Wednesday, May 11, 2016

Count down: Poetry in Spanish

Less than a week until my last classroom day. My office is virtually empty. Yesterday I scraped a set of tiny magnet words from my California State metal office walls. I once had two sets. One set, poetry in English. The other, poetry in Spanish. I don't know Spanish, but more than a third of my students speak it at home.
          Prying the little black and white words from the wall near my door, I was reminded of the time thirteen years ago when two Latino students put together something in Spanish there:
          I am at my desk. They giggle a bit. "What does it say?"
         "Oh, Dr. Riedmann, it's beautiful poetry." A week later I'm advising a Latina who happens to cast eyes on that wall. She blushes. Raises her hand to her mouth. "What is it?" I ask.
          "Oh, Dr. Riedmann, I can't believe you have that on your wall."
           "What does it say?"
            "I can't even say it." She's still blushing. I remove the Spanish word set.
             The Latino poets went on to grad school. One's now a social worker; the other, a high school counselor.
   






1 comment:

BettieO said...

Agnes. great story. Some years ago after the San Jose library had been closed for renovation, they put up a big banner for the grand reopening with "Welcome" in a number of languages - except the Tagalog line actually said "circumcision" -- my goodness, I just looked this up on Google and it made the news in January 1990. I would never have guessed it was 26 years ago! Obviously made an impression.