Bruce Sinclair serves as both the English as a Second Language Department Head and the Classical + Modern Languages Department Head. He invited colleagues who teach in the Classical + Modern Languages department to share their passion and how they nurture curiosity.
SPANISH TEACHERS
Patricia Villaquiran + Catalina Reinoso Patricia: I think the way language differentiates itself from most subjects is that you cannot speak a language without culture. They go hand in hand. They build each other up. Even if you are a student struggling with success on the academic side of a language, you can still be a student that can find enrichment on the cultural side of that subject. That’s what makes it very unique: it’s not just about the process of learning how the language works, but also how people live and how it impacts the world out there, too. Every country puts a little piece of themselves into how they speak the language. So you have to be careful about not only how you pronounce things, but how certain words can mean different things. They can put you in an uncomfortable situation if you’re not careful with what you use. I like to try and push my students to learn that for most of us here, it is not just our neighbors, Mexico, who speak Spanish. There’s a whole world out there that uses Spanish in their own way, and that makes it so rich. If they open their minds and their music and their movies and their books and their Instagram idols that they follow, it really will give them a broader understanding of this.
Catalina: I remember a student came from another school as a junior into Spanish 4 and she couldn’t understand a word of what we were saying. She was lost. I said, “But you were already in Spanish 4. You know the grammar and everything.” Then she told me she only learned how to do drills. Not to speak it, not to listen to it, not to get your ear trained. When you learn a language, you need everything. You need eyes. You need ears. You need your mouth. You need body language. Learning a language, you have to use your body for it! I want them to love to learn, whether it’s my language, whether it’s French, Chinese, or Latin. I want them to love to learn and to not feel embarrassed to make mistakes. We all make mistakes. I still remember my mistakes when I came to this country. I was singing in a performance of The Mikado and instead of saying “your ladyship,” I said “your lady sheep!” And I remember the director saying, “Who is it?” And I laughed, because, yes, it’s pronunciation. So it doesn’t matter. Everybody’s going to have an accent. But laugh at it. Enjoy it. Have fun. You’ll make mistakes, but be curious to keep on learning. Always be curious.
Across every discipline, Cushing’s department heads return to the same idea: curiosity, once ignited, is hard to contain. It moves from teacher to student, from student to student, from the classroom into summers, into careers, into lives. That may be the most lasting thing Cushing offers — not answers —
but the confidence of asking when the first answer isn’t enough.