The Orlando Sentinel, October 30, 2000

Professors sweat over exams – their own

                                                                           By Scott Powers of the Sentinel Staff

          Rollins College English Professor Maurice O’Sullivan doesn’t lock students out of class for being late any more; he empathizes with them instead.

            Like many professors, O’Sullivan used to send stern messages occasionally to remind students to make getting to class on time a priority.  Sometimes a tardy student would find the solid wooden door to O’Sullivan’s classroom closed.  The student would have to listen to the lecture in the hall and pass notes under the door to participate.

            That was before O’Sullivan signed up for Rollins’ “Spanish for Professors” course this year.  It was before he was tardy himself, more than a few times, and came to realize how easy it was for simple but important matters to delay him.

            It was before O’Sullivan was reminded what it was like to be an undergraduate. 

            He’s one of 45 Rollins professors, deans, directors and staff members who this year are sweating through what is essentially freshman Spanish.  Rollins set up the class as an experiment to immerse more faculty and staff in Spanish and Hispanic culture, to both help them be a part of Rollins’ and Orlando’s Hispanic community and to increase the college’s prospects to work internationally.

            But the class has become a phenomenon on campus.  Class members rave about relearning the simple joys and frustrations of being a student again. 

            “We spend enormous amounts of time as colleagues talking about the process of teaching, the nature of learning…But we do it mostly from the outside, as teachers, and from what we learn from our reading,” O’Sullivan said.  “It’s completely different for us now when (Spanish professor) Roy (Kerr) hands out an exam for us to take home.  People start thinking, how do I deal with this?”  In this course, class distinctions mean nothing.  Everybody struggles, regardless of whether they have doctorates, or where they earned them.

            “Ignorance in this particular case is a great equalizer,” said Barbara Howell, an administrative assistant.  She has taken a little Spanish before, but said the distinction is lost in class.

            “There can be no hierarchy here,” Howell added.  “Our custodian speaks Spanish; when we’re going off, we try to piece together a sentence – and he corrects us.” 

            English professor Lezlie Couch concedes she has mangled more than her share of the Spanish language in class.  Such foibles, she said, help class members see past each other’s positions and pretensions. 

            “It’s so cute to see them working hard and struggling and laughing together at each other’s goofs,” Couch said.  “There is no politics in this room.”

            Kerr, a professor of Spanish and Portuguese, and Alberto Prieto-Calixto, an Assistant Professor of Spanish, hatched the idea and teach the class.  They expected only a handful of people to voluntarily give up two or three lunch hours a week for a year.  But 80 expressed interest.  The class was capped at 45.

            “One of the things they told us was, “We live in a Hispanic culture.  I want to be able to listen to Spanish radio, to understand what is said at the grocery store, to talk with my neighbor,” Kerr said.

            But it’s clear that the students are learning more than Spanish.

            “I realize that when I’m teaching accounting to my students, I may be the one talking in a foreign language,” said Sherry Fischer, director of Rollins’ Arts and Sciences Internship Program and an accounting instructor.  “Alberto sometimes has to talk really slowly for us to understand.  As a teacher, you have to get that.”

            Teacher becomes student.  And student becomes teacher.

            “I’ve been talking to some of my students in Spanish.  When I walk in, they say, ‘Did you do your homework?’ ” Fischer said. 

            “I said, ‘Ok, I’ll help you in accounting if you help me in Spanish.’ ”

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