Personal Narrative: Frau In The Classroom

The only accurate way to describe Frau to someone is to compare her to one of those extremely long french fries from McDonald’s that are exceedingly rare and odd compared to the rest of the batch. Her demeanor while she walked was that of a wet Kraft macaroni noodle, and her hands always found their way to their favorite resting place where her body slightly curved out a perfect indentation where they could sit while she greeted the class, “Guten Morgen, Klasse! Wie geht’s euch heute?”.
She wore dress pants every day, but her shirts always differed—never yellow— and revealed the liver spots scattered across her chest and neck. She only owned one pair of shoes, and if she owned more, she never wore them to school. Not that she needed the extra …show more content…
To live up to Frau’s legendary reputation leaves my fingers numb, breath shaky, palms sweaty. We do not compare. When I read, I stumble; When I speak, I stutter; When I listen, I stifle. My train of thought runs clunkily and breaks down much too far from its destination. To continuously follow through a sentence without my brain scrambling for a translation, or without my chest about to explode, or without my face turning into a giant cherry is close to impossible. I know the words, but they sit at the tip of my tongue and hold on with the grip of an eagle’s claws. As soon as they get the chance, they slide down my tongue to the back of my throat and force me to swallow. They get stuck there, too. That, for Frau, never seemed to be a …show more content…
Although she learned German at a fairly young age, she picked up the Austrian dialect; so she had to retrain her brain and mouth to think and speak independently of what she already knew. It is one thing to know the language inside and out, but it is a completely different thing to teach it to high schoolers in a way that makes sense. I only got to spend one full academic year with Frau before she decided that her family took precedence over her career. She spent almost thirty years dedicated to teaching her pride and joy, and I, fortunately, got her last year; and it was the most influential year of my life. I may not be able to speak completely fluently like Frau could, but I still have a lot of time to get there. I discovered so many parallels between English and German because they’re so closely related. Each one has its own complexities the other doesn’t offer, which makes it difficult. Learning another language takes dedication and almost always immersion into a country that speaks it. I’ve never been out of the country let alone to Germany, or Austria, or Switzerland, or