Why I Became a Student Again

I didn’t take a “gap year.” I had my first child on my 23rd birthday, and then life moved fast. Three kids, back-to-back, and all the responsibilities that came with that. I always longed for adventure though.

I first started tutoring international students in English when I was 20. It amazed me that they would travel to a new country to learn English and take on that kind of challenge. I think part of me always wished I could do the same.

Years later, we took a job in Mexico. I taught at a bilingual school, my kids were 4, 6, and 7, and it was my first time working full-time again. We only stayed a year. At the time, I felt like I had failed. I wasn’t strong enough, brave enough, or fluent enough.

Now, I am kinder to that version of myself. I was navigating full-time teaching in a language I barely knew. No one tells you how exhausting and overwhelming that really is—especially when you’re the teacher.

I froze when people spoke Spanish to me. I avoided speaking it because I was embarrassed. I can still feel that moment when someone would ask me a question and my mind went completely blank. The shame, the anxiety, the fatigue—it was real.

Fast forward to today. Our youngest is going to university, and suddenly we are empty nesters at a relatively young age. We finally have a chance to do the things we couldn’t then.

I didn’t only want to travel for fun. I wanted to do something that mattered, something that would help me grow as an educator. I had teaching opportunities, but I kept thinking about those two weeks I spent learning Spanish in Costa Rica the summer before.

In those two weeks, something shifted. I remembered what it felt like to be a learner. I remembered the overwhelm, the hope, and the small victories. I remembered why language learning is so much more than grammar and vocabulary.

So I made a decision: I would become a student again.

Not just because I wanted to speak with parents more easily or help my students academically—though both are true. But because I knew becoming a student again would help me understand the learning process from the inside.

If I, a dyslexic learner who struggled with language my entire life, could push through the B1 level, then surely I could help my students do the same.

I’ve been working on Spanish for 15 years on and off, but I’m now solidly at the B1 level—the same place most of my students begin with me. Many of them have been in U.S. schools since kindergarten. Many have been “stuck” in the intermediate level for years.

So I decided to challenge myself the same way I challenge them:

Don’t give up.

Keep learning.

Keep failing forward.

Keep pushing past the fear.

Becoming a student again didn’t just connect me to Spanish. It connected me to my students.

I didn’t know then that this would become a project. I didn’t know it would become a story worth sharing. But now, I can’t imagine teaching without seeing through the student’s eyes again.