Sergio and Diego, two of my students. Diego, at eight o’clock on Tuesdays and Thursdays, a 20-something engineer doing an internship after finishing his degree. Very thin, dark hair, dark eyes, polite, sweet, unassuming. A good soccer player and an excellent dancer. Has a gentle sense of humor and chuckles willingly at any prompt. Sergio, a 30ish metal worker who attends class at eight p.m. on Mondays and Wednesdays. Compact, husky, attractive, intense, determined. A dog-lover with a teasing manner, very considerate. “It’s Paula’s turn,” he reminded me one evening when I called on him in class.
“Oh. Thanks.” I shifted my gaze to the student to his left. “Paula?”
She smiled serenely as she answered.
Sergio and Diego—two very different students. Their names are different, too. They don’t even rhyme, so why do I have so much difficulty remembering which name goes with whom? I don’t usually draw a blank with my students’ names, but I often doubt myself. I once had two students in different classes named Iyán, and in a third class, a student named Iván. Whenever I called on any of the three, I had a 50 percent chance of using the wrong name. It wasn’t that I didn’t know their names; I just didn’t know them in time, before I spoke. Then one day, I no longer was sneaking glances at the roster before I called on one of these three students. Suddenly, I found myself on the far side of the name obstacle, and I didn’t know how I’d gotten there. If only I did know! Then I could short-circuit the process and speak confidently from day one with Sergio and Diego.
I have a student named Marcos. What would happen, I wondered, if I called him Carlos instead? It would embarrass me terribly. There’s no reason except for the similar sounds to make that error, I told myself, which almost caused me do it.
Among my younger students, I have two who are both new to me this year, Noel and Enol. Again, the names don’t rhyme, though they sound similar and have the same letters. For some reason, getting Enol’s name right was not a problem. But three months into the school year, I still froze up if I mentally reviewed the name of the other boy before calling on him. I had to see the name on the roster to get it right. “Noel, Noel, Noel,” I repeated to myself. And still Enol slipped out.
Paula and Sergio—Sergio? Yes, Sergio—were again side-by-side, and after I asked a question of a third student, I instructed Sergio to pose the same query to Paula.
“One question first,” Sergio said. He then proceeded to ask about six questions as he tried to get straight on a simple matter of using the indefinite pronouns anyone and everybody.
When he was satisfied, we returned to the oral exercise. Sergio asked Paula the question. In an even voice, speaking in her mild, gentle way, she gave the answer after several false starts and some stumbling.
How does one blunder, trip, fall, and catch oneself, all without a hint of agitation?
I gazed with true admiration. Paula often stumbled over matters that should have given her no trouble at all. And yet she appeared entirely free from embarrassment. Very cool, I thought. I liked her just as well, maybe better, than I would have had she managed without the errors and the hesitation. When, several classes later, I learned that she suffers from anxiety, I felt even greater appreciation. “You appear so calm.” I told her. “Only on the outside,” she answered. Behind a beatific face, all that turmoil—trouble with English, trouble with nerves, trouble sleeping. If only I could manage an equally composed response to a student’s surprise at my calling him Diego instead of Sergio, or vice-versa, or calling him Enol when he keeps telling me it’s Noel—if I could smile and shake my head with a touch of mild amusement, then maybe I would relax, not worry about the possibility of error. Maybe I could wear a beatific smile too. To look good is half the battle. To keep looking good is the other half.
