Reason #3 Elisabeth – Attitude is Everything.

Oh là là!  Being late for class has its disadvantages.  One student has had a tendency for not quite being on time.  When she gets in to class, the other students are always, well usually, already working on their illustrations. This means that I have already gone over things and checked for understanding. Today, once students were working on their illustrations, I walked around the room to check and see how they were doing.  Just as I walked by her, she said, quite loudly, “French is so hard.  I can’t do it.” to the girl next to her. It was a difficult thing for me to hear because I work so hard to explain things clearly and in many different ways.  It was a little frustrating because I want all my students to understand what we are doing, otherwise they don’t learn. They also tend to develop negative attitudes and that just doesn't work for anyone. It is important to me to remain positive so my students are positive as well. 

Well, I took a deep breath after I heard her say that.  Thanks to yoga I thought of that before responding. What could I say?  How could I relate that it didn’t have to be hard?  I came up with something.  I told her that the energy she was using to talk about how hard it was could be used to actually ask me a question so I could help. 

She seemed surprised by my comment.  Then she thought about it and looked at her paper.  Then her question was «Why is that feminine, la fille? How do you know? This doesn’t make sense. » Granted this is a common question.  English does not have masculine and feminine.  I had to take another deep breath. I was present during the 2 minutes I discussed when class begun and so were the 24 other students. She was not.  So, I patiently and simply explained  “The la means feminine and the « le » is masculine.”  By the look of relief on her face you would have thought it was the first time I had ever said this.  Though it was not, it was the first time she heard me, really heard me. Today I was able to keep my attitude positive and it worked!  

My patience was rewarded with her exclamation, “Oh that is so easy!  I get it!” 

A deep breath and one moment of patience paid off.  Maybe she won’t be late tomorrow?