over, with slight changes. The kids weren’t taking notes. They were watching her the way you watch a magician. And by the end, a girl in the back row said “La abuela” before Sra. Reyes even pulled out the gray wig.
I’m not a language person. I studied with flashcards and verb charts, and the only phrase that ever stuck was “¿Dónde está la biblioteca?” which I can’t even use. So watching Sra. Reyes was annoying at first. I kept thinking, “This is inefficient. She’s not even writing anything.” But then I remembered my son’s word: weird. He didn’t mean scary. He meant unusual. And unusual might be exactly what his brain needed.
When I asked Sra. Reyes about it later, she shrugged. “If I give them a worksheet, they just guess or fill it out. When I put on a wig and say ‘Soy tu abuela,’ they have to figure out what I mean from the wig and my voice and my pointing. That’s real communication. It feels weird because they’re not allowed to be passive.” She said something else that made me think about every weird teacher my son might ever have: “If a class is nervous, no one speaks. My job is to make the room so silly that they forget to be embarrassed.”
I’m not saying every odd classroom is a good classroom. I’ve seen teachers act in ways that were just disruptive and confusing. But the important word changed for me: “weird” can mean unfamiliar. Most kids don’t expect a teacher to intentionally pretend to be a movie star. They also don’t expect to understand almost everything in a foreign language on day six. That surprise is powerful.
At home, we adjusted too. Instead of asking my son “What did you learn in Spanish today?”—which gets you nothing—I started asking, “What strange thing did Sra. Reyes do today?” That question opened the floodgates. He told me she drew eyes on her fingers and made them talk to each other. He told me she made the whole class close their eyes and repeat “Escuchen” over and over, like a chant. He described her lessons in detail, and in describing them, he was practicing without even noticing.
I also noticed that she wasn’t afraid of silence. When no one answered, she didn’t switch back to English. She just repeated the phrase and did the gesture again. I’ve tried to copy that at home when my son pauses mid-sentence. Instead of finishing his thought for him, I wait a few seconds. Sometimes he finds the word. Sometimes he doesn’t. Waiting feels harder than jumping in, but he’s more likely to try again because of it.
The other thing we did: I stopped correcting his Spanish at dinner. He said “Pásame the salt” one night. Then he said “Pásame la sal.” He mixed up “la” and “el” constantly. I used to correct him immediately, the way my own father corrected my English, and it just made him stubborn. So now I just repeat the phrase correctly. “Sí, pásame la sal.” No red pen. It seems small, but it’s the same principle Sra. Reyes uses in class: let the child feel understood, then gently model the right version.
If your child tells you a teacher is weird, it’s worth digging one layer down. Ask: “Could you tell what the teacher wanted you to do?” “Did other kids know the answer?” “Was the teacher making everything obvious, or hiding the ball?” That will tell you whether the weirdness is a method or just a mess. Weird teachers who act out meaning, repeat language in patterns, and encourage guessing are often addressing a real problem: kids shutting down when they don’t know the exact word. That kind of weirdness is a strategy, not a mistake.
My son still says Sra. Reyes is the weirdest teacher he’s ever had. It’s been eight weeks. He has also started mumbling Spanish in the bath, singing something about a hungry taco, fully aware I can’t understand any of it. He doesn’t mind. I’m not sure he’s “good” at Spanish yet, and I have no idea if he’ll remember any of it next year. But on Thursday evenings, I hear him practicing “me gusta” to the shower curtain. That’s more than I ever did.
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