No Hablo Espanol

Last Thursday, I found myself in the very unique and, might I add, unfamiliar position of being in the minority.  My team partner, Colleen Hermann, and I returned to Journey House in order to finish gathering our interviews and video for our final project.

This time around, we attended a GED class for immigrants. The minute we walked through the doors of the old church and into the classroom, I suddenly wished I had continued taking Spanish beyond the two required semesters. Spanish filled the air as students chatted among themselves waiting for class to start. At first I figured this was no big deal. I assumed that as soon as class started they would all speak English and I would be able to keep up with the conversation just fine. Oh, how wrong I was.

As the class settled down and the evening’s lecture began, I quickly realized the whole class was to be conducted in Spanish. Now I had a problem. How could I possibly cover a story when I had no idea what was going on?

As the teacher, Ana Melo, scribbled fractions on the board, I breathed a small sigh of relief, mathematics the universal language. Maybe now I would be able to keep up. After all, Sesame Street taught me how to count to ten in Spanish when I was five. Too bad I forgot everything I learned in high school math.

Just about the time I thought I had a grasp on what was going on, the math lesson came to an abrupt halt. Apparently, as I later learned, the reason for this unexpected stop was my partner and my presence in the class. Students wanted to know why we were there and, more importantly, why we were taping them. Melo quickly explained saying we were students from Marquette University working on a school project. To be completely honest, the only reason I even knew she was talking about us was her reference to “Marquette Univerisad.”

Melo must have caught the bewildered look in my eyes because from that point on she attempted to translate everything the students said that she thought would be of interest to us. Some of the students spoke a little English, and some of them spoke no English at all.

The language barrier created a few problems. First, because we were dependent on Melo to translate, we only heard what she thought was important. Second, because my partner and I did not understand much of what the students said, we missed out on a lot of information and context. If you know anything about reporting, you know that the context of a situation is crucial. The last problem we had was in translating student’s quotes into English. There are some Spanish words that just do not have an English equivalent making quoting students verbatim a near impossibility.

If I learned one thing from this situation, it was what it felt like to be in the minority. And that experience, I believe, gave me greater insight into these peoples’ lives and helped me in reporting my story more accurately.