The Persistent Polyglot: Señora Smith’s Journey to Learning Spanish, French, and Russian

By Lee L. Dandoy

March 30, 2021

On a bright, sunny March morning, Christine Smith’s) third period class (both virtual and live) were given the task of creating assumptions about her to practice their fluency in Spanish, specifically with their subjunctives.

One particular student shared their assumption about her.

“I doubt that you speak another language other than Spanish and English,” the student confidently spoke in Spanish with their perfect subjunctive sentence.

Unexpectedly, she retaliated.

“Ah, that’s a good one!” Smith exclaimed first. “But, actually, I also speak French.”

Everyone in the Google Meet was shocked to the core to know that their foreign language teacher can speak another language other than Spanish and English.

During our interview via Google Meet, Smith declared that she is proud to be multilingual.

“I understand that there are many people who aren’t impressed with that fact, but I’m really not in the business of impressing people anyway,” she humbly added. “I enjoy studying and learning languages; it makes me happy to keep learning,” she said.

Her journey learning foreign languages, she said, started in seventh grade.

“That was the first time you could take a language and I chose Spanish,” Smith said. “I had two older brothers and my Spanish teacher did not like them and therefore, did not like me… she wasn’t really the nicest person,” Smith said.

But that one specific teacher did not hold her back from continuing Spanish in high school.

“When I went on to the other levels, I had great teachers,” Smith emphasized along with arm gestures to show how helpful they were to her.

She also highlighted that she had an aptitude for learning foreign languages; in her sophomore year in high school, she took Spanish and added French onto her schedule and in her junior year, she continued to study Spanish and French while learning Russian at the same time!

“The Russian teacher was so cool,” she began excitedly as she looked around the classroom. “He would go to Russia every year and it was during the Cold War!”

She continued while sweetly reminiscing about her past, “He would tell all these cool stories and how he would bring cartons of cigarettes when he would go to Russia because, you know, those were good little bribes he could make with the KGB guys; it was the coolest thing.”

And as she transitioned into college, Smith said she also had wonderful professors who guided her along the way, like Professor Carlos (her Master’s Thesis instructor at SUNY Albany), and a supportive family and friends that were there for her.

Even with the amazing set of high school and college teachers, Smith was aware that she had trouble learning because to her, she could understand more than she can speak, especially when she was in high school. But when she had the opportunity to study abroad in Spain, it didn’t matter to her anymore.

“In education, there’s this thing called an ‘affective filter;’ a student has an affective filter that goes up when they get nervous or anxious,” Smith explained.

She added, “It wasn’t until I went and studied abroad that my affective filter lowered, so I can just feel free like ‘Eh! If I make a mistake, who cares? I’m still trying to get the language out.’”

Later on, Smith encountered difficulties that other multilingual individuals also encounter back in America.

“I think the obvious disadvantage is that people treat you less than,” she said without any hesitation. “I’ve had people say, ‘Speak English,’ and I’m like, ‘I’m not talking to you, so there’s no reason for you to understand what I’m saying.’”

Smith also pointed out that multilinguals are often underappreciated by other people. “And they are way more smarter than you think.”

And again, these minor problems did not hinder her from moving forward.

Now, Smith is a certified teacher that teaches Spanish to high school students and converses in French with her children, as they are currently taking French classes in school. In her lifetime, she earned an Associate’s degree, a Bachelor’s degree, and two Master’s degrees.

“I have many things to be proud of,” Smith said. And one of them is being multilingual.