I’m beginning to learn what the phrase “those who can’t do, teach” means. It doesn’t mean only people who are crap at something teach it. It means that if you do something instinctively, actually trying to figure out what you do enough to explain it to someone else is a process that might actually drive you insane.
So right now, I have a part-time gig tutoring. I tutor in ESL—that’s English as a second language—and I’m pretty good at it. Not because I can’t speak English (oh, my, can I speak English) but because I’ve learned other languages the hard way. I have been the person staring at lists of vocabulary long into the night wondering why nothing will stick. My time in the grammar trenches has come and gone and left me with battle scars—still do I flinch when I realize I must conjugate a verb into the “must” form. (Saseraremashita, you beautiful verb-ending bastard.)
See, a large portion of ESL the way I teach it is phonics, and because of my particular approach, that means spelling. And I suck at spelling, hardcore. Suck to the point that I’m betting if I was tested, I’d register on the dyslexia scale. So it seems pretty stupid to have me teach phonics, right?
Wrong. I know every trick, every rule, every stupid thing I’ve memorized over the years in hopes it might actually help me to not look like a total moron writing long-handed. Learning phonics in order to teach them truly helped tune my ear, and now I am a phonics master. Teach? Ha! I can teach English spelling to anyone!
And then I got a student who just plain needs help in English. Like, with high-level high school grammar and composition. A native speaker.
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