Why I love Bilingual Education

In Spanish molestar=to bother

With the lovely Spanglish that my kids like to use, they say things like "But teacher he is molesting me!"

I am working VERY hard to make sure they realize their error in that sentence before they go to the States and try that out!

In Spanish contestar=answer

When I was tutoring one of my students from last year she tried calling a friend to ask for the homework. Hanging up in frustration she told me, "But teacher he no contests!"

In Spanish brujula=compass

I was showing my kids pictures of Chinese inventions and one thing they invented was the compass. I asked someone to raise their hand and tell me what I was showing them a picture of. Someone said brujula so I said "Nope, that's not English". Then a smartie pants raised his hand and said "I know I know! It's a brujer."

It's easy to see the language differences when you hear things like "borrow me a pencil please", "explain me", and "how say you..."

And it makes me laugh all the time ;)

As for the older kids in the school, they're really into saying things are "gay", but they just sound ridiculous because they're not using that slang right. They'll tell my roommate "But teacher that movie is for gays!"

One time she was going to put on some music as a reward for finishing early and one kid raised his hand and said, "Teacher, put on music but not gay music, black people music."

Hey, I never said it was a country concerned about being PC!