How much Spanish do I need to know to teach it at the middle school level?
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El nivel de las clases en la segundaria no es al mismo nivel que en las universidades. Cuando tomaba clases en la segundaria, me enseñaron cosas como, "¿Como te llamas?, ¿De dónde eres?, etc." La verdad es que durante los tres años en la segundaria, probablemente no vas a tener ningún estudiante que aprenderá más que el préterito (que es una forma muy básica en el español). Yo diría que sí, debes tomar dos horas más para poder enseñar. Que fácil, ¿no? Y si no te sientes comodo ahora, quizás te sentarás más preparado después de tomar un curso.
If you can read this, then you'll be fine!
You need to know Spanish very well. Like how to talk in sentences if they have questions, numbers, colors.ect.
A lot of it depends on where and what you want to teach. I work in LA Unified, and wish that I could speak enough spanish to tell mom her nino is screwing up in class, instead of relying on someone else to do translate.
Bottom line, it might be worth your while to go for the extra hours.
Middle school is considered secondary education so Spanish has to be at least your minor teachable or a three full unit concentration of study. Ask your academic advisor/anyone in the BEd program faculty about the requirements for your state.
Imagine if you had a English class where the teacher spoke very, very bad English and everyone laughed at them. You wouldn't want to be that teacher, would you? I would think you would need a pretty good command of the language if you are going to TEACH that language.
MY MIDDLE SCHOOL TEACHER TAUGHT ME SQUAT . . . GET A LATINO FRIEND . . . . U CAN ALWAYS RELY ON THE TEACHERS EDITION OF A BOOK. . . .CAN U CONJUGATE? . . . IF U CAN ANSWER THESE FEW THINGS THEN SURE U CAN.
1. CUAL ES TU NUMERO DE TELEFONO?
2. CUANTOS ANOS TIENE?
3. COMO SE LLAMAS?
4. COMO ESTAS?
5. QUE TE GUSTA?
6. QUE ESTUDIA?
7. DE DONDE ERES?
8. QUIENES SON TUS PADRES?
9. CUANTAS PERSONAS HAY EN TU FAMILIA?
10. QUE SE DEDECLARON SU AMOR? SI TE QUIERO . . . Y YO A TI.
You probably don't have to know tons of Spanish to survive teaching middle school Spanish. However, you pretty much have to be fluent to pass the state test to be certified to teach it. Qualifying to test for an endorsement and being qualified to obtain an endorsement are two different things. I've taken the practice test for the endorsement/ certification and they're no joke. You listen to a prompt read orally by a machine and then you have anywhere between 30 to 90 seconds to prepare your prompt and then another two minutes to record your response. They range from novice to intermediate to advanced to superior and they're testing over various grammar concepts such as tú vs. usted, direct and indirect objects, reflexive verbs, conjugations, tenses and moods, formal and informal commands, and sentence complexity while asking you to complete tasks such as given directions, pretending to give a tour, talking to a colleague, talking to a superior, talking to a student, etc. Then there's a written section over culture and literature. They ask questions about the spanish and latin american history about culturally acceptable ways to address situations and etcetera. They are EXTREMELY thorough. They're intended to weed out the professionals from the pretenders.
It depends upon what method you would be using to teach Spanish as well as what the school and state require. There is a method called TPR which requires fluency from the teacher as you would be constantly talking in Spanish, trying to get the kids to respond in Spanish in order to improve their language skills. Even if you are not teaching that method, you will probably do workbook pages and read things throughout the year in the textbook which requires the ability to understand and explain it to your students...if you have problems doing that, you should not try to teach Spanish. Also, if your school district has students learning Spanish in elementary school, your middle school kids will be more advanced and you may not be prepared to teach at that level.
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