In America in your experience how common is it for teachers of foreign languages to be non-native speakers of that language they are teaching?

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Gail_the_SLP@reddit

Most of the high school language teachers I have met are native English speakers. My college and university German profs, on the other hand, were native German speakers.

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Fosad@reddit

My Spanish teacher spoke like 9 languages and neither Spanish nor English were her native language

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monsteronmars@reddit

In high school, half of my teachers were native, half were not but majored in the language in college and had lived abroad. At the University level, my professors were native speakers.

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All of the Spanish and French teachers in my high school were non-native speakers, with English being their primary language. The exception was the Japanese teacher. She was a native speaker. But in college our Spanish professor was a native speaker. But they were all incredibly fluent in their languages.

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Commercial-Place6793@reddit

My daughter was in a Chinese immersion program from 1st grade on. Her 1st grade teacher was not a native speaker but had spent years living and working in Taiwan. From 2nd grade through high school all the rest were native Chinese speakers from Taiwan, Hong Kong or mainland China.

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Andimia@reddit

My ASL teacher in college was deaf and took her hearing aids out to teach the class. She was a native user of ASL. In high school none of my Spanish teachers were native Spanish speakers.

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pirate40plus@reddit

I was a teacher for 15 years. In that time I only 2 that were native English speakers, both taught German. One Spanish teacher barely spoke English and was recruited out of Mexico.

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Zealousideal_Law8297@reddit

At my first high school my Spanish teacher was a native speaker, my second high school neither of the Spanish teachers were native speakers, in college my Spanish teacher was not a native speaker. The only Spanish class I failed was with the native speaker, but it was me being lazy not her ability to teach.

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QT_3-14159@reddit

In the US, my French teacher’s 1st language was German

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Quenzayne@reddit

My Latin teacher was non-native, although that's kind of a given tbh.

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frank-sarno@reddit

Same for my Latin teacher. She was also a Spanish teacher. I think she was originally from Argentina.

The other Spanish teacher was not a native speaker, which was funny because there are a lot of native Spanish speakers in South Florida.

My German teachers are both native. My first German teacher was non-native (from India originally) but his pronunciation was horrible and would get angry when I questioned him.

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LoganSettler@reddit

Funny, my German teacher was a native speaker from Argentina.

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SirFelsenAxt@reddit

Mine claimed to be but I call bullhonkey.

No native speaker would have accidentally summoned the devil while teaching conjugations

Sum, es, est, satan, estis, sunt

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Thedollysmama@reddit

What an incredible slur to just throw out there like it’s nothing.

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SirFelsenAxt@reddit

Wut?

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wastedpixls@reddit

I always wondered if that last conjugation was spelled differently...maybe that was just my teacher.

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Jektonoporkins1@reddit

Eh, stercus accidit.

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CreatrixAnima@reddit

Eram, eras, erat, Eramus, Beelzebub, erunt.

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CorgiMonsoon@reddit

Semper ubi sub ubi

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LoudCrickets72@reddit

When my mom found out my Latin teacher wasn’t actually a Roman citizen, there was hell to pay.

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Badger_Terp@reddit

In college my Latin professor was Irish - I learned Latin with an Irish accent. 😂

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tangouniform2020@reddit

Nor mine. I even think she was from North Texas!

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Alternative-Zebra311@reddit

I’m glad I had the opportunity to take Latin as it is a base for a number of languages. It should still be required.

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SleepinGriffin@reddit

My Latin teacher was the German teacher as well as from Germany.

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HealthySchedule2641@reddit

I was about to say, I took Latin, so...

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BoukenGreen@reddit

Same.

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CParksAct@reddit

Same

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Flibs-@reddit

My Latin teacher gave absolutely zero fucks and we watched Gladiator ten times in a year or something.

Probably the nicest teacher I ever had in my life though, genuinely.

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rennerpipes@reddit

For Spanish, almost always.

I had a Germam teacher that grew up on an American military base in Germany.

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yourlittlebirdie@reddit

Yes usually, except for Spanish. It’s uncommon to have a native French or German speaker teaching those subjects because there just aren’t that many native speakers of those languages in the U.S. and even fewer who are teachers.

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DontCallMeRooster@reddit

My high school had a teacher from Germany. She taught German and Spanish. The Cuban Spanish teacher hated her.

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stillnotelf@reddit

We had an ethnically Chinese teacher teaching lower level Japanese and an ethnically Japanese teacher teaching higher level. As you may imagine there were tensions.

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imnottheoneipromise@reddit

That reminds me of the South Park episode with the war between City Wok and City Sushi

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tangouniform2020@reddit

And they swore at each other in Mandarin just so you wouldn’t know what they were saying?

Although “fuck you” has a certain ring in any language. And if you know “mother” intonation finishes that phrase.

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hsj713@reddit

Student asking ethnic Chinese teacher teaching Japanese: Teacher how do you say hello in Japanese?

Chinese teacher: The proper phrase is kuso kurae!

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No-Penalty1722@reddit

Probably because the German teacher was teaching Spanish as it would be spoken in Spain.

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TangoCharliePDX@reddit

So... Wouldn't that make it Esperanto?

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No-Penalty1722@reddit

How so?

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TangoCharliePDX@reddit

Feel free to correct me, but it's my understanding that what we understand as Spanish in the Americas might be better referred to as Castellano - the language of the ruling family at the time these areas were made territories.

However at the present day the prevailing language in Spain is Esperanto, but one of many local dialects including Castilian Spanish.

Not having been there, my information is second hand.

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gonyere@reddit

Castillian, basque, catal, Galician, are ALL Spanish (Espanol). None are Esperanto.

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Spirited_Ingenuity89@reddit

Basque is not Spanish. It’s not even an Indo-European language.

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TangoCharliePDX@reddit

Then what is?

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No-Penalty1722@reddit

Esperanto is not Spanish

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Esperanto

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Joel_feila@reddit

Well drop the genders

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tangouniform2020@reddit

Or maybe in Argentina?

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No-Penalty1722@reddit

hiiiiii yo

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nabrok@reddit

Is that a similar amount of difference as US English vs UK English or is it more different than that?

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No-Penalty1722@reddit

Is that a similar amount of difference as US English vs UK English or is it more different than that?

No idea. The only experience I have with the differences is a Spanish kid from school (as in, from Spain) overhearing two kids from Venezuela speaking Spanish and making a remark to me that their Spanish was like "pigeon" Spanish.

This is just speculation, but I could imagine it could be the same way with Cuban-Spanish and Spanish-Spanish. It could be annoying if you have some guy trying to correct the way you grew up speaking.

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basszameg@reddit

My high school also had a teacher from Germany who taught German and Spanish! English was her third language.

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DontCallMeRooster@reddit

Which high school?

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basszameg@reddit

In Florida. She ended up marrying one of the PE teachers.

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DontCallMeRooster@reddit

I went to high school in Florida, too. That's why I asked.

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D-ouble-D-utch@reddit

Oak Ridge Military Academy

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eunma2112@reddit

Darn … I was hoping it was Beulah Balbricker at Angel Beach High School.

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tangouniform2020@reddit

My German teacher in jr high was Italian. In the US school in Germany!

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AnalysisNo4295@reddit

One of my language instructors spoke 9 different languages including Latin and ironically her first language was Italian. Her English was very broken but she was pretty cool.

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natattack15@reddit

My high school had a teacher from Spain that taught Spanish and German. English was his 3rd language.

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DangerousKidTurtle@reddit

I had a Spanish teacher in junior high like that. She grew up in Quebec, spent her teenage years in Mexico, bopped around for a few years, and moved to the US when she was in her 30s. And spent years as a sign-language interpreter. Many languages hath she.

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soulless_ape@reddit

I studied abroad in a spanish speaking country and had two English teachers, one not native and she hated me. The other was of UK decent, and she had no issues. She would even ask me to read aloud as a comparison between the UK and US English during each clash. I think the non native English teacher hated my pronunciation was natural.

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TangoCharliePDX@reddit

That's kind of funny, especially when you consider that for some inexplicable reason Germans and Mexicans seem to get along famously.

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HeyKrech@reddit

I had a teacher from Germany. She taught math. She only swore in German. Our German teachers were all non-native (as far as I knew - one could've been raised in a German speaking family as a child but was born in the US).

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Roughneck16@reddit

My Spanish teacher was from Ukraine. His parents moved to Venezuela after WWII and he grew up there from about age 12, moving to the US at age 18 for college. He had an accent, but because he learned Spanish at a young age through complete immersion, he was functionally a native Spanish speaker.

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Lady_DreadStar@reddit

My German teacher also taught French and Spanish. There were a few other teachers for French and Spanish- including native speakers for the AP level- but he was the only German teacher.

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agirlwholovesdogs@reddit

When I was in high school I had a Japanese man as my Spanish teacher and my French teacher in middle school was from Madagascar.

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skateboreder@reddit

Madagascar was a French colony and alongside Malagasy is an official language so he probably was a native speaker. :)

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agirlwholovesdogs@reddit

Yes he was! I learned that from him.

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gravitybongresin@reddit

Depends on where you live. In New England, it's much more common to have a native French (Canadian) speaker than a native Spanish speaker

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Anustart15@reddit

Is it? Maybe in northern New England, but in Massachusetts we had plenty of native Spanish speakers and my school had no native French speakers. There's a pretty significant Puerto Rican population in southern New England

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Murderhornet212@reddit

Where I lived in SE MA Portuguese was by far the most common first language after English.

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skateboreder@reddit

Can confirm, have friends from Mass who are Portuguese.

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Suitable_Departure98@reddit

About 125+ years ago there were a lot of French Canadians / Franco Americans in the Boston area. My grandmother was born in Fitchburg Mass & at the time my great grandfather owned an apartment block that housed French families. Even then, two generations in, they were loosing their French. I have some Franco American friends in Boston and they don’t speak much French anymore. I also have about 1500 third and fourth cousins and ⅔ of them have Anglo names even though they’re from the French side of the family.

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taylorscorpse@reddit

I went to HS for part of the time in Southeastern MA and the most popular language class was Portuguese lol

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gravitybongresin@reddit

Yeah you're right. NH and ME in my experience

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Ake4455@reddit

Yup, all our French teachers were from Quebec, so as a result I am perfectly able to understand any Quebec media, but no fucking clue when it comes to Anything actually French.

Live in Los Angeles now and my kids Spanish teacher is from is from fucking Serbia.

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FoundationBrave9434@reddit

Really? We have multiple native Spanish, Mandarin, French and Russian teachers in my district in CT. We also have bilingual teachers helping out when needed for the tougher to serve languages like Greek and Latin.

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gravitybongresin@reddit

Yeah i should've said Northern New England. Heavy French Canadian population from back in the mill days

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vanillablue_@reddit

Can confirm. I learned French that way. She tried to teach more standard French though.

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allieggs@reddit

Around here if a more niche foreign language is offered, it’s usually because the area has a high concentration of native speakers. I’ve seen it with Mandarin, Korean, Vietnamese, Arabic, etc.

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matthewcameron60@reddit

My French teacher in Texas was from Quebec

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RainyMcBrainy@reddit

Yep. My French teacher in highschool was not a native speaker, but she was an excellent teacher and I learned so much from her. Much more than I learned from my French professor in college, who was a native speaker, that we all reported for racism and misogyny. She was put on forced sabbatical. I genuinely don't know what happened with her after that.

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evetrapeze@reddit

My German teacher was German, my Spanish teacher was Polish

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Echo9111960@reddit

We were required to have 2 years foreign language instruction to graduate, so kina a big deal.

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yourlittlebirdie@reddit

Two years is nothing compared to most countries when it comes to foreign language instruction.

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Late_Resource_1653@reddit

Even for Spanish if you are old enough. I'm in my 40s.

My middle school and high school Spanish teachers were just as white as me.

Now, I'll admit, for some reason my brain has a really hard time with languages. My siblings are awesome at it. I just never was. Not dumb, my SAT score in the early 2000s was 1580 out of 1600. But when I went to university, I tested into level one. And for the first time had a teacher who actually was from a country that spoke Spanish.

Totally different. I learned so much more. Still wasn't great, but passed. And when I dated a Puerto Rican girl, I could understand about half of what they were saying about me.

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SuccotashOther277@reddit

Most of my Spanish teachers were white. However, many Latinos are white, with European ancestry, so they were native Spanish speakers who also taught. Others were non-Hispanic white dudes rolling with broken Spanish.

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Weak_Employment_5260@reddit

My high school Spanish teacher was from Spain, came to the USA to teach after retiring as a bullfighter and had the scars to show it from the injuries. The South American hispanics tended to have darker skin because most were at least part native middle and South American, basically mestizo.

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Late_Resource_1653@reddit

Sorry, true.

I should clarify, my Spanish teachers in middle and highschool were generally like most of my teachers - Pennsylvania dutch, usually a German background.

Miss Schultzfus taught me middle school Spanish.

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MagpieSkull@reddit

And it’s hard to immigrate as a teacher. Most Germans who come here are going to be either a student or something highly specialized and seen as “useful” to the country. That’s true of immigration in many countries as well. My wife is a white American Spanish teacher and we lived in England. She was the rare non-British teacher. French over there had native teachers for obvious reasons, but it’s the same phenomenon as the US.

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Pianowman@reddit

My school had a German teacher who was native Czech. He was fluent in about a dozen languages.

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Gorgonzola2756@reddit

All my French teachers were native speakers except 1. I took French 6th grade through freshman year of college. I guess I was lucky (though I still can’t really speak French).

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ShelbyDriver@reddit

My pasty white uncle taught Spanish (in Houston of all places) for a while. He's fluent and got certified to teach it. Mostly he taught chemistry though.

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reapersritehand@reddit

It's funny my highschool Spanish teacher was this old hippie chick that swore she lived in Mexico for at least a decade but most of us doubted it, my kids highschool Spanish teacher was actually from south America and barely spoke English as a 2nd language, difference being my son loved the class and came speaking it 20x better then we did

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saggywitchtits@reddit

The French teacher prior to me getting into high school was a native French and German speaker having grown up on the boarder of France and Germany. I only knew this because she would substitute every once in a while in our German class.

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RupeThereItIs@reddit

Native Spanish speakers are not common throughout the country.

None of my Spanish teachers here in the upper midwest were native speakers.

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taylorscorpse@reddit

My French teacher was Portuguese (born on a base in Mozambique I think) and taught French, Portuguese, AND Spanish classes

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AccountantRadiant351@reddit

My school's teacher from Germany taught German and Latin.

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Felis_igneus726@reddit

Depends where you are. I was only ever taught by native German speakers from German-speaking countries and just kind of assumed that's how language classes always work until in my senior year of high school my teacher was an L2 speaker from Pennsylvania. I think the French teachers at my school were native, too, though I can't say for sure, and of course the Spanish teachers were. It's not hard to find native-speaking teachers in NJ unless you want a fairly niche language.

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levidurham@reddit

My French teacher taught Spanish at the school my father went to when he was a student there. The teacher wasn't a native speaker of French, but his grandfather had spoken Cajun French as his native language.

It was kind of a weird school though. It was very well off due to property taxes on oil refineries. My physics teacher was a retired physicist from the local power company, the head chemistry teacher was a retired chemist from Texaco.

If there's not enough hints above. I went to school just south of Beaumont, TX; where oil was first discovered in Texas in 1901. Which is about a 30 minute drive to Louisiana.

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Rimailkall@reddit

And 50% of the grads went to Lamar for college?

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Infinite-Dinner-9707@reddit

Only 50%. In our town (North of Beaumont) it seemed like 80% went to Lamar

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LainieCat@reddit

My high school's German teacher was a native speaker. One of the French teachers grew up speaking French but it wasn't her family's first language.

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uReallyShouldTrustMe@reddit

I have a colleague that’s a non native DLI Spanish teacher. She is Caucasian but fluent in Spanish.

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idont_readresponses@reddit

My French teacher in high school was this older Irish woman.. so that was fun.

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Thick_Description982@reddit

My Spanish teacher was Greek but spoke 9 languages

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Unlikely_City_3560@reddit

Our Spanish teacher was this pasty white guy who did a religious mission in South America and learned Spanish that way.

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LionCM@reddit

My Spanish teacher in high school was from Alabama. She had a doctorate, but had a thick southern accent.

In second year Spanish, our teacher (Latina) had us say different phrases in Spanish to see what we knew. She would call out all of us who had Miss Neal, as we all spoke Spanish with a southern accent!

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TheMagHatter@reddit

It’s pretty common. My high school Spanish teacher was from Columbia and my college Italian professor was from Italy. In my experience, many of the foreign language teachers I have met came from other countries tried specifically to teach English speaking students their language

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RedLegGI@reddit

Very common

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OkTaurus510@reddit

I had a Spanish teacher who was from France. I couldn’t understand her English with her accent so it was really tough to learn anything. She told us that her husband taught French to high school students and his first language was Spanish… 🤦🏻‍♀️

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lemonlime_slime@reddit

My German teacher was Russian. The Spanish teacher was white as can be

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Curious-Cranberry-27@reddit

Common. Only one of our foreign language teachers was a native speaker. She was a kooky German lady who loved Cold Stone Creamery.

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katiw46@reddit

My first French teacher was native, and honestly, she was a terrible teacher. My second French teacher was not native, but I learned so much more from her. She was just better at explaining grammar and things instead of drilling vocab.

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Nullarni@reddit

I went to a military high school. My Spanish teacher knew very little Spanish, but was an expert in Russian.

When I asked her about it, she said she was a trained US Air Force linguist, so she knew how to teach languages in general, even ones she wasn’t skilled at.

I then asked her why she didn’t teach Russian rather than Spanish. She just laughed at me a said, “You are barely getting by in Spanish. You can’t handle Russian.”

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harsinghpur@reddit

That's a strange way for her to answer your question. The answer is that they hired her to be a Spanish teacher based on their school's need for Spanish teachers. Very few US high schools have Russian classes, so it's not likely to find a job as a high-school Russian teacher.

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Annachroniced@reddit

To be fair though being native to a language doesn't make you a good teacher or capable of explaining the language to new learners.

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Spirited_Ingenuity89@reddit

This is SOOO true. Being a native speaker means you intuitively know how to do pretty much everything in your language. It does not mean you are aware of the patterns you acquired naturally, let alone aware enough to explain them to other people.

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Infinite-Dinner-9707@reddit

I mean, most high schools offer languages depending on what they can find a teacher for.

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harsinghpur@reddit

Really? What's your source for this information?

I don't think schools start by finding a teacher, then choosing which languages to offer based on the teachers they found. In every school I've worked with, the committees determine the curriculum first, then seek a teacher who is skilled in the curriculum that the committee decided.

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QuarterMaestro@reddit

Don't know how common it is but it does happen. Like the "guaranteed" foreign languages offered are Spanish and French, but they might offer Russian or German if they happen to have access to a teacher who knows those languages.

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Nullarni@reddit

My partner is a French teacher, and you are correct. Almost all US schools have a Spanish program. Then, it’s basically what they can find. French is the most common, followed by German, and then Japanese.

There are sometimes niche languages, based on local population or teacher specialties, like Mandarin or Arabic, but you can’t really bank on those if you are transferring credits.

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Infinite-Dinner-9707@reddit

Two of my kids are teachers and one son in law. My daughter's very tiny high school offers Spanish and Italian. My daughter teaches math and Italian - they added Italian specifically because my daughter can teach it. That happened after their German teacher left.

My son in law teaches Spanish. Before he came to this school they only had ASL for language because they didn't have a teacher that could teach anything else nor did they have the budget for a full time language teacher.

Beyond that, we've moved a lot and been active in many school and seen this many times

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Nullarni@reddit

For background, it was a military boarding school with a fairly small faculty. I think, as you said, they were hired for a particular role and then expanded to other classes they were able/qualified to teach.

For example, one of the English teachers was also the soccer coach and the German teacher.

To your point, I think Spanish classes are more useful than Russian, because kids transferring in are MUCH more likely to have prior Spanish credits than Russian.

As for her response, I think after spending the day with delinquent teens and spoiled rich kids, you need a to dish out a bit of snark to keep you sane.

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harsinghpur@reddit

That makes sense. And I'm guessing they didn't have Russian classes, did they?

It always seems to me that people who grow up speaking English in the US hear enough Spanish on a regular basis that the first few levels of learning come pretty naturally. A person with military training in language pedagogy could pretty easily pick up a Spanish textbook and make a plan how to use it in a high-school level class. At the end of the class, students wouldn't be expected to be near fluency, but they'd have made some meaningful progress.

Her comment "You can't handle Russian" is probably accurate, that with the complexities and foreignness of the Russian language, it would be much harder to get a US high-school student any meaningful level of understanding.

The drawback mostly comes when the process of language learning makes students curious, and they ask questions about the language that aren't addressed in the textbook. A native speaker's intuition for the language is both helpful, in that they can say with confidence "No, no Spanish speaker ever says it that way," but also sometimes makes a bit of a gulf in understanding, that they never had to learn why it works that way.

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Nullarni@reddit

You are correct, we only had Spanish and German available. Which was a problem for me, because I took a couple semesters of French and needed only one more French credit. Since they didn’t offer it, I wound up having to start over with Spanish. (All the language credits had to be the same language for them to count.)

You are also correct about her actually being able to do the job with the linguistics training she had. She was a good teacher, but struggled a bit with the vocabulary from time to time.

You would ask her, “what is the Spanish word for ?” And her response was frequently, “I remember that in French,” or “I know it in Russian, let me look it up.”

My one of my friends is a Spanish teacher with a degree in Spanish literature, and he would agree with you. He says high school and even early college is fairly easy to teach. But advanced Spanish is difficult. Basically, Spanish is easy to learn, but difficult to master.

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Zarathustra124@reddit

Schools have a requirement to teach a foreign language. They're not picky about which, at least in a small town where options are limited. My high school had Spanish and French classes, then the French teacher retired and there probably wasn't another qualified speaker within 100 miles. There was a Chinese teacher available, though, so we offer Spanish and Chinese now.

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harsinghpur@reddit

In large public school districts I can assure you that the school board is very picky about what curriculum is approved.

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ShinyHouseElf@reddit

My college roommate freshman year decided to take Russian. She got as far as writing out the alphabet and then dropped the class.

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CompleteTell6795@reddit

Yes, Russian & also Ukrainian is a very hard language to learn & be fluent in. I went to a church affiliated grade school, we had one hr Ukrainian lessons from first grade thru 8th grade every school day. My dad could speak it but we did not speak it at home. But he did help me with the homework. By the time I graduated 8th grade I could read it & write it & understand conversation but never learned to speak it. Now , yrs later it's all lost, can't read it etc. It has way more letters than our alphabet & it's also gender specific, the endings on words are different depending on if you are referring to a male, female or an object.

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ruggergrl13@reddit

I will never understand why parents that speak other languages don't help their kids learn. It's such a missed opportunity.

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hyperfat@reddit

I speak, read, and write in Russian. Badly. And I am Russian.

Commonly most Russians cant write or read well in America. It's weird.

I am extra, I read church slovonic in church. Orthodox. So I am fairly skill reading cursive Russian and a mostly unused language.

Uselessss

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foxaenea@reddit

I'm speculating, because I can probably muster only a handful of Russian words, but I always figured if I were to try, the alphabet has many characters that look the same as the English alphabet, and that'd probably be a stumbling block, at least for my brain, because I'd be constantly having to override the sound it's always made or looks like it should make, at least in the beginning.

A bit like how the double-Ls in Spanish and certain Cs in Italian can trip people up, except to a much, much broader level with so many similarities visually between the two alphabets on top of the entirely different grammar. So, I've always thought the reverse would be just as true. Is that a common factor in your experience or am I clueless?

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Fr00tman@reddit

I was scared off from learning Russian in college bc I thought it would be hard to learn a different alphabet. Then I ended up learning Japanese after college. Dunno what I was thinking.

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QuarterMaestro@reddit

The Cyrillic alphabet isn't that hard to learn, you can memorize it in a few hours. What makes Russian difficult is the highly complex grammar and the vast amount of vocabulary you just have to memorize-- far fewer cognates with English compared to French or Spanish etc.

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DancingFlamingo11@reddit

My college roommate went to HS in a small town that happened to have a native Russian teaching Russian. She took the class all four years as well as a college course in Russian. Years later we went on a Baltic cruise that stopped in St. Petersburg. Our tour guide and bus driver didn’t know she was familiar with the language so she had fun listening to their conversations about our group. She didn’t hear anything juicy though.

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Occhrome@reddit

“Well maybe you aren’t such a good teacher”

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stiletto929@reddit

Maybe if you had a better teacher…?

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famousanonamos@reddit

When I was in high school, I think most of our language teachers were native speakers of the language they were teaching. I don't know about the German teacher, but 2 out of 3 Spanish teachers and the French teacher were native speakers.

My daughter's high school only offered Spanish and both teachers were white guys who were fluent, but not native speakers.

I took community college sign language and both professors I had were deaf.

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RAConteur76@reddit

Pretty common. I lucked out in my junior year of high school, had a native Russian for my Russian language class. The grammar was always the hardest part, but she was a good teacher.

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UNoahGuy@reddit

My Chinese teacher was from Taiwan and our new Spanish teachers are on exchange from Spain.

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Saltwater_Heart@reddit

My French teacher wasn’t native but was fluent. My Spanish teacher was from Puerto Rico.

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Alternative-Soup2714@reddit

I had 4 French teachers, all from France except one. I was very annoyed at the American teaching me French, because after years of native French speakers teaching me, I could hear that her accent was bad.

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Time_Neat_4732@reddit

In high school, only our Japanese teacher was a native speaker. In college, I had one Spanish teacher who was a non-native teacher who sucked so bad she got fired after one year, but all my other language teachers were native speakers.

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JessicaGriffin@reddit

It depends on what level of school, and who is available to teach.

In middle school, I took German from a German woman who had immigrated to the US. It was an elective class, and she didn’t have formal training in teaching languages. She taught us a lot of phrases, but it wasn’t a very good class. I learned more German from my mom, who took German in high school, than I learned in a whole semester in my middle school class.

In high school, only one of the language teachers I interacted with (Japanese) was a native speaker, though he had moved to the US when he was 7, so his English was perfect, as he had been in American schools from elementary school through college. He started a Japanese language program at our high school, and that’s all he taught. Our school’s Russian and Spanish teachers both spoke those languages as second or third languages. I took Japanese my freshman year, then moved to another school district which didn’t have Japanese, so I took Russian. The Russian teacher majored in Slavic languages in college, and also taught AP history. I think Russian was his 4th or 5th language. The Spanish teacher was someone who majored in Spanish language and literature, but he was not a native speaker.

In college, however, my Japanese teacher was a Japanese immigrant who spoke English as her third language (she’d learned French first, while attending school in Japan.) She taught Japanese because students requested it, and she had training in teaching languages, but ironically, she started out teaching English to ESOL students! Our other language teacher at the college (Spanish) was also a native speaker (Colombian Spanish), who had immigrated to the US. She was actually a chemist, but found fewer places to teach chemistry than Spanish, so she also got certified in teaching foreign language.

My experience is probably atypical, but honestly, you’ll get as many answers as there are people to answer on a question like this.

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LoudCrickets72@reddit

I’d say 50/50. Took German in middle school and the teacher was from Germany. Took French and the teacher’s native language was not French. Took Chinese in college and one of the teachers was a white American guy, the other was straight from China. So…. It depends

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esaum0@reddit

I had 3 German teachers over the years. One in Jr High, one in St High, and one in college. None of them were native speakers.

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BullPropaganda@reddit

For me every foreign language teacher I had was a native speaker

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Maxgallow@reddit

Ridiculously common

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la-anah@reddit

All the language teachers in my high school were native English speakers. My French teacher had majored in Russian in college.

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PuffinScores@reddit

In high school, my teachers were non-native speakers. My university professors were native speakers.

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ssascotth@reddit

Between junior high, high school and college, I had 5 Spanish teachers. No native speakers. First semester of college German was a native German professor. Second semester was a Vietnamese woman who told us on the first day that she barely spoke English and would communicate almost entirely in German.

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Itriedbeingniceonce@reddit

Extremely.

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nosidrah@reddit

I took French for five years and none of the teachers were native speakers. The one Spanish teacher I had was Hispanic.

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pinkrobot420@reddit

Very common. Two of my Spanish teachers were native speakers, but the rest of them were all white dudes. I had a lot of teachers because I went to two high schools. This was in the 1970s though, so it may be different now.

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machagogo@reddit

I had three different Italian teachers in high school. One was born In the US, but he had a PHD and spoke 8 different languages. Man was brilliant and engaging. He moved on to bigger and better things.

2nd year we had a man who just immigrated to the US from Malta. Poor man. My all boys school tore him apart. He started the year with a full head of black hair, by June he was mostly grey.
Third year we had a woman who was from somewhere in South America, I forget which country. She taught Itlaian and Spanish.

My kids Spanish teacher in middle school and one of the teachers in my older son's high school was American and spoke terrible, terrible Spanish. My Argentine wife used to correct her work all of the time.

Anyway. I'd say it's a healthy mix.

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skateboreder@reddit

Argentine (Rio-Platanese) Spanish has many pecularities not always found in other dialects.

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JanaKaySTL@reddit

I mostly had Spanish teachers from the US, except one in college from Cuba. My son had native German speakers for his German classes. His Italian teacher was from Italy.

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txlady100@reddit

Very common.

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bearhorn6@reddit

Depends where and what language. All my Hebrew teachers were actually Isreali. The Spanish teachers were 50/50 on being fluent and it was typically Spain Spanish. Mandarin was a native speaker as far as I know.

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botulizard@reddit

I didn't learn from a native speaker until the middle of high school.

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clearly_not_an_alt@reddit

Very common, I'd say Spanish is the only one that you are even somewhat likely to have a native speaker and it's still not that common.

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No-BrowEntertainment@reddit

My high school had two Spanish teachers. One was born in the US and spoke English as her first language, and the other was born in Chile. The one from Chile absolutely hated the way the other one taught. She used to make fun of her pronunciation in her own class. It was pretty amusing.

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CoherentBusyDucks@reddit

My stepmom is a Spanish teacher but a native English speaker. In high school I only had Spanish teachers who were native English speakers, but my French teacher was French.

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notdeadyet1821@reddit

Rare. Barring a Spanish teacher in High School everyone was a native speaker of the language they were teaching. But I'm from a large, highly diverse, coastal city.

The Spanish teacher was a disaster, though. She was from Kansas and tried to tell us LATAM kids that only Mexican Spanish was "correct."

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WilhelmVonHalo@reddit

Incredibly common outside of Spanish; my high schools French teacher was Croatian and middle schools American, my middle school Spanish teacher however was American.

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fruits-and-flowers@reddit

For French, Spanish and German, very common. Less common for other languages

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thelordstrum@reddit

Both of my French teachers were native English speakers.

One of them was from California.

But they had both lived in France for a while, so it sounded right to me.

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Mysterious-Cat9583@reddit

1/2 the time exactly.

My first Spanish teacher was descended but not actually from a Latin country.

2nd was directly from Mexico.

3rd was Mexican and German, was born in the USA but spent some time in Mexico.

4th taught both Spanish and French, and was raised in a French household by immigrant parents.

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fijatequesi@reddit

both my hs japanese and german teachers were non native speakers

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__The_Kraken__@reddit

I think it's much more common to have a native speaker at the college level. My high school German teacher was an American who had studied German his whole life (and was very skilled, but not a native speaker). In college, all of my Japanese professors and teaching assistants were originally from Japan.

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BotherBoring@reddit

Generally yes, although I did have a native speaker a couple of times. It's not a requirement.

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Fun-Yellow-6576@reddit

My French teacher was actually Belgian (like Hercule Poroit) and he also taught Spanish.

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Arkhamina@reddit

I once had a Swedish prof who was American born, but she had studied it for 4 years in Uppsala, at the University level.

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Joel_feila@reddit

For Spanish, probably most. I did have one Spanish teacher in high school, he eas fluent but not native speaker.

I would guess that for more rare languages like japanese you would be more likely to find non native speakers

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DFPFilms1@reddit

My Spanish teacher from 1st to 8th grade was from Argentina

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SpecialComplex5249@reddit

My kid’s first French teacher was an American who had studied in Canada. Their second French teacher was a Senegalese who studied in France and did not think well of the Canadian accent her students had acquired from the first teacher.

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pfmason@reddit

I have never seen a native speaker teaching a foreign language in the US for high school or middle school. Slightly more common at universities.

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hiirogen@reddit

In my high school we had a couple Spanish teachers who were Hispanic. We had a French teacher who was French and a German teacher who was German…

However the German teacher also taught French 1 as more students were interested in French than German (but obviously Spanish was the #1 choice)

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Badger_Terp@reddit

In middle school French teacher was American. In high school I had three French teachers - 1 was Haitian, 1 American, 1 was French (born in Egypt) I always assumed her dad worked with the Suez Canal based on her age.

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FlashSeason2@reddit

Foreign language was mandatory and the options were French or Spanish. Didn’t take Spanish but my French teacher was originally from New York but did live in France for several years and is fluent in the language. She was also fluent in a handful of other languages so it probably helped her get the job.

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neronga@reddit

I only ever had native speaker language teachers

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iridians@reddit

Had native French and Spanish teachers, and learned much from them, because of their passion after having gone through the immigration process to live in a new country. Had an American teacher attempt to teach me German for three years, but nobody in the class learned anything except she had the hots for some guy in Germany who seemed to see her as a FWB. At the beginning of the year, she'd talk about her past summer with him, and toward the end of the year, she would talk about her upcoming summer with him. Super inappropriate (lol).

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jenntasticxx@reddit

My German teacher had German parents and spent a lot of time in Germany, but she was American.

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vaspost@reddit

It's very common to have non native speakers teaching foreign languages in high school. I don't know about Universities... I never took a foreign language in college. Now that I think about it I don't recall ever talking to anyone who took foreign language in college.

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beepboop27885@reddit

My Spanish professor taught both Italian and Spanish. She didn't speak either until college

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Artistic_Alps_4794@reddit

Very common. Language teachers in public schools are trained and certified in the foreign languages they are teaching.

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muphasta@reddit

My German teacher also taught French. She was neither.

2/3s of the Spanish teachers at my kid's high school are not native Spanish speakers.

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lemonoreo_@reddit

I grew up in Florida. I actually had a mixed bag- some of my Spanish teachers were Hispanic and some were not. All of them except one were very good teachers.

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cafelaserlemons@reddit

My Italian teacher in high school was from Sicily!

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_Internet_Hugs_@reddit

Pretty common.

When I took German in high school my teacher was a total idiot. I grew up on Army Posts in Southern Germany and still had some ability to speak it. The problem was that I had a Southern accent and knew a lot of slang and he would tell me I was all wrong. He learned his German in a Mormon mission, safe to say I knew A LOT more dirty words than he did.

Later that year we had a group of exchanged students come and one stayed with me. She told me our teacher spoke German like a mentally slow person and explained to me about my accent and the slang. I didn't continue in the class the next year.

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dalton-watch@reddit

I took Norwegian in college and my teacher was Checklaslovakian

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lionhearted318@reddit

At my school, we offered Italian, Spanish, and French. The Italian teachers were almost always native Italian speakers, there was maybe 1 native speaking Spanish teacher, and none of the French teachers were native speakers. I think it overall is the norm that most foreign language teachers are native English teachers, but you'll find a minority who aren't and the language will depend on the region.

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bk1285@reddit

My school offered Spanish, French, Latin, Japanese, Chinese and German. The only native speaker was the German teacher, he was born in post war Germany and moved to America when he was a young boy. He didn’t teach us German though as he was about to retire and didn’t care anymore. Instead we watched band of brothers a lot and he illustrated how to lay ambushes in the jungles of south east Asia for us.

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meganemistake@reddit

Where i went to school in both not-so AND very populated parts of north Texas, usually Spanish teachers have been native speakers to a different region's type of spanish than they're supposed to teach, but sometimes also just white non-native speaking ladies(i knew one who was italian american?). I've had both men and women teaching this.

French was always non-native in my experience, usually an american-born woman, but in one school it was a lady who had immigrated from Germany?

German teachers my friends told me about were from what i could tell at least likely american-born women.

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No_Education_8888@reddit

My Spanish teacher was a white lady. She wasn’t too bad, she actually knew how to speak good Spanish due to studying it abroad in Argentina for years.. but still, there are things she probably doesn’t know that native would

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Acethetic_AF@reddit

My French teacher in high school was from France and that was a big deal for our language department. Our Spanish teacher was from Appleton, Wisconsin, by the way.

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FlamingBagOfPoop@reddit

In Lousiana we speak a different dialect of French so native speakers are from here to begin with. We’ve got got schools that start at kindergarten and 1st grade with full immersion.

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reddock4490@reddit

My French teacher in Alabama was from Louisiana

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LSUMath@reddit

For a native NYer with two years of high school French, Cajun is a bit of a struggle :)

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Angry-Dragon-1331@reddit

My German teacher wasn’t but he spent several years stationed in Berlin during the Cold War and his intern was German the year I had his class. I don’t think any of the French or Spanish came that close to being native.

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sfdsquid@reddit

Pretty common.

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lacaras21@reddit

Very common, most foreign language teachers are American, and by extention are nearly all native English speakers. Spanish is really the only language where you might get a native speaker teaching it, but in my experience, still probably not.

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Party_Caregiver9405@reddit

Very.

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cornbreadkillua@reddit

I’ve never had a foreign language teacher who had that as their first language. Nor do I know of any here. Always English as a first language then they learned that language in like high school and did a few extra classes in college to qualify teaching it.

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Aesop_Asleep@reddit

Yep all but one of my Spanish teachers was a native speaker from middle to high school. Lots of mispronunciations were taught I came to find out later…

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robotcrackle@reddit

Of the 3 language teachers I had in HS, 2 were native speakers.

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MyAvarice4@reddit

I took 6 years of Spanish and every single teacher was Mexican (as opposed to some other Hispanic origin). I think one year in college I had a teacher with no detectable latino accent, but everyone else still carried their original accent.

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Consistent_Damage885@reddit

We have three Spanish teachers, one is a native speaker. French teacher is native speaking, German teacher is not. So at my school 60 percent are not native speaking.

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yellowbubble7@reddit

I had a mixture. In my K to 12 education (in Maryland) I had: Two non-native Spanish teachers One native and three non-native French teachers One native and one non-native German teachers

The Mandarin teacher at my highschool was a native speaker, none of the French teachers were native speakers, and the Spanish teachers were a mix. The native speaker German teacher stopped teaching German so that she was only teaching ESL, and they brought in the non-native speaker.

Throwing in Canada for undergrad: my French language instructors were all native speakers and my German language professors were both non-native. The university's Italian and Japanese language professors were both native speakers and the Spanish language professors were a mix.

My not-associated with a school/university Russian classes in the US were exclusively taught by non-native speakers.

In my adult life I know a number of French teachers, and none are native speakers.

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Evamione@reddit

There were six Spanish teachers, one French teacher, and one German/latin teacher. None of them were native speakers (1990s/2000s - suburban Ohio).

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Kestrel_Iolani@reddit

I grew up in Utah which has a very high rate of people being bilingual. I think I had one native speaker in all my years of languages.

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WesternRover@reddit

My mother grew up speaking Finnish and Swedish as a native and Russian as a near native (with Russian grandparents and a Russian stepmother), and then moved to Utah and taught German and Russian, as well as teaching English classes (composition and literature, not ESL). But there wasn't any demand to teach Swedish or Finnish.

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AtomicCoyote@reddit

I had 5ish years of Spanish and only one teacher was a non-native speaker. Interestingly that made it very helpful. Because she had the perspective of a learner, she had lots of mnemonic devices and tricks to help remember rules.

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Lcky22@reddit

Im a French and Spanish teacher and I learned both languages in school. French is a heritage language for me, but no one in my family used it when I was growing up because of stigma towards immigrants. The other Spanish teacher at my school is a heritage speaker; his dad is a native speaker. None of the other language teachers in my district are native speakers, but one is married to a native speaker.

Thinking about my professional network, I would estimate that maybe 1 in 10 are native speakers.

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Megerber@reddit

My French teacher was Argentinian, but her mother spoke French at home.

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AcadianADV@reddit

My Spanish teacher wasn't native but she did attend university in a Spanish speaking country and has her masters in Spanish.Married to a native Spanish speaker. She also lived in Argentina for like 12 years before moving back to the states to teach.

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Turdulator@reddit

My Spanish teacher in high school was from Italy 🤷‍♂️

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AdEast4272@reddit

Very common. My French teacher loved the language and culture, but was decidedly American. As a teacher, principal and superintendent, I think I ran across a native speaker teacher once across 33.5 years and 6 school districts. It was hard enough to find a foreign language teacher, let alone a native speaker.

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Prestigious_Ant_703@reddit

I did not take foreign language classes after high school, but all of my middle school and high school teachers were native English-speaking.

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tenehemia@reddit

In elementary school I took Spanish, Japanese & French. In high school, Russian and German and in college more Japanese. None of those teachers was a native speaker.

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Maddad_666@reddit

Like 99%

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Frenchitwist@reddit

It depends what language you take, and where you live

Growing up in big, coastal cities, all my Spanish teachers were native Spanish speakers. My Hebrew teacher was Israeli. My summer program Russian teacher was non-native. In university, my Italian teacher was Italian, but my Arabic teacher was non-native. It all depends.

But in high school, I only had one teacher who wasn’t a native Spanish speaker. Ironically, her Spanish accent fucked me up so bad I had to repeatedly ask her to repeat herself, whereas her Colombian colleague (whom I had the following year) was perfectly clear to me.

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Huge_Policy_6517@reddit

I had a native German speaker for community college. But I think that was only because he had originally come here as an exchange student at the local state college.

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TillikumWasFramed@reddit

One of my French teachers in college was from Italy.

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AuntieFox@reddit

My high school FL teacher was Italian and spoke fluent Spanish, Italian (not offered) and French.

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sultrie@reddit

Id say about 75% of my language teachers including english, spanish, or french were not native english speakers. most had spanish as their first language

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ForceOfNature525@reddit

The US is a big place, and it is separated from the countries where the most popular languages originated by an ocean. It's not like Europe where all the different countries of origin are right next to each other and you can drive from one to the other in a car.

All of the modern foreign language teachers in my high-school were born and raised in the US, including the Spanish teacher who wasn't latina, had a Polish last name from being married and had, I believe, an Irish maiden name. My French class was taught by a woman with an English last name, from marriage, and an Italian maiden name. Practically everyone in the US is a mix of different ethic backgrounds nowadays, so that's pretty common, but they were people who were born and raised in the US (many of them were originally from the same TOWN where the highschool is located) and learned those languages as a college major, in the US. I think they both had masters degrees. I'm fairly certain they had both at least visited France and Spain respectively.

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evetrapeze@reddit

My Spanish teacher was Polish

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IHSV1855@reddit

It depends on the language a good bit. I don’t think I’ve ever encountered a non-native Spanish teacher. French is maybe 50/50, and the same for German and Mandarin. Latin obviously is all non-native.

This is speaking from my own experience from 2nd grade through university, having taken Spanish, French, and Latin and having Mandarin and German offered grades 6-12.

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sapgetshappy@reddit

My high school French teacher was German. I’ve met 3 middle and high school Spanish teachers who aren’t native speakers (all from the U.S.). I also had one university professor who was from the U.S. and learned Spanish as an adult while living in Spain.

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Western_Nebula9624@reddit

My Spanish teacher, my son's Spanish teacher and my daughter's French teacher were all non-native speakers.

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TheDrsCompanion@reddit

My freshman year Spanish 1 teacher had a thick French accent. It was terrible to learn Spanish from her. Even her English was hard to decipher sometimes.

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abbot_x@reddit

The majority of K12 language teachers in the United States are native speakers of English only who learned the language they teach in high school and college. It’s the same career trajectory teachers of math, science, etc. follow.

Native speaker teachers exist, of course, but are a minority.

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o_susannah@reddit

I had a native French speaker teaching French class in high school. It was the 1980’s.

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Jasminefirefly@reddit

I first learned French from a Dutch woman. She said, “I am teaching a foreign language in a foreign language.” (It was not an immersion class, so she explained things in English.)

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JaneandMichaelBanks@reddit

Pretty common, I'd say, especially at the lower levels. For my daughter's last year of French, her teacher was a woman who was born and raised in Russia, moved to France with her husband and became a lawyer, then moved to the U.S and became a high school French teacher.

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Original_Cable6719@reddit

My middle school and high school Spanish teacher spoke English as a first language, but lived in Puerto Rico for three years. My college level Spanish teacher was European (IIRC Portuguese) and spoke 5 languages, but Spanish was not her first language.

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Beginning-Ad3390@reddit

Even in college some of my language teachers were non-native speakers. Thank gosh because no German was ever going to pass me and say I can speak German. An American though? A for effort not for practical knowledge.

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Winter-eyed@reddit

My french teacher spoke and taught french, spanish and italian. She was born and raised American.

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freedux4evr1@reddit

I had both in Spanish and German and just a native speaker for Italian.

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chonteeeze@reddit

I’m a French teacher in California from California. Very easy to find Spanish speakers who grew up speaking Spanish and more and more Mandarin teachers and such. Native speakers of European languages is more uncommon. Even in college, to my knowledge, only one of my French professors was a native speaker

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QuarterMaestro@reddit

I had one Latin American immigrant Spanish teacher for a year in middle school, all my high school Spanish teachers were non-native. Then I was a Spanish major in college, and all of the four or five professors I had in the Spanish department were non-native. This was twenty years ago; I think the department has since hired a couple of native Spanish speakers.

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TangoCharliePDX@reddit

If you mean the French teacher is not from France, the Spanish teacher is not from Spain / Mexico / South America, the Latin teacher is not from The Roman empire, yeah it's pretty much the norm. It's nice when you have a language teacher who is actually a native speaker, which I did in my Spanish class, otherwise it's a small minority.

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Anxious-Auditor-5880@reddit

Both my Spanish teacher and French teacher were American.

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Snagtooth@reddit

That's a really interesting question. For a long time, the standard language of international business was English. That's starting to shift a bit with other countries' economic growth.

So, in my experience, while learning a second language is important, a lot of schools don't take it as seriously as other subjects.

Depending on where you are, it will be easier for a school to find a fluent/native speaker. For example, here in Florida, there is a large Latin population. So, all my Spanish teachers were Native speakers, either raised bilingual or ESL (english second language).

In most places, tho, from what I've heard, it isn't as good.

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silkywhitemarble@reddit

Is language not a graduation requirement there? In California and Nevada, you have to have one or two years (can't remember which) of language other than your native language to graduate high school.

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Snagtooth@reddit

You have to take the classes, sure, but when I was in school it was pretty easy to pass them without really learning another language. Most people will learn what they need for the tests, then forget even that after a few years.

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rharper38@reddit

Only one of my French teachers was a native speaker. I got a base of proper Parisian accent from her, but when I am speaking, I slip into a Nicoise accent because my main teacher was taught by someone from Nice. Even my college prof was American, but he would not speak English for the first month. Until I answered a question in my Nicoise accent and he busted out laughing at my accent.

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Ok-Aside2816@reddit

very but i dont mind because professors are more important yet half the science staff has thick accents

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GroundThing@reddit

I had 3 foreign language teachers, and only one of them you could argue was kind-of a native speaker: Spanish teacher who was of Hispanic descent, who mostly spoke English at home growing up, but knew enough Spanish for basic conversations with his Grandparents, but wasn't really fluent until studying it. Otherwise the others either studied it in college, or learned through immersion as an adult.

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AtheneSchmidt@reddit

I grew up in an area with a huge Hispanic population. Not one of my Spanish teachers was a native Spanish speaker, nor were they Hispanic.

The German and French teachers weren't native speakers, either. But we also didn't have...any native speakers of those languages, as far as I know, in the school.

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Brave_Pan@reddit

My Spanish 1 teacher was actually the German teacher. She ended up with a period of Spanish because there were too many Spanish students for the Spanish teachers and they were too cheap to hire another one. She literally learned along with us and just read ahead in the textbook

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PapaTua@reddit

My Japanese teacher in Highschool was non-native, but in college my professor was Japanese.

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Carrotcake1988@reddit

My high school’s German teacher was actually German. But, she was also the Spanish teacher. Which considering I grew up in a largely Spanish speaking area, is weird.

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AverageSizePeen800@reddit

My French teacher was Egyptian and her first language was Arabic.

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hollowbolding@reddit

none of the french teachers ever spoke it natively. arabic and spanish teachers often did, though

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aurorasoup@reddit

I had a German professor teaching German 1 and 2, an Italian professor who was the head of the Italian department at my university, and all of my American Sign Language professor were Deaf and spoke ASL as their native language.

But for the most part, I didn’t have native speakers teaching their language. One of my Italian professors was American, and another was Croatian. All of my French teachers were American. All the Spanish teachers and professors I met were non-native speakers too, which was strange given I live in California and native Spanish speakers are not hard to find.

Honestly, I don’t think being a native speaker is an advantage when teaching languages. Native speakers usually haven’t studied the grammar and structure of their native language, and so are unable to teach it to someone else. Spanish is my native language and I definitely don’t know the ins and outs as well as I do with the languages I had to learn through formal study.

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Suspicious-Fish7281@reddit

My German teacher was a non-native speaker, but did go to Germany every summer for 2 to 3 months. She was pretty good especially as it pertained to slang and culture. The Spanish teacher and French (Canadian) teacher were native speakers. The Latin teacher was not.

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Echo9111960@reddit

I'm kinda old, but my HS French teacher was a native of Alabama, but complained about our accent.

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fireflypoet@reddit

My high school French teacher in CT was of French Canadian origin.Needless to say, his accent was hardly Parisian. I had a college French professor who was French, although living in the US, and rumored to have been in the French resistance during WW 2.

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glemits@reddit

Two native Germans, and one Spaniard here.

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noicecream101@reddit

I took French for 3 years in high school and a year in college. The first teacher was from France but left in the middle of the school year without telling anyone. The replacement teacher did not speak French beyond knowing a few numbers (she thought she was going to teach ASL). The next teacher stayed for the rest of the time and did speak French as a third language. He doubled up as a Spanish teacher too (his first language). My college professor was from Morocco and French technically was his second language but he couldn’t remember a time he didn’t speak it. My French sounds confused.

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accidentalscientist_@reddit

Most of the Spanish teachers in my high school were not native speakers. Had a lot of white teachers. We also had one from Lebanon who was also the Arabic teacher. We had maybe 2 I can remember that were actually native speakers.

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SordoCrabs@reddit

Unless you live in an especially diverse or populous area, or in/near an ethnic enclave, chances are high that the teachers are non-native speakers.

I had native speakers of Spanish for 6 years before university. Two of my instructors at university were non-native speakers, and there was a 3rd that I'm still uncertain about to this day.

AFAIK the non-native Spanish teachers in my high school only taught the early levels, though that could have been more because they were less experienced teachers. We also had a French teacher from Normandy.

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Dylaus@reddit

Our German teacher was from Germany, but our French and Spanish teachers were both from here.

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Icy-Whale-2253@reddit

One of my French teachers was a British woman.

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gceaves@reddit

Non native is fine. The Slavic languages department at UW in the early 1990s had a bunch of not Slavic people teaching Russian, Polish, and a few others. The teachers knew more than the students. It was fine.

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ATLDeepCreeker@reddit

I had a French teacher who was American born, but her mother was French, and she studied at the Sorbonne. Close enough for me. My Spanish teacher was from Texas, but some sort of Latinx.

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MageDA6@reddit

It’s pretty common to have foreign language teachers not be native speakers. My high school was one of the few places we’re all but two teachers were native speakers. 5 out of 6 Spanish teachers, 2 out of 3 French teachers, and our one German teacher were all native speakers that moved to usa as a teenager or young adult.

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tired-of-everyting@reddit

All the language teachers in both middle and high school at my schools were non-native speakers. In fact my french teacher is also the one that did japanese lessons.

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My_Frozen_Heart@reddit

Yeah. We didn't have foreign languages til middle school and we had one teacher that taught French and Spanish (very basic intro level stuff). Pretty sure she was not a native speaker of either language.

High school I decided to take all the Spanish courses and there was one Latina but her English was also native-level, she may have been born in the US to latino parents, she didn't have an accent at all. There were two other Spanish teachers in HS but neither were native. One had lived in Spain for a while tho, the other was from Texas and I actualy realized later (after moving abroad myself to a Spanish speaking country) was probably not fluent in Spanish at all, lol... for example she taught me oido (ear) instead of odio (hate).. don't ask what that project was about

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--serotonin--@reddit

Yeah. My French teacher was from Boston.

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ActuaLogic@reddit

When I was in high school, I had three Spanish teachers, only one of whom was a native speaker. When I was in college, I had three years of Italian. A non-native speaker taught the first semester, and I had native speakers after that. I also had a semester of Dutch, which turned out to be an undergraduate course to enable art history grad students to read eighteenth century Dutch. It was taught by an art history professor whose native language was English.

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Puzzlehead_Gen@reddit

My high school Spanish teachers were native speakers, as was my college French professor (she had one parent who was French and grew up speaking both English and French).

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Haruspex12@reddit

It isn’t common. And it may be counterproductive. In live near maybe a thousand or two native German speakers, but nobody in Germany speaks that dialect anymore. And, isolation has caused that dialect to diverge quite a bit from the German spoken in Germany. Likewise, most French and Canadian French speakers can’t understand Louisiana French.

While we are a nation of immigrants, they are not spread evenly through the culture. I come from an Italian speaking area. It may sound like someone’s grandfather’s version of Neapolitan, but otherwise nobody will recognize it.

The only exception may be Spanish, but even there, peninsular or Mexican or Cuban or what?

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Drummergirl16@reddit

My French teacher in high school was a non-native speaker, but he lived and worked in France when he was a young man, as both a nanny for a rich family and as a hair model.

At the small-ish state school I first went to for college, my French teacher was a native French speaker. I think at the college level, instructors tend to be native speakers, while at the grade school level it’s much less common.

Most high schools in the U.S., if they have a language teacher at all, have Spanish courses. I’ve found that those positions are more likely to be filled with native speakers than courses in other languages. There were 6 high schools in my county, every one offered Spanish courses.

My high school was the only one that offered a different foreign language (French), and his class was very competitive to get into- everyone loved him. He was a sassy, closeted gay man who wore Hawaiian shirts and a gold chain necklace every day, owned multiple dachshunds, and helped with the school’s annual theater production. He spoke English with a southern coastal drawl and French with a Parisian accent. He was actually an incredibly effective teacher, when I went to France with family years later I could converse comfortably and didn’t need to resort to English to communicate at all.

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Adorable_Dust3799@reddit

My city is on the Mexican border. My main Spanish teacher was from Spain and always taught the differences between Mexican Spanish and Spain Spanish when it was relevant.

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No-Technician-7536@reddit

In my experience, no. My school offered Spanish, French, Japanese, and Chinese. The Chinese and Japanese teachers were both ethnically Chinese/Japanese and native speakers — I think all but 1 were immigrants. The two French teachers were both from France, and the two Spanish teachers that I had were from Peru and Spain. There were a couple more Spanish teachers (since it was by far the most popular language) and I’m fairly sure they all were Latin American

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IKnowAllSeven@reddit

My kids Japanese teachers were all native speakers but French, Spanish and German were all non native

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Sledgehammer925@reddit

One of my teachers was non-native and she was one of my favorites. She had a lasting impact on my life.

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remes1234@reddit

None of my high schools language teachers were native speakers of that language.

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Scribe_WarriorAngel@reddit

One of the French teachers was Spanish speaking native

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shadydelilah@reddit

My Spanish professor was from Poland and taught us in English and Spanish

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Intelligent_Pop1173@reddit

Pretty rare in middle school and high school for me. Most were primarily English speakers. In college though they were mostly native speakers.

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IGotFancyPants@reddit

In college my Spanish professor was a German man from Argentina. It wasn’t until years later I thought, “How did a German man end up in Argentina?” I did the math and realized he was the right age to be a WW2 vet. Yikes!

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Particular_Bet_5466@reddit

All my Spanish teachers were American born white ladies and men.

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mrpoopsocks@reddit

I'm not sure how often a work visa for a foreign language teacher would be approved. I'm certain a teacher wouldn't be able to afford to immigrate and survive on just a teachers salary, which would be the only work they'd be able to legally do on their work visa (if I remember correctly, visas are complicated)

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starfish_carousel@reddit

In my high school, there were two French teachers - one was from Puerto Rico (and also taught Spanish) and the other was from France (and taught the upper level courses). The Spanish teacher from Puerto Rico was the only native speaker.

At my university, none of the French professors were native speakers. They were from Louisiana (but French as a foreign language), Ohio, and New York. The German professor was Hungarian. There were more Spanish professors and I think some of them were native speakers, but Spanish is the only language I didn’t study at the university level so I didn’t get to know them. My senior year we got a Chinese professor from China.

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SisterTalio@reddit

Extremely. My elementary school Spanish teacher has only taken 1 year of Spanish before getting her teaching certificate.

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shouldiknowthat@reddit

Very common for foreign language teachers to have learned those languages in order to teach them.

I was lucky my first two years of Spanish to have a Cuban exile (former corporate lawyer in Cuba) as my Spanish teacher. Third year, different state, had an native English speaker who taught the Castilian dialect. Fourth year, yet another state, school didn't even offer Spanish even though it was in area with many Mexican/Central American migrant workers. They did offer French, taught by the Art teacher, who had had 4 years of high school French.

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nwbrown@reddit

All of mine have been non native speakers.

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DFMNE404@reddit

My French teacher is native, the other French teacher isn’t. The Italian teacher is native. I believe the two Spanish teachers are native. The Korean teacher is Korean but I think she was raised in America so she had Korean at home and English everywhere else. There’s one more teacher but the language is very specific to where I live and I dont wanna out that but she’s a native too.

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Expert-Leg8110@reddit

My German teachers in middle school, high school, and college were all native speakers. The French and Spanish teachers at my middle school and high school were also native speakers, although I did not take French or Spanish.

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brzantium@reddit

My high school French teacher was from Nebraska. One of my college French professors was from France, another from Italy, and another from Senegal.

My middle school Spanish teacher was not a native Spanish speaker, but that was when I lived on the East Coast. Here in Texas, it's pretty typical for Spanish teachers to be Latino and speak Spanish natively. When I tried to take Spanish at the local community college five years ago, my professor was Salvadoran.

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quietlywatching6@reddit

I'm from a poor rural community, the only way we had language teachers was b/c we had English teachers getting their masters in the US, teach Spanish (native language) for school credit on top of the small salary, only way we could get them.

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AlienDelarge@reddit

My high school spanish teacher was the art teacher who was told to learn Spanish over the summer or lose his job. He was not a native Spanish speaker.

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Ca1rill@reddit

Took French throughout high school and college and a year of Italian. French I never had a native speaker as a teacher, but one of my French professors in college spoke so well I thought she was native until I found out she went to high school somewhere in the French Caribbean (maybe Martinique?). My Italian professors were always native Italian. One of my French teachers in high school also taught Italian (she was of Italian heritage, believe she picked it up at home).

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callmeKiKi1@reddit

All of my Spanish teachers(4) were of Mexican descent. One was a naturalized citizen.

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Spud8000@reddit

no. You forget America is FULL of all sorts of different language speaking citizens. they all have english as a common language. but what language their parents or grandparents spoke is also there too

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Baebarri@reddit

My sister taught high school Spanish for 30 years and she is the whitest white girl ever. But she loves the language and the culture, and she was an excellent teacher.

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Bright_Ices@reddit

Most of my Spanish teachers were native Spanish speakers, but the French teacher at my high school was Madame Hopper.

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Ok_Owl_5403@reddit

Very common for French and German. In my day Spanish was also usually taught by non-native speakers. However, I'm guessing that has changed. Chinese, also very common, is usually taught be native speakers.

Those are the top 4 languages (plus Latin).

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AnalysisNo4295@reddit

So I learned years after high school that I had learned Spanish incorrectly and Spanish grammar entirely incorrectly from all 4 years of me taking Spanish because my Spanish teacher had a doctorates in secondary education but was NOT a native Spanish speaker. We had native Spanish speaking kids in my class and he'd say "Don't think this is going to be easy because knowing Spanish and learning Spanish are different things" and claimed that he was going to teach us the "right way" and those kids ended up correcting him all the time to the point it became a rule that if you were a fluent Spanish speaker or native speaker OR if you spoke it at home then you need to take a more challenging course and would ask for second language credit to instead choose between French or German but the thing with that is it had to ONLY be a suggestion because it cradles on discrimination.

I knew that I wasn't learning everything right but I didn't know HOW badly that teacher wasn't teaching the right way to speak Spanish until I had a friend in college who was a native Spanish speaker from Mexico talk to me and they kept asking me like "What are you trying to say?" and I'd say that i was trying to say ____ (Whatever it was) and asked me where I learned Spanish and I told them my professors name which was WILDLY non hispanic and they said "OH were they from Mexico?" and I said "No. They were local and didn't speak fluent Spanish from my understanding." They told me what I said (NOT what I wanted to say) and taught me the appropriate way to say it. HOWEVER, I had been going so long saying it that way that it became a habit and that person suggested I go to another class taught by a native Spanish speaker to reinvent my knowledge of Spanish.

I still more than likely will address certain scenarios like the single most broken Spanish speaker out there. People at work know I don't speak fluent Spanish but I am permitted to use my Spanish SOMETIMES in certain situations at work to get by at least but kind of the same as Drake Bell- dude literally LIVES in Mexico and can carry a conversation but still doesn't consider himself to be fluent. That's me. Thanks to that teacher not being a native Spanish speaker...

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Efficient_Wheel_6333@reddit

Most of my foreign language teachers were non-native speakers of their languages. I think I had one Spanish teacher who was a native speaker, but I don't know if it was Spain Spanish or Mexican Spanish; given I had her when I was living in NE Ohio as a kid (spent a good chunk of my school years in Michigan), I'm suspecting Mexican Spanish.

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twinklebelle@reddit

My high school French teacher was Vietnamese.

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FlyByPC@reddit

My French I (and later, V) teacher in high school was from France. The teacher I had for French II and III was from NYC, but was fluent and had a nearly perfect accent.

Another teacher at the school was originally from ... somewhere up in the hills, somewhere. She understood French well as far as grammar and vocabulary and fluency, but just could NOT understand that it requires different sounds than English. She would pronounce it like a naïve American who had only ever known English would. It was like hearing fingernails on a blackboard.

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TheRealRollestonian@reddit

It's pretty common. In Virginia, I had only one native speaker out of several for Spanish in high school and college, and she spoke Castillan, which is different.

For Japanese in college, I had a native speaker. Imagine her horror in giving us Japanese names for class when she saw the number of r's and l's in my name.

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miknis@reddit

Castillan spanish is the official spanish in Spain.

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Novel_Willingness721@reddit

When I took foreign language in high school all my teachers were native speakers.

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swfwtqia@reddit

It’s pretty common for them to be native English speakers who learned the language they are teaching. Although my French teacher in high school was German.

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r2k398@reddit

Pretty common in my experience, except for Spanish.

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Think-Departure-5054@reddit

Ours spoke the language. Idk if they were first, second, third generation but my school did not have Americans teaching foreign languages

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LSUMath@reddit

This is another the U.S. is a big place questions. I had friends in college who had 1500 students in their graduating class. That's bigger than the town I grew up in. That changes the resources you have available to you.

It's a lot easier to find a native Spanish speaker in California than it is in New Hampshire. So many varia bles.

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Next-Wishbone1404@reddit

No one in my whole home town was a native speaker of French.

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thirdeyefish@reddit

In my experience, 100%. High school (I didn't go past high school) was the only place I was offered more than just Spanish, and all of the teachers were L2 speakers.

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skrufforious@reddit

I think I had one Spanish teacher in middle school who was not a native speaker, but all the others were. I studied German, French, Spanish, Chinese, and Japanese. My German teacher was Austrian, my French teacher was French-Canadian, my Spanish teachers were Cuban and Mexican, my Chinese teacher was Chinese, and my Japanese teachers were Japanese. This was in the public school system and college, in Michigan. Makes more sense to have a native speaker when possible, then you also get to benefit more from cultural exchange as well.

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rozzingit@reddit

I never had or knew a foreign language teacher in school who was a native speaker of the language they were teaching.

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i08nakamura@reddit

all the spanish teachers i have are white and english is their native language

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cdb03b@reddit

It is standard for your foreign language teacher to be a non-native speaker of that language at ALL levels of education in the US.

Most of our teachers will American and being American their native language will be English.

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brickbaterang@reddit

All the language teachers in my school system were native speakers

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FatherSkeletor@reddit

I took 4 years of German in high school. I had two non native speakers and one native speaker

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JasminJaded@reddit

A native Spanish speaker taught Spanish to my 5th grade class. I don't recall what country she was from, but she wasn't from the US. Her kids were born in the US and were classmates of mine.

7th through 9th grade, my German teacher was a native German speaker from Germany, and in high school, my German teacher was a native English speaker, but had lived in West Germany for many years.

I don't know how common my experience is.

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Top_File_8547@reddit

My great niece in Indiana has gone to a Spanish immersion public school since first grade and is fluent in Spanish.

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natnat1919@reddit

All of the language teachers at my high school were native speakers, but one. And we had about 9?

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Top-Comfortable-4789@reddit

Not very common the two language teachers I had were both native.

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Immediate_Falcon8808@reddit

Seems a lot more common than it used to be to have non native speakers as language teachers.

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MoriKitsune@reddit

Somewhat common, but good schools will prioritize hiring native speakers when they can.

My high school's Mandarin teacher was Chinese, the French teacher was from Martinique, and the Spanish teacher was Cuban (iirc.)

I only took French and German in college, but the French teacher was Quebecois, and the German teacher was German.

I don't remember if my middle school Spanish teacher was a native speaker, but I want to say she was?

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bearface93@reddit

In middle and high school, only one of my five Spanish teachers was a native speaker and he hadn’t been here very long so his English wasn’t always the best. My Latin teacher obviously wasn’t a native speaker, either. In college, my Italian professor was a native speaker but hadn’t lived in Italy for over 20 years since she came to the US for college and stayed after graduating.

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AcrobaticAd4464@reddit

My German teachers were all native speakers. My French and Arabic teachers were not.

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DanThePartyGhost@reddit

For my Spanish classes, despite growing up in Southern California where literally half the population is of Hispanic- mostly Mexican- descent, I had one native Spanish speaker (Venezuelan), and 4 different native English speakers. Very strange! Although I have to say, the best Spanish teacher I ever had was one of the native English speaking ones. She said that language is never came easy to her and that’s why she was good at teaching it - because she understood how hard it was

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Sarah9954@reddit

I live in a rural area our entire grades has roughly 85-100 people not per class per grade. We had a Spanish teacher who was 100 percent Spanish no idea how she ended up by the US/Canadian border to teach us. Apparently there was a French class to but the teacher was not French

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YOUTUBEFREEKYOYO@reddit

Every foreign language teacher in all my years of teaching were all from the area I was being taught in lol

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vadutchgirl@reddit

In the 70s/80s we didn't have native speakers in my high school.

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Irresponsable_Frog@reddit

Pretty common if not Spanish. But I’ve had professors that were non native but lived in a Spanish speaking country and studied there for years. Japanese? More common. French? Usually French Canadians. German? Very common non native. But my college professor was from Mexico and grew up in a German village. So he spoke both. English was his 3rd language. There are communities of other languages in Mexico, I thought that was amazing when I was young. Now I think, why wouldn’t they? US has plenty little burrows where English isn’t the primary language! And I’m older so a lot of German immigrants went to Mexico, Central and South America after world war 2 .

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ChanclasConHuevos@reddit

2 out of my 3 Spanish teachers in high school were white, Mormon men. The other one was an incredibly sweet woman from Mexico.

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TopperMadeline@reddit

My high school French teacher, French wasn’t her native language.

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1Negative_Person@reddit

My high school offered Spanish, French, German, and Japanese. None of the teachers were native speakers, but all had lived of studied in countries where those were the primary language.

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TheHarlemHellfighter@reddit

I didn’t get a native speaker until I was in college…

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cometshoney@reddit

My German teacher was the only native speaker I ever had. My Spanish and French teachers were neither Spanish nor French, and my Latin teacher was no Julius Caesar.

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Turbulent_Bullfrog87@reddit

None of my high school language teachers were native speakers. In college I had 3; 2 of them were native speakers, the other was not.

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Not_an_okama@reddit

In my experience in the mid west, we had 2 native spanish speaking spanish teachers, 1 who was american but fluent. We only had 1 chinese teacher who was a native speaker, and 1 french teacher who was a native speaker. You also had the option to go to the other highschool to take japanese (they would come to our for chinese) but i didnt know anything about that teacher.

I didnt know anyone that took more than one language in highschool, though some switched between middle school, highschool and college.

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oldfatcranky1@reddit

My Spanish teacher. Spanish was her second language, and English was her third.

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boulevardofdef@reddit

My high-school Spanish teacher was not a native speaker, and honestly, I'm not even sure in retrospect if her Spanish was that great. There were two kids with my Spanish name in my class, and she dubbed me "[Name] Primero" and the other "[Name] Segundo," which I later learned isn't really grammatical.

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Jswazy@reddit

I never had a language teacher that was a native speaker. They had been speaking fluently for decades usually but it wasn't thier first language

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niccig@reddit

I've taken courses in Spanish, Italian, French and German for a total of maybe 8-10 instructors. Only one was a native speaker (community Spanish class).

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PeorgieT75@reddit

None of the language teachers in my high school were native speakers.

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dieticewater@reddit

My German teacher was from Mississippi. A fun party trick was learning to speak German with a thick southern accent, I mostly used it to make my Oma mad.

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yaxAttack@reddit

I went to a public middle school and a private high school. For both, the Spanish teacher was a native speaker from the Americas (one was Mexican and the other was Puerto Rican), while the French teacher at the public school spoke it as a second language, and the private school teacher was a native speaker. In college, I took Arabic, and our intro professor was not a native speaker but had studied a LOT of language acquisition in addition to the Arabic, while the advanced professor was a native speaker (well, technically his first language was a Berber language, but his primary schooling was in Arabic and French).

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queenofthegrapefruit@reddit

In grade school all of my teachers were native English speakers, including the Spanish teacher. It was a small school so Spanish was the only choice. At the college level the professors teaching Spanish, French, and German were all native speakers of those languages.

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Sea-Kitchen3779@reddit

Out of all the French and Spanish teachers we had while I was in school, there was only ONE, one of the middle school French teachers, who was an actual native speaker.

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Quix66@reddit

Very

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DankBlunderwood@reddit

We call them L2 speakers. We couldn't possibly find enough L1 speakers to meet half the demand for foreign language teachers, so yes most of them are non-native speakers.

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Elixabef@reddit

Three out of my four Spanish teachers in high school were NOT native Spanish speakers. In college, all of my many Spanish professors were native speakers.

However, neither of the two French professors I had in college were native French speakers.

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_Bon_Vivant_@reddit

In my high school (1979-1982) we had three language classes.

German - taught by native German speaker

Spanish - native Spanish speaker

French - non-native speaker.

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Sharp_Anything_5474@reddit

My year 1 Japanese teacher was born and raised in the US. Started learning Japanese later in life and had gone to Japan to teach English and get better at Japanese.

Years 2 ,3, and 4 I had a native speaker who moved to the US when she was in her early 20's.

I enjoyed the native speaker better. She was overall a better teacher and I also enjoyed hearing about what it was like growing up and living in Japan and the differences she noticed moving to the US.

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seesha@reddit

At university my French professor was Chinese.

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guiltypleasures82@reddit

At various times I took Spanish, Chinese, French, and German and only one of my teachers was a native speaker (one of the German teachers). That was K12, in college I took more French and again, had one native speaker and the rest were native English speakers.

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codenameajax67@reddit

100% of Latin teachers are non-native

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_Mulberry__@reddit

My French teacher wasn't native. Most (maybe all? I don't really remember my elementary school Spanish teachers) of my Spanish teachers were native speakers. My Russian professor in college was a native speaker

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Derwin0@reddit

Fairly common.

My kids’s German teacher was a native American, as was my Spanish teacher in high school.

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taylorscorpse@reddit

I took French in high school and it was my teacher’s third or fourth language, she was Portuguese and also taught Portuguese classes (and Spanish classes)

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Spiceybrown@reddit

In CT, my French teacher was Croatian but she also taught Spanish and was a pretty fluent English speaker.

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Excellent_Squirrel86@reddit

I studies Spanish for years. Mexican teachers, Venezuelan, Argentinian, Cuban, Spanish (as is Barcelona). Had one non-native teacher in college. Who would frequently forget that she was not teaching Italian. And she was bad at that, too (Sicilian Grandfather)

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Chuckles52@reddit

Not common in my time. I did have an English teacher who came from the south US. She tried to teach us how to mispronounce words. As in “How have you bean?”

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smokiechick@reddit

My high school had a native Spanish speaker, a native French speaker, and I don't remember which language was native to the guy who taught German, Spanish, Latin, and Italian. Probably not Latin. I can't remember if his family fled Germany for Italy or the other way around. But he spent 3 years in Spain trying to get to the US. And then he deliberately decided to try to teach a bunch of dumbasses for 30 years.

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The_crazy_bird_lady@reddit

Our Spanish teacher was a native speaker of German.

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Aggravating_Kale9788@reddit

Ours had two French teachers, one was native and the other was not, though the native one spoke Belgian French and the non-native Parisian French, which caused some... differences to be learned and engrained. I count in Belgian French and I struggle with understanding Parisians. The German teacher was really German, but was Swabian so I acquired a touch of that accent which gets odd looks from Hochdeutch speakers.

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daffodil0127@reddit

I don’t know if it’s uncommon, but most of the foreign language teachers in my school were non-native speakers of the languages they taught.

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LydiaGormist@reddit

In lots of cases, yes. In my high school -- and you see, not starting foreign language instruction before secondary school is the norm in the US -- the non-native Spanish speaker taught the Spanish I classes, and and the native speaker (who was bilingual in English) taught the Spanish II and above.

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CheezitCheeve@reddit

Man, if you think you’re getting a native Japanese speaker in Nowhere, Kansas, you’re having a laugh. You’d be lucky to get a native Spanish speaker.

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Wrong-Landscape-2508@reddit

All but one of my teachers learned the language they taught, in American highschool and college. One dude grew up in Italy, but taught French.

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letoiledunordstars@reddit

None of my high school Spanish teachers were native speakers

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Hufflepuffknitter80@reddit

I had 3 different Spanish teachers from middle school through college. Only one was a native Spanish speaker, she was Cuban and it was my middle school teacher. My high school teacher was a native English speaker, lived in Chile as a young adult. My college professor was fluent in like 6 languages. I believe Hungarian was her native language but she was married to a Spaniard. So I had 3 different types of Spanish taught to me through the years, Cuban, Spain, and Chilean. And I lived in AZ so was exposed to a lot of Mexican Spanish as well.

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ngshafer@reddit

I don't think any of the language teachers I've ever had were native speakers of that language.

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BrackenFernAnja@reddit

It used to be a lot more common before more people recognized the importance of native or native-like fluency and cultural knowledge.

I find that countries vary tremendously in how much this is recognized. I’ve met English teachers from many countries, especially in Asia, who could not be considered fluent in English by any stretch of the imagination.

All of my high school foreign language teachers were native or native-like in the languages they taught. This was for Spanish, French, German, Italian, Swahili, and American Sign Language. Same thing was true in college, where I added Japanese.

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mando_ad@reddit

Neither of my high school Spanish teachers were native speakers. And - even though I already knew enough Spanish that I planned to skate through those classes - I'm pretty sure I spoke it better than my Spanish 2 teacher...

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Reasonable_Guess_175@reddit

At my high school the mandarin and Japanese teachers were native speakers (one teacher for each language), the Spanish teachers were split (probably 3 native speakers and 2 non-native), and then I’m not sure about the French teachers (2 of them).

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Antitenant@reddit

It was pretty common, particularly for languages that aren't Spanish. With Spanish, I've had teachers from the US, but also immigrant teachers from all around Latin America and Spain.

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ShiraPiano@reddit

In suburban Massachusetts all of our language teachers were non-native.

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Gr8danedog@reddit

My middle school Spanish teacher had a degree in Spanish, but she was an American. My high school Spanish teacher was from Colombia as was her brother who taught Spanish and French at the local community college.

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csb193882@reddit

My Spanish teacher was not a native speaker. I think she also taught French at one point too but by the time I took her class she wasn't teaching French anymore. She was the only foreign language teacher in the school district. So our only option was Spanish. Now, she's retired and I think the school district never managed to find a replacement (idk if they even bothered) and now they just have Rosetta Stone to fill the spot.

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TheRealDudeMitch@reddit

Neither of my Spanish teachers in high school were native Spanish speakers.

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Hello_Hangnail@reddit

We had a science teacher teaching german at our school. He didn't even speak german.

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SinnerClair@reddit

Extremely common I’d say. In my experience, most language professors either just really liked a country that speaks that language, or they married a native speaker and picked it up over time or out of necessity.

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teacuperate@reddit

I only ever had non-native-speaking Spanish teachers—maybe 3 total? And all the ones I’ve met in my life as a teacher were non-native speakers, too.

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fourthwrite@reddit

Of the 5 foreign language teachers I remember enough about, only 2 were native speakers to the language they taught. One in French, another in Japanese. There may have been some who were native Spanish or German speakers, but I went the French route and didn't know enough about the other teachers personally. (It was a large school, with multiple teachers in each language.)

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PC_Friar@reddit

Most are, I’d say. In college, one of my French professors was a native of France, otherwise in many years of learning German, French and Spanish in High School and College, all my instructors were Americans.

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MegaMiles08@reddit

I took Spanish in middle school, high school, and college. All my teachers were non-native speakers, but I do feel like they were all very fluent and all had lived in a Spanish speaking country for at least 1 year while in college. It wasn't like being taught from Peg Hill.

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Mr_BillyB@reddit

It's pretty common. The replies about it being more common in certain places are probably true, but...

I went to a high school that was around ¼ Hispanic (+/- 90% Mexican) at the time. My two Spanish teachers for those 4 years were Peruvian and Ecuadorian. I teach at a high school about 5 miles from my alma mater. Our student population is over 50% Hispanic (again, mostly Mexican). We've had 7 or 8 Spanish teachers in the 10-ish years I've been there, and only 2 have been native speakers.

I think a thing worth remembering is that teaching requires a bachelor's degree at minimum, as well as passing certification exams and background checks. It's going to prevent a huge portion of native speakers from even considering teaching. And it sucks, because kids don't get to see themselves represented in the faculty.

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Skipp_To_My_Lou@reddit

As with everything relating to education, it depends on where you are. America does not have one education system; we have a federal agency that sets some basic standards & doles out money, 50 state (plus DC!) education agencies that set some standards (some like California & Texas are large enough their textbook standards become de facto regional/national standards), & thousands of county & city school boards that actually run the schools.

So with that out of the way. Larger cities will have an easier time finding native or highly capable non-native speakers, especially for more popular languages like Spanish, French, German, & so on. For that matter native Spanish speakers aren't that hard to find in most places but finding one who is qualified to be a teacher might be.

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nc45y445@reddit

Thank you! I keep seeing these questions on Reddit about the “American education system” and I wonder why I’m often the only American speaking up to say that’s not a thing. There is no “American education system”

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Equal-Guess-2673@reddit

I had two native speaker teachers growing up & two non native. Being a native speaker doesn’t make you a good teacher. In my case the two non native speakers were far better at actually teaching us & communicating the differences so we could learn.

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nc45y445@reddit

I had multiple teachers from Spain who taught both Spanish and French in the 70s and 80s in the Chicago area. My kid’s Spanish teachers were all from Latin America, the Japanese teachers were from Japan and the Mandarin teachers were mainly from China. West Coast.

You can’t really generalize about “In America”

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lavasca@reddit

It is kind of common.

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Ijustreadalot@reddit

There was a native Austrian at my high school who taught Spanish for years before the school finally let her teach German. I was already taking Spanish by then. I had a ditzy blond American for my 1st year. For my 2nd year I had an American teacher who was fluent in French, but she wanted to work at my high school so she took a long-term sub position in Spanish so she could hopefully get a position in French when one opened up. For my 3rd year I had a native Spanish teacher, but by then I think there was little hope for my accent.

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Frederf220@reddit

"Mek-ree bow-cups" --HS French Teacher

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5usDomesticus@reddit

I took multiple years of Spanish because I was terrible at it and had to keep repeating it (they required a foreign language).

Only one of my teachers were native speakers. The rest just spoke it fluently.

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NoKnee5693@reddit

Did you learn Spanish well or you forgot

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AbbreviationsPast785@reddit

My high school Spanish teacher taught Castilian Spanish in the US, not sure how common that is but it seemed strange. Then she would constantly say, “In Spain, we do this and that, we eat paella,” etc. She grew up in New Jersey and isn’t a native speaker.

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Water-is-h2o@reddit

My Spanish teacher was American, and Spanish was actually her 3rd language after German

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RodeoBoss66@reddit

So she was a German immigrant?

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supercaptinpanda@reddit

No, it seems that German was her second language, so assuming she spoke English as well, then English was her first.

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Water-is-h2o@reddit

Yeah, this

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sarahprib56@reddit

I tried to take 9th grade German in high school in the mid 90s in MA. I dropped it because for some reason a whole bunch of people were not beginners and I was lost. I suppose there were kids whose grandparents spoke German, otherwise I have no idea how they knew so much German. Remember, back then WWII was only 50 years ago.

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SelectionFar8145@reddit

Nearly 100% of the time. Most common foreign language classes in American high schools are Spanish, French, German & Japanese. We don't have easy access to any native speakers of those excepting Spanish & kinda sorta French, but only if we're bringing in a French Canadian or a Cajun.

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Bulky-Strawberry-110@reddit

2/3 of my Spanish teachers were ESL. I'm in a northern state

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freeze45@reddit

All of the language teachers at my school were American born, not native speaker to the language they taught

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Rourensu@reddit

2/2 of my Spanish teachers were non-native speakers.

4/5 of my Japanese teachers were native speakers.

1/2 of my German teachers was a native speaker.

1/1 of my Korean teachers was a native speaker.

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lmxor101@reddit

I took Spanish and German in high school. There were four Spanish teachers, one for each level, and only one of them was a native speaker. At least one of the non-native speakers had lived in a Spanish speaking country previously. The German teacher was not native but had passed the Goethe Institut’s C2 exam and lived in Germany for some time.

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Complex_Yam_5390@reddit

My Spanish teachers in jr. high and h.s. were all from Mexico except for one who was from Spain. This was California. I have no idea about the other language classes.

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Used-Currency-476@reddit

My sons, in K-8, high school, and college had native Spanish speakers teaching Spanish. In high school and college I had native Italian speakers teaching Italian. My husband only took Spanish in high school and did not have a native speaking teacher.

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HermioneMarch@reddit

Very

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Both_Wasabi_3606@reddit

All my high school French and Russian teachers were non-native speakers.

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warneagle@reddit

Neither of my Spanish teachers in high school nor my German professor in college were native speakers. They were all American.

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JadedMacoroni867@reddit

Out of five foreign language teachers, only one was a native speaker but I wouldn’t be apprised by zero in most places

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Fearless-Boba@reddit

Depends on how big your district is and what your population is like.

I went to a big high school...our Spanish teacher was Colombian.

I've worked at rural schools and the Spanish teacher is not native.

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question_girl617@reddit

Very common. I’m a language teacher and teach my second language.

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doktorhladnjak@reddit

It’s pretty mixed. In my high school, Spanish was by far the most popular foreign language. There were 5 Spanish teachers who only taught Spanish, one who only taught French (native), one who taught French and Spanish, and one who taught German (native) and English.

Of the Spanish teachers, about half were native speakers. This was in Southern California where Spanish is very widely spoken so most students choose it as their foreign language.

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Illustrious_Fix5906@reddit

My high school Spanish teacher spoke 3 languages!! Spanish was his 3rd!!

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Comprehensive-Menu44@reddit

My first Spanish teacher was a red headed white woman from Midwest US. My second year Spanish teacher was a Hispanic man from Mexico. I learned more from Spanish 1 than Spanish 2.

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Raibean@reddit

Only higher level university foreign language classes are taught in that language as the norm, though some individual teachers may choose to teach in their target language.

Foreign language classes are often where we learn grammar after English classes drop it in favor of composition and literature analysis.

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Petrifalcon3@reddit

Typically Spanish teachers grew up speaking Spanish (except in particularly non-diverse areas where they don't realistically have that option). As for other languages, a lot of times they spent time in a country that speaks that language, maybe as a study abroad, or living after college, but it's unlikely that it's actually their first language. Although there are exceptions.

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OrdinarySubstance491@reddit

Relatively common. It depends a lot on the area and the school.

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CosmicallyF-d@reddit

All of the high school language teachers in my school, with the exception of Hebrew, we're not native. Our language options were French, Spanish, Hebrew and Russian.

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sugarplumbanshee@reddit

My teachers were pretty evenly split: I had three French teachers, one of whom was a native speaker- one of the non-native speakers had a French degree but was truly abysmal at the language and one was a stronger Spanish speaker but the school wanted to introduce French classes (but she taught at the very introductory level and gave a good practical foundation). I had one Spanish teacher, she was a native speaker. And I’ve had four ASL teachers, three of whom were native signers.

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Prof-Rock@reddit

To teach a forgein language in college, you have to have a degree in that language. Most people don't want to get a degree in their native language. I know several who got degrees in English Language Learning or Linguistics instead and teach ELL. We try to hire Deaf people to teach ASL, but they need a Masters degree in ASL, and most would rather study something else. It is considered improper for hearing ASL interpreters to teach ASL because it is taking a job from a Deaf person, but that creates vacancies that are unfilled resulting in fewer people learning ASL overall.

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silence_infidel@reddit

Yes. Native speakers of a foreign language who live in the US looking to teach K-12 aren’t exactly a large demographic. My French and Japanese teachers were both perfectly fluent and had lived and worked in those countries for a while, but they weren’t native speakers.

The Chinese teacher at my primary school was a native speaker. But she didn’t speak much English, it was immersion class as part of a cultural exchange program. Cool, but I imagine the littler kids got more out of it than my 5th grade class did.

Spanish is a bit different, since there’s a lot more native Spanish speakers in the US. Easier to find a teacher who’s a native speaker.

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Accomplished-Way8986@reddit

My French teacher was from France and my schools Spanish teacher was from Mexico. But our German teacher was not native to Germany.

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VisualNo2896@reddit

I’ve found that for lower level/introductory courses in college, or for k-12 language classes, it was common to have native English speakers teaching foreign language. For higher level courses you’re more likely to encounter a native speaker of the language being taught and/or someone who has had 10- 20+ years of experience studying the language.

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millera85@reddit

In my high school, none of the foreign language teachers were native speakers of the languages they taught.

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Tricky_Ad_1870@reddit

I had 3 German professors from Germany and 1 from Murica.

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StumblinThroughLife@reddit

All our foreign language teachers were white Americans. Got to college and had an Argentinian teacher for Spanish class and it’s wild how different the experience became. Have 7 years education and can read it well but can’t really have conversations because I can’t understand accents.

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trinite0@reddit

I think none of the language teachers in my high school were native speakers. We had French, Spanish, German, and Latin. As far as I know, all the teachers were Midwestern Americans with no native background in their language, they ugh I could be wrong (I took Latin, so it wasn't a live question).

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SuperPomegranate7933@reddit

My Italian teacher was born to immigrant parents, so she spoke both languages like a native. I think that's pretty common & the Peggy Hills of the teaching world are a little less likely these days.

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Dangerous-Safe-4336@reddit

My high school Italian teacher was born in New York to Italian immigrants. I think she was hired to teach Spanish, though, and Italian was just a bonus.

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SuperPomegranate7933@reddit

Lol that's funny, mine taught Spanish as a bonus when too many kids signed up 😆

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Intelligent-Invite79@reddit

Escuchame?!

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Occhrome@reddit

lol

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far_tie923@reddit

Canada here; in i think grade 4 we had a native French speaker (not Quebec though; she was actually parisian) but she was also the secretary, just kinda filling-in that year. The rest of gradeschool french (mandatory) and in high-school, Latin, Greek, Old English, Arabic, Italian, German, and Spanish were all taught by native english speakers. In university it broadened out a bit, but I did Latin, Greek, and Sanskrit, so it isnt a fair sampling.

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Complex_Raspberry97@reddit

My HS Spanish teacher, she’s American but I do think one side of her family was from a Spanish-speaking country, but it wasn’t obvious and I’m not certain. My college prof was from Spain.

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ShmoeTheJoe@reddit

My German teacher in high school was from Germany, but she also taught Spanish. It was cool hearing Spanish in a thick southern German accent.

She retired and was replaced by a woman from Wisconsin. I think the rest of the language teachers were American born.

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goodvibes13202013@reddit

My high school had all native speakers for languages and a CODA for sign language

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bluescrew@reddit

There were zero Hispanic students or teachers at my school in rural Ohio in the 90s. About four Black students in my class of 170. My Spanish teacher was a white American with a German surname. She looked a lot like Miss Frizzle and lived in a house on the river with some pet burros who she would excitedly bring in photos of. Rumor was, the reason she was fluent was because in her youth she was engaged a prince or something, she traveled the world with him until he died tragically young in a private plane crash.

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Lovebeingadad54321@reddit

My German teacher was a native German speaker, I believe her parents were Austrians who fled to America around the time of wwII, for …reasons… not exactly sure how old she was when she came to America. May be completely wrong about the details.

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Sam_Paige25@reddit

My high school offered Spanish, French, German, and ASL. Only the ASL teacher was a native speaker, but one of the Spanish teachers was married to a native Spanish speaker.

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whatdoidonowdamnit@reddit

I had three foreign language teachers. Two of them were non-native. Only the Spanish teacher was born into a Spanish speaking family. And it made sense because our city has a lot more Spanish speakers than French speakers.

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kingchik@reddit

I only once had a native speaking Spanish speaker from elementary school through college courses. The rest were all American, non-Hispanic white folks.

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Electrical_Cut8610@reddit

Anecdotally, as an American who took 13 years of Spanish (I’d say 50/50 on native speakers or not) I took a Spanish class when I studied abroad in Australia as an easy class I wouldn’t have to put much effort into. She was not a native and being taught Spanish in a slight Australian accent was absolutely wild.

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iSc00t@reddit

In lower grades, very common. In my experience in college setting it’s a lot more likely to have a native speaker. Others may have different experiences, though.

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ACrazyDog@reddit

My daughter had instruction in Mongolian at her private school. Not that it would be useful outside of a “secret language”* but because they had a teacher from Mongolia.

*Kids are weird

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OneMediumSizePoopSak@reddit

From what I can remember they all taught their native language, other than latin and sign language.

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_pamelab@reddit

I have a BA in French and I think I had 3 native French speaking instructors ever.

American - all 4 years of high school
English
French - native speaker
American
Russian-Moroccan - Grew up speaking Russian and French, also taught Russian
Belgian (Flemish)
French - native speaker, primarily taught Spanish

Also 3 American German teachers in college.

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juleeff@reddit

I think it depends on where you live, the language program, and what language is being offered. In my district, I'd say 95% of the immersion program teachers are native speakers who are on work visas from their respective countries of the native languages. The other 5% of most likely first-generation Americans who grew up speaking it. For those teachers who aren't teaching in an immersion program but as a second language elective, my guess is it's about a 50/50 chance they are native speakers based on the schools I've worked at, or my children and friends children have attended.

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DeliciousBeanWater@reddit

Bro i was in 7th or 8th grade. I never asked.

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Avocadobaguette@reddit

When i was growing up, our public school in Florida had a native German teacher, a native Spanish teacher, and a native French teacher (French canadian). We had a non native Latin teacher (obv).

My son's school has a native French teacher. I assume because it is not terribly common for Americans to be fluent in a second language, native language teachers might actually be fairly common.

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UCFknight2016@reddit

Common. The Spanish teacher was also fluent in French, so I heard the kids that took that class learned French with a Colombian accent. My favorite story was told by my Spanish teacher who had a friend from the deep south who also taught Spanish. I think that accent would be very interesting.

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YeoChaplain@reddit

Universal.

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Antique_Character215@reddit

Every time. Except one college Japanese course.

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HamRadio_73@reddit

My US high school German teacher was a Swedish national that spoke four languages. Her husband worked for an extention of the U.N.

She was a tough taskmaster but I didn't realize how much we learned until I encountered Germans in my travels and they all complimented me on my German skills, were flattered but said I didn't have to be so diplomatically formal.

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Skipptopher@reddit

The only language class I ever took was Spanish. 3 of the 4 years there was a native speaker teaching it but freshman year it was a white teacher who was not a native speaker. I'm assuming it's pretty common.

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arcticmischief@reddit

I’ve had five foreign language teachers through high school and college.

Spanish teacher 1: non-Hispanic American. Primarily the school‘s French teacher and allegedly had a bit of a French accent in Spanish, although at the time, I wouldn’t have been able to discern it.
Spanish teacher 2: native Russian speaker
German professors 1&2: both native German speakers
German professor 3 (and the department chair): native Turkish speaker who spent much of her younger life in Germany; she did have a noticeable-to-me Turkish accent in German

It’s probably fairly unusual in the US to have a non-native Spanish speaker teaching Spanish, but this was a smaller school in Alaska.

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Meilingcrusader@reddit

Extremely common

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hecking-doggo@reddit

Most weren't native speakers. 3 of the 4 ASL teachers weren't Deaf and the couple French teachers weren't from France or Quebec

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puffinthewy@reddit

Pretty common, almost all of my foreign language teachers (besides spanish) were native english speakers. Funnily tho, my English teacher in highschool was from Iceland and English wasn’t her first language lol.

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OverSearch@reddit

I had three Spanish teachers in high school and their native languages were English, Italian, and English, respectively.

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spywarefunfunfun@reddit

Texas Only Experience: Other than Español, not very common.

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Infinite-Dinner-9707@reddit

I had three language teachers in high school. My husband had 2. My children had seven if we counted correctly. Only one of those was a native speaker.

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therealmmethenrdier@reddit

Pretty common

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EffectiveOne236@reddit

We had the same teacher for French and Spanish, she was neither. In college, I did have a French teacher and it was mildly hilarious because apparently our text books were French Canadian and Yes there is a difference. She was sure to make sure we knew that! The big one being that we learned to say form a line, and she said, the French do not stand in lines!

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Dogzillas_Mom@reddit

I’ll put it this way. I work for an educational publisher and we were doing something for students on Puerto Rico that was related to being able to understand spoken English. However. There were often Spanish words in the passage. So I had to find native Spanish speakers (preferably Puerto Ricans) to listen and make sure “they don’t sound like a high school Spanish teacher.”

So I’d say it extremely common.

I had an actual Italian professor teaching Italian in college. But at the high school level, it would be pretty rare to find a native speaker where I grew up.

Now, in South Florida? Southern California, Texas, Arizona? Pretty easy to find a native Spanish speaker. So I think it depends on where you are.

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Byrand-YT@reddit

My Spanish teacher in high school was a non native speaker but my Japanese teacher in college was a native speaker. And because of that I found Japanese easier to learn.

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Responsible_Olive782@reddit

In my experience, K-12 was usually a native English speaker or someone who moved to the states at a really early age or someone who grew up in a bilingual house or region like Montreal(if they taught french) or the southwest(if they taught Spanish)…University is almost always a native speaker whose there as a part of work-study or exchange program

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Zizi_Tennenbaum@reddit

My first French teacher was French, after she retired my second teacher grew up 50/50 in Paris and Brooklyn. She had one of the strangest accents I’ve ever heard but she was really young and cool and introduced us all to Pink Martini.

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Few_Whereas5206@reddit

Very common.

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More-Sock-67@reddit

We had one teacher whose family were native speakers though I believe she grew up in the U.S. but obviously spoke the language fluently.

The rest were non native as well but lived in France for some time while studying the language

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taffibunni@reddit

I had more than one French teacher from Quebec. So, technically native French speakers, but not from France.

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tacogardener@reddit

My Spanish teacher in 8th grade was a white woman decked out in Mexican makeup.. the lip lines and all. She nor her family was from any Latin country.

The class was terrible.

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Objective-Garbage-41@reddit

Pretty common. Both my Spanish teachers were white American women

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A_Baby_Hera@reddit

I went to a really small high school (around 25 kids per grade) in Montana (which is on the border with Canada but fairly far from the predominately french speaking areas) so our Spanish teacher was a white lady who was a weeaboo for Spain who taught Exclusively Castilian Spanish (she never said anything outright racist about people who spoke LatAm Spanish instead of Castilian, but it was very clear that LatAm Spanish was Incorrect in her classroom). We also had a French class, which I didn't take, but I had that same teacher for FACS, and she didn't have any french accent and talked about being raised in the town she was teaching in, which did not have a french speaking population, so I would be willing to bet money she was not native.

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n0exit@reddit

My Japanese teacher in highschool was from the American south. She also taught German and Spanish earlier in her career. She was a decent Japanese teacher for highschool level.

In uni, my first Japanese professor was Italian, but the head of the department was this evil old Japanese lady.

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billdizzle@reddit

Extremely common

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QueenieofWonderland@reddit

At my high school, the only foreign language that was offered and all of the teachers that taught it were non native Spanish speakers. They had been to countries that spoke it and one’s ex husband was from Guatemala (I think), but none of them spoke Spanish as their native tongue

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QueenieofWonderland@reddit

Although in college it might be a bit more common to have the foreign language teacher, teach in their native tongue. I’m not fully sure though

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Bluemonogi@reddit

There was a mix in my area. It was common for the teacher not to be a native speaker of the foreign language they were teaching though.

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accro_de_mots@reddit

Language teacher here. The priority in my state tends to be educational background and teaching experience over language perfection. Being a native speaker of the language doesn’t ensure you can handle a group of 30 young people in a room for 80 minutes OR implement a constant revolving door of district initiatives. Americans tend to want exposure to foreign languages, but many/most students are not expected to master the languages and maintain them throughout adulthood. Couple this with very low requirements for foreign language, at the secondary and university level.

Real talk? I am essentially a provider of entertainment, inflated elective grades and a bit of real academic rigor in a system that barely maintains the survival of my class offerings. I succeed in offering thoughtful discussions to nudge students out of their ethnocentrism and I teach them as much language as they deem necessary to pass the class. We just don’t prize multilingualism as a country.

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whatafuckinusername@reddit

My Spanish teacher in middle school was an old (American) white lady while in university, one was a native speaker, one was a white American girl, the other was indigenous Mexican but born in Michigan. Tangentially related, I went on an English tour of the UN two weeks ago and the guide was Japanese

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Dramatic-Blueberry98@reddit

Usually at the university level, the teachers are natives. At K-12 it can be a bit rarer depending on the school district and the demographics of the locale.

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anemisto@reddit

My high school had a Russian Spanish teacher. I believe the other language teachers were all native English speakers.

At university level, they're mostly PhD students, which skewed to native English speakers, but that'll depend on the demographics of the department. (I also knew a PhD student who was a native speaker of a "small" language who taught that language in a different department -- the department didn't necessarily have a grad student to teach it, but at any give time, there was probably a native speaker kicking around some language department.)

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LemonSlicesOnSushi@reddit

University professors are typically native speakers. It is a mixed bag with high school teachers. The most problematic is Spanish because of the difference between Castilian Spanish and Latin American Spanish (that have so many dialects, it is hard to group together).

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Murderhornet212@reddit

Every German teacher I’ve had (4 of them from middle school through college) did not have German as their first language.

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Accomplished_Mix7827@reddit

Extremely. I still speak French with a Southern accent, despite being Midwestern, because of my high school French teacher😅

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BM7-D7-GM7-Bb7-EbM7@reddit

One of my best friends became a Spanish teenager and it was not his native language, he majored in it in college. It's pretty common.

In Texas the lines are becoming very blurred though, as the Spanish language has gotten so dense in some areas that there is difficulty finding enough teachers who can speak Spanish for all the kids who can't speak English. I have a bunch of family who are teachers and they actually brought teachers over from Spain and other Latin Americans just to backfill the need for teachers who can speak Spanish in general, not to teach Spanish but for all of the kids who can't speak English.

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cumulobiscuit@reddit

I live in Texas. It’s quite common to have native Spanish speakers for that subject, though there are plenty of nonnative teachers. I personally have had both native and nonnative Spanish teachers.

Other subjects are usually taught by nonnative speakers.

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murderthumbs@reddit

Off topic, but still relevant . I was Peace corps in Bolivia in the Late 20th century lol (circa 1995) and EVERY FUCKING Kid I ran in to upon arriving would run up to me and say "1,2,3 Batman" (and then runaway) My spanish sucked so I was SOOOO confused..... one of the kids actually told me "Open your legs, my lover" (took me a while to figure out what he was saying) (sounded like opa mil egsmy lubher"}(this is a family joke now in my family) So disturbing on many levels..... who the F taught him that and was it a class exercise (wow....). Luckily I was there to work on their agriculture development and didn't need to investigate further.

ETA: This was deep Andes, closest airport was a 20 hr busr ide, No idea where they learned that but I.m assuming because there was a mandate to teach english in all bolivian schools per their FEDgovernment and that's a lot of schools. They usually filled with someone (local not peace corps) that was not at all able to speak but a little but tried <3 - no shade on them. They couldn't get anyone else)

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Puddin370@reddit

In high school, 1980s, the intro Spanish teacher was white. The next level teacher was from Meixco.

In college, the Spanish teacher was from Costa Rica.

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Brrred@reddit

In my public Junior high school (about ages 12-15) almost all of the foreign language (Spanish & French) teachers were native English speakers. In my private high school (Spanish, French & German) they were almost all native speakers of the language they taught.

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nutmeg_griffin@reddit

It’s common here in Iowa. Even for Spanish as we don’t have a large hispanic population and most are blue collar workers.

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emanekaf2222@reddit

Growing up in the Midwest, I took Spanish throughout middle school and high school and none of the teachers I had were native Spanish speakers.

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JustinWilsonBot@reddit

Even in college Id say half of my language classes were taught by Americans whose first language was English. I mean, think about it. Who is likely to be getting a graduate degree in Spanish or Portuguese at an American university? Americans. These graduate students were adjunct professors in the same department and taught the intro levels.

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BankManager69420@reddit

Literally every foreign language teacher I’ve had, although most have at least live in a country that speaks that language for a bit.

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Ebice42@reddit

My dad taught French and later some Spanish. He went to college for ESL and taught english overseas for many years. While overseas, he picked up French ( and Arabic and Farsi). He got his position as a French teacher on ESL + French. Thou he did get his Master's in the correct field.

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SirFelsenAxt@reddit

I live in the south in an area where 20 to 30% of people are native Spanish teachers

And I'm pretty sure every Spanish teacher I ever had there was some random white woman who pronounced things like Peggy Hill.

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Jaysnewphone@reddit

Nobody who has ever tried to teach me a foreign language knew how to teach the language.

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Gorewuzhere@reddit

My French teacher also taught Spanish and was a Spanish native speaker. Usually the only native speakers are Spanish here... Usually

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genghis-san@reddit

My german teacher was American, my Japanese teachers were Japanese-Americans, my Spanish teachers were one Puerto Rican, one Filipino, and one Mexican. The Hawaiian teacher was Hawaiian.

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DIYnivor@reddit

My high school had two Spanish teachers. One immigrated from Mexico. The other had been married to a man from Spain for many years, and said they only spoke Spanish at home. We had an exchange student from Spain my senior year, and he said her Spanish was perfect.

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JohnRedcornMassage@reddit

I have had 10 Spanish teachers. 9 were from a Spanish speaking country. 1 was American but majored in it in college. 🤷‍♂️

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spitfire451@reddit

In my high school my German teacher was from Croatia/Yugoslavia.

In college my German teacher was from Canada.

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Anthrodiva@reddit

My German teacher was German. My Russian professor was from a Baltic Republic.

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headlesslady@reddit

My language teachers were all native speakers. High school teacher was from Mexico, college teachers were from Spain and Italy. (I switched from Spanish to Italian when I realized that the Spanish I learned in high school bore no resemblance whatsoever to that spoken in Barcelona.)

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Meat_Bingo@reddit

My French teacher was Haitian. I don’t think my Spanish teacher was a native speaker. Ironically my freshman college English composition teacher was South African and English was not her native language.

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AdEmbarrassed9719@reddit

In my experience 100% of the time. In fact my high school German teacher preferred French and wished they would let her teach that instead. That wasn’t her first language either.

That was early 90s though. I think now, and particularly in certain areas, Spanish teachers at least are more likely to be native speakers.

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Solid_Parsley_@reddit

All of my French teachers throughout high school and college were non-native. I live in a heavily Hispanic area, though, so most of the Spanish teachers were native speakers.

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No_Cellist8937@reddit

I had one Cuban Spanish teacher hence my Ys are Js

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Whatever-ItsFine@reddit

In college, they were native speakers. But in high school, one was and one wasn't.

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Fabulous_Donut26@reddit

My German teacher was from Germany. She also taught English.

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papercranium@reddit

Very common. My middle school French teacher, who taught both French and German, was a native German speaker who learned both English and French growing up. The rest of my foreign language teachers were all native English speakers.

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ZaphodG@reddit

My French teacher in middle school was born in France. In High School, they were all native English speakers. At university, the instructor I had for an intermediate French course to meet a possible language requirement was French. I think I was the only student who hadn't done a year abroad. The first month, I had to do a lot of work to get up to the level of the class since I'd never had that year of total immersion. I was fortunately in Burlington, Vermont so I could get some Parisian French television programming.

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FluffySoftFox@reddit

Most of the language teachers in my middle / high school or not native speakers of that language and where people who themselves learned it as a second language

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schonleben@reddit

My German professor in university was a native Russian speaker. I always say I learned German with a Russian accent. She was fluent in 7 or 8 languages if I recall correctly.

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Obsidian-Dive@reddit

We didn’t have any native foreign speakers

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FoxConsistent4406@reddit

100% non native speakers

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Nicholas3412@reddit

I was in a French immersion program in South Carolina in elementary school and took some normal French classes in middle school and high school. The immersion teachers were native French speaker, I’m pretty sure I had one from Quebec, France, and maybe Algerian-French. My highschool French was a South Carolina native and learned French later in life.

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DawaLhamo@reddit

All the foreign language teachers at my highschool 20+ years ago were non-native speakers. My niece and nephew go to a French immersion school though and a lot of the teachers are native speakers from Francophone countries.

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Nouseriously@reddit

Small school, same Cuban guy taught Spanish & French

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Agile-Direction8081@reddit

Extremely common. Oftentimes they teach multiple languages. At my school, our Spanish teacher is actually a native German speaker and the other Spanish teacher used to teach French. That said, there are always a few native speakers, but that is not always ideal in a teacher.

There are quirks in how our native languages affect the target language acquisition. I have taught English language learners and I have to learn from the students what is challenging for them in English based on their native language. As a native English speaker, things that are totally natural to me are very, very foreign to people learning English.

Of course, there are advantages in native speakers as teachers as well. Obviously the accent and deep knowledge of the language are better in native speakers. But I don’t think native speakers are always better, particularly in introductory classes.

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ThePickleConnoisseur@reddit

There are so many people who just speak Spanish that finding a non-native speaker is probably harder. At least in the South West

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penisdevourer@reddit

My first Spanish teacher was a native speaker but he didn’t give a shit and was kinda crazy. Didnt learn much from him that year. Second year of Spanish and our Spanish teacher had COVID and did virtual lessons all year while we had a sub in class to watch us. Didnt learn much from her but one of our subs was an actual native speaking Spanish teacher who genuinely loved teaching. We learned the most from her but she sadly only got to sub for us a few times.

Now I’m about to turn 21 and have a niece whom I babysit everyday so I’ve been trying to learn on my own while also trying to teach my niece.

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river-running@reddit

Middle school French and Spanish teacher was Belgian, so native for French and non-native for Spanish.

High school Spanish teacher was not a native speaker.

High school German teacher was not a native speaker.

College German professor was a native speaker.

College ASL professor was Deaf/a native user of sign.

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RisingApe-@reddit

Every language teacher I ever had was a non-native speaker. I didn’t figure out until I started Duolingo for French a couple years ago that my high school French teacher mispronounced third person plural verbs.

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flora_poste_@reddit

All my language teachers were native speakers in junior high, high school, and college. I studied French and Russian. My Latin and Greek teachers were native-born Americans.

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AggravatingTear4919@reddit

not sure all my teachers except one have been immigrants but while i work for a school the spanish teacher wasnt. I remember my mandarin teacher the most because her american name was Hong Shen. Always wondered what her original name was if her american name was Hong Shen. She liked one of the students so much she named a dog after him lmfaooooooo. But everyone loved the dude too only time where teachers pet wasnt shameful lmfaoooo

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mrsp71@reddit

In twenty years of teaching in four private schools, I've worked with about twelve different foreign language teachers, only one of whom was a native speaker.

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TwincessAhsokaAarmau@reddit

My Mandarin teacher in freshman and sophomore year was a white man from America, he went to China in 2008 and has studied the language for a while.

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1979tlaw@reddit

Extremely common especially rural high schools. Bigger high schools and colleges it’s more likely to be a native speaker.

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Johnny_Burrito@reddit

The higher the level, the more likely you will have a native speaker, in my experience. I did have a native Italian speaker in 7th grade though, so who knows.

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campbellm@reddit

My Russian class teacher in the mid 1980's was Russian.

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agate_@reddit

My Russian teachers in college had Slavic-and Germanic-sounding last names and an absolutely strict “no English in the classroom” policy from Day 1, so I had no idea they weren’t native speakers. It was a shock when I overheard their natural American accents after taking the class.

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blaspheminCapn@reddit

Peggy Hill

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splorp_evilbastard@reddit

My high school Spanish teacher (in central Ohio) was from Honduras.

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tank-you--very-much@reddit

I had seven Spanish teachers through middle and high school, only one was a native speaker. One was Hispanic American but I don't know if he grew up speaking the language, the rest were native English speaking Americans.

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savvylikeapirate@reddit

I didn't have a native speaker for French until I was in college. My first teacher used to teach Cajun kids in Louisiana. The native speakers were from Dijon and Mali.

The one from France was brutal. Started with a class of 36, and it dropped to 12 by the time of the final.

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TiFist@reddit

K-12... really most language education is 9-12 with some locations offering it a little earlier in middle school -- that's normally taught by people who are native English speakers or bilingually fluent in English and Spanish (the languages taught at that level are commonly limited to Spanish, French, German, and Latin so obviously no native Latin speakers.)

In college/university it varies. It's certainly possible that your teacher will be a native English speaker with a high degree of 2nd language fluency but it's also common to be taught by people who are teaching their native language. Both have their benefits as native speakers don't often think about the grammar of their native language as a code to be broken the way 2nd language learners do. Native speakers also have to be careful to speak on level and in the dialect being taught with minimal slang. By the time you hit upper level college classes those restrictions are lifted and you're expected to approach something like B1 proficiency more or less.

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TwiceBakedTomato20@reddit

Depends on where you live.

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pretty-pleeb@reddit

In the 70s, my Spanish & French teachers were non-native.

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camisashrimp@reddit

in high school i took French and she was American who just loved France, she did a lot of research on the slang and more common terms used by our age group in France rather than the strictly proper grammar. In college my French professor was an amazing French woman. oh man she was amazing. the way she taught was the same way i learned in high school. this gave me much more respect for my high school french teacher (whom i already loved) because it showed that she truly cared and wanted to teach us French the proper way (as it is spoken in France). i believe that you can have a great foreign language education even without a non-native speaker as long as they are truly passionate about that language and culture (the culture is a huge part of learning the language as well). but i had two other french professors (i had to take 4 semesters of French in college) who were American. The first I really liked because she really wanted us to just be engaged and learn at least a little something and improve our critical thinking which helps in all aspects of life (because a lot of students take it just for the requirement with no real interest). but the other was super anal about us learning the exact proper way to learn and graded us very harshly (way more harsh than the French woman!)

TLDR: non-native speakers can give you just as high level an education as native speakers if they are truly passionate about the language and culture

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DavvenGarick@reddit

My high school had two Spanish teachers, neither of whom were native speakers. However, the teacher I had moved to South America (I forget which country... it's been 20+ years), married a local and lived there for several years before moving back to the U.S.

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TheBimpo@reddit

I don’t know how we would come up with any type of actual statistic for this. It’s probably just going to all be anecdotal. My high school Spanish teacher was from Puerto Rico. The French teacher was definitely not from France.

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Forward-Fishing-9498@reddit

I've been to 6 different schools and only had 2 native Spanish speakers as Spanish teachers. Learned way more from them than from the non native Spanish teachers.

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CountChoculasGhost@reddit

Depends.

In college, my one Spanish professor was a native speaker.

In high school, none of them were. Although one grew up in a Texas border town and learned Spanish very young and was able to immerse herself in it quite a bit I imagine.

Middle and elementary school, I think none were native speakers. Although I recall at least one spending a lot of time in Central America (it was a Christian school and they went to various countries on volunteer/mission trips every summer).

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Ayuuun321@reddit

I took French in school and 2/3 of my teachers were native French speakers.

The other language option was Spanish and all of the Spanish teachers were white American women.

I grew up on Long Island in NY

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Mallyxatl@reddit

Almost always. Big part of why nobody actually learns a second language in Amarica. We take a foreign language for the easy class to pass.

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SammieNikko@reddit

My Japanese teacher in high school was a Puerto Rican.

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mwcdem@reddit

100% of the foreign language teachers I had or have known (and I’m a teacher so I know a fair few) were native English speakers.

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ChannellingR_Swanson@reddit

Pretty common except for Spanish in high school, though most of the teachers we had for foreign language at my school actually lived in those countries for at least a decade. In college a lot of the professors you have for any class aren’t from the USA.

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selimnagisokrov@reddit

I remember my English teacher was from Mexico. Honestly wasn't a better person to teach it

The same time my French teacher also taught German. She was from Norway and spoke 5 languages

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randomladybug@reddit

I took ASL for my high school foreign language requirement and my teacher was a hearing child of deaf parents, so I guess that sort of counts as a native speaker.

Didn't know that though when school started, he pretended to be deaf and listened to us talk shit when he had his back turned. Surprised the fuck out of us at our first fire drill and he spoke. 😂😂

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RedeyeSPR@reddit

In high school none of the 3 language teachers were native speakers. When I got to college I believe most or all of them were. It was wild going to Italian class and meeting this 6’2” blonde haired, blue eyed guy from the northern region of Italy.

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ProfessorOfPancakes@reddit

My middle school's French and Spanish teachers were both American.

My high school's French teacher was Bulgarian and the Spanish teacher was Cuban. I believe the teacher for my online German class was American.

My college had classes for French, Spanish, Italian, Russian, Arabic, Chinese and I think 1 or 2 others but I've only met one of the Italian professors though they were indeed from Italy

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Cock--Robin@reddit

My high school German teacher was actually the economics teacher, and she spoke German just about as well as you expect an economics teacher from the deep south to speak. Fortunately, there was a girl in my class who had been a military kid and had spent many many years in Germany and spoke it very well. She was the one that really taught to class.

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Vivid-Fennel3234@reddit

My school only offered Spanish and it was mandatory. We had two teachers - one was from Spain, the other was blonde/white/from the Midwest.

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patty202@reddit

50% are probably non native speakers.

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SLJ106@reddit

I’ve met many foreign language teachers as a teacher myself and someone who took foreign language all the way through college. Not one of them was a native speaker of the language.

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hermitzen@reddit

I only had two foreign language teachers out of five who were native speakers of the language they taught.

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Superb-Fail-9937@reddit

Zero. Ha.

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Nawoitsol@reddit

Fifty-five years ago in Iowa all of the language teachers in my high school were native speakers. That was French, German, and Spanish. I took German. My two instructors in college were both native speakers.

I had German in junior high school and the instructor there was a native speaker. She had German Beatles records.

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shosuko@reddit

In Utah a lot of our foreign language teachers were people sent on foreign missions by the Mormon church.

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ReadTheReddit69@reddit

I had 3 spanish teachers throughout high school and none were native speakers. In college, my professor was not a native speaker, but the "lab" TA was.

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Sdog1981@reddit

My high school Spanish teacher was Brazilian. I had taken Spanish before so his Spanish had an accent made it hard to understand what he was trying to say.

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Alarming_Bar7107@reddit

I can't say how common it is, but my Spanish teacher was non-native. She lived in Spain for a year

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harsinghpur@reddit

As most people say, for French and German, commonly they are non-native speakers. There are more bilingual Spanish-speakers in the US, so it is likely that Spanish classes will be taught by someone who at least has it as a home language.

When getting to university-level study of languages that are not commonly taught in high schools, the faculty is much more often native speakers. Looking at UW-Seattle's Asian Languages and Literature courses and Slavic L&L courses every instructor of the 101, 201, 301 courses has a name that would suggest a native or heritage speaker. (I mean, two of my Hindi professors in college had Marathi as their native language, but that's a complex issue.)

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my_team_is_better@reddit

My first French advisor at university was from Alsace, then he retired and his replacement was from Lexington Kentucky. The replacement did a better job teaching, since she wasn’t as easy to get off-track during her lessons.

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ilanallama85@reddit

I took a lot of languages through school and college. About half my teachers were native speakers, the other half were not. The native speakers weren’t always better though - my Castilian Spanish teacher, aside from having an extremely old school idea of how to teach elementary school kids, also taught me words and pronunciations that would have never been useful conversing with any US Spanish speakers. My native German teacher obviously knew the language well, but sometimes struggled with explaining things in English - my American German teacher (who also spoke like 3 other languages fluently) was much MUCH better at explaining things in a way we could understand. Miss you Frau A., you were the best.

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gothica_obscura@reddit

My high school Latin and Spanish teachers were non-native. My college Spanish teacher was native, but my two college French teachers were not, which is weird since you'd think there'd be a lot of French speakers in Louisiana.

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Expensive-Day-3551@reddit

Fairly common except maybe with Spanish, but even then it depends on where you live. You are more likely to have a native Spanish speaker as a teacher living in California or New York than you are in Mississippi

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rootsquasher@reddit

First Spanish teacher - lived in Spain two years after college.

Second Spanish teacher - spent much time in Costa Rica and Central America on mission trips—was also fluent in French and had visited France a couple of times.

Third Spanish teacher - lived in Spain one year after college and had also visited Mexico several times.

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SnooChipmunks2079@reddit

My German teacher was from Brooklyn and not a native speaker.

The rumor in high school was that the Spanish teacher barely knew Spanish. She was supposedly much better at French, but the school didn’t want to offer French.

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KonaKumo@reddit

Depends on the language.

In my area, Spanish is more often taught by a native speaker. French is usually non-native. Any other languages is a crap shoot....since they'll get offer based on teacher ability/availability.

Example: my high school offered the following languages at the time:

Latin and Italian - teacher from Italy. Spanish - teachers both native and non-native speakers French - teachers both native and non-native German - Native speaker Japanese - Non- native teacher

As teachers retired, those choices dwindled down to just Spanish and French.

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DoTheRightThing1953@reddit

My Spanish teacher was not only a non-native speaker, she could have been the inspiration for Peggy Hill.

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SysError404@reddit

I had one teacher that was not a native English speaker and while I thought she was great. Things didnt go well for me.

I was in 3rd grade and in Band. I was 2nd seat in the Junior High Band, in 3rd grade. I loved playing Trumpet and practice religiously. Until my Dad had a massive hernia surgery that had him laid up on the couch for a week. I still followed my music and practice my finger motions. But didnt actually play, as to not disturb my Dad. I didnt count it as practice because I wasnt actually playing.

At the end of the week we had to turn in a practice sheet that our parents would sign off on. I told her the situation and she understood. She wasnt going to mark it against me for grading purposes but would still call home to confirm. This is where the problem occurred. She asked my Dad and Step Mother in broken Eastern European English, "SysError404 Says you had him not practice to not disturb his father. Is this correct?" Obviously my Dad and step mother assumed I had lied. So they pulled me out of band, and returned my Trumpet to the Music store in Town. The next practice I turned in my Sheet Music to a very upset teacher.

That same Evening she actually showed up at our house to try and correct her mistaken phrasing. But my stepmother, who had resented my existence. She owned these feeling later in life. told her, "Too late we have already returned the instrument and he will no longer be attending Band." My father had returned to work and never heard about this, or My mother. So I never played Trumpet again.

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languagelover17@reddit

Common! Nobody in my department in my school district is a native speaker. There are 10 teachers of foreign language!

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kidfromdc@reddit

In my experience, all of our foreign language teachers were native speakers (except for Latin, which is a given). We had French, Spanish, Russian, Japanese, Latin, Korean, Mandarin, and German. Although, I do live in a pretty diverse area with a big emphasis on education

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tavikravenfrost@reddit

My first French teacher was Cajun, and she was native speaker of Cajun French but also spoke standard French. My second French teacher was Québécois. My third French teacher was from Paris.

My German teacher was from Texas, and I'm not even sure how or where she acquired her German fluency.

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AWTNM1112@reddit

All but one that I’ve met so far, out of a dozen or more.

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jessek@reddit

All of the language teachers at my high school were non-native speakers who’d studied the language in school.

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antisara@reddit

In my Highschool the Spanish and Italian teachers were native speakers. I took German and my German teacher was older and married to a German man her whole life and was fluent. But not native. I don’t know about the French teacher and obviously the Latin teacher was not a native speaker. Hahaha

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surloc_dalnor@reddit

My HS Spanish teacher was from Spain. This resulted in me learning very formal Castilian Spanish. In college it used to send the cooks at work into fits of laughter. Also I couldn't really understand Mexican Spanish or Spanglish.

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TJ042@reddit

I went to a public high school, we had mostly native speakers. Our Mandarin teacher was Chinese, at least one of the Spanish teachers was from Spain, and the German teacher from Germany.

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Mushrooming247@reddit

I took five years of French in high school.

Our French teacher spoke no French.

She was born and raised in the US and had studied German, and was the German teacher at our tiny rural school until they canceled the German program and switched her to French.

We did not learn French in that class. We learned a lot of vocabulary and sentence structure, and took tests and quizzes on that, but never actually spoke French aloud or heard anyone else speak French.

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reflectorvest@reddit

Of the 7 language teachers in my high school, only the French teacher was a native speaker (she was Canadian)

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Beneficial-Ease6187@reddit

I just graduated high school in a large city. Almost of all of the teachers for Spanish, Chinese, Italian are native speakers. For French and German, this was not the case.

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rawbface@reddit

It was like 50/50 for me.

There were no language teachers before 9th grade. We learned some Spanish and French from our regular teachers.

In high school, one Spanish teacher, our Italian teacher, and our German teacher were born outside the US. Everyone else was from here.

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fizzile@reddit

I never saw a native teacher. I've heard of it though

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Qedtanya13@reddit

Most of the Spanish teachers at my school (HS) are native speakers. We have like 6

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RudyPup@reddit

I think it depends on both the language, and the part of the country. You have to remember that America is huge.

I grew up in Los Angeles, all but 1 of my high school and college Spanish teachers were of Latino heritage.

But in North Dakota? That might be tougher.

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WithRealPeaches@reddit

In my own experience, high school and lower level teachers are likely to be non-native. In university I would expect a higher percentage of them to be native (I think of all my Spanish professors in college probably 80% of them were native).

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TheBugsMomma@reddit

My Italian professor in college was actually Italian. My Spanish and French teachers in middle and high school were not native speakers.

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vanillablue_@reddit

Yes except for our sign language. There are some hearing teachers, but I always sought Deaf teachers. I went on to get a degree in interpreting and did that work for a few years.

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TinyRandomLady@reddit

I took 4 years of Spanish and 1 year of Japanese in middle/high school. 1 of my 3 Spanish teachers was from Spain, she was the worst teacher at teaching the language. She taught Spanish 4 and really held us back and the class should have been more immersive like other teachers but she made it a review class. It was like repeating the last 3 years.

For Japanese I technically had 3 teachers, 2 taught on a broadcast and 1 was a monthly phone call to make sure we could speak the language. 2 of the teachers were from Japan, 1 of the broadcast teachers and the 1 on the phone.

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AilanthusHydra@reddit

I had, between high school and undergrad, exactly two foreign language teachers who were native speakers of the languages they taught (a Russian professor who was an ethnic Russian from Latvia, and a Polish professor who was Polish and from Poland). Excluding study abroad, of course.

Of the others, one Russian professor, one Spanish teacher, and one German teacher were all married to (or in long term relationships with) native speakers of the languages they taught, but not native speakers themselves.

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Spiritual_Being5845@reddit

When I was in high school the Spanish and German teacher were both native speakers. I don’t know about the French teacher.

My children currently in grade school have a Spanish teacher who is not a native speaker. I don’t really know Spanish, but I do know that “soy calor” is not how you say “I’m hot” and that “soy enfermo” also isn’t correct unless you have a long term chronic illness. I tried to explain to the kids that if you’re hot/hungry/etc you use “tengo.” No idea of what tengo means. I also explained that estar is for transient states of being, ser is for permanent states of being. Apparently the teacher doesn’t use estar because she didn’t want to confuse them with two forms of “to be.” I wouldn’t care that she wasn’t a native speaker if she at least had a grasp of basic beginner level concepts.

In the high school the German teacher is also not a native speaker but I know maybe five words of German so I can’t comment on how well he understands and teaches the language.

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ThatOneHaitian@reddit

Back when I was in high school, we had a man from Poland teach Spanish. The man spoke English and Polish, but they had him teaching Spanish. Meanwhile my Spanish teacher was Puerto Rican and the other one was Colombian.

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Inspi@reddit

In my experience in K-12, I only had 1 teacher that s even proficient in Spanish, the other 7 or 8 teachers were only a few pages ahead of us in the book. In college, I took 3 semesters of German and 1 of the teachers was actually from Germany, the other married a German and became fluent while living there before teaching.

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Gunther482@reddit

At least in my school district every foreign language teacher was a white American and not a foreign born teacher.

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cdwright820@reddit

None of my language teachers that I had in high school or college were native speakers.

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nickalit@reddit

In my public school years, all our teachers were non-natives speakers of the language they taught. French, German, and Spanish. It was a very boring "white bread" suburb.

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OJimmy@reddit

Not really. My 1st ca high school German teacher was an old lady Frau Schmidt. My second German teacher was a turk raised in Hamburg.

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sureasyoureborn@reddit

In k-12 I never had a native speaker teach another language. Once I got to college it was exclusively native teachers.

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CasualChic@reddit

They are pretty commonly not native speakers. Only 1/7 of my Spanish teachers were even native Spanish speakers and Spanish is very commonly spoken here. I once had a Spanish teacher who spoke Spanish as her third language after English and French.

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ayebrade69@reddit

My Spanish teacher in high school was from deeper in the holler than me and was an even bigger hillbilly

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ScooterZine@reddit

My German language teacher was a Mexican native with a heavy accent when speaking English. His German with the Spanish accent was hilarious.

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ThunderPigGaming@reddit

My French teacher in high school (1980s) was from France. That was pretty cool she could also speak better Spanish than our Spanish teacher. LOL

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Self-Comprehensive@reddit

Two semesters in high school and four semesters in college and I only had one Hispanic Spanish teacher. All the rest were white. This is in Texas where there's no shortage of native Spanish speakers.

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Traditional_Entry183@reddit

It never was for me growing up, ever. But my kids Spanish teacher in middle school is from Mexico.

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djmcfuzzyduck@reddit

Spanish teach born and raised in Argentina; she is currently the principal. The cool Spanish Teacher followed part the Y Tu Mamá También motorcycle ride. French teacher from Canada and another from Belgium. We got lucky for a school with less than 1000 kids but that is all the choices we had, other schools have more languages.

I had basic sign language in kindergarten for my elder sister (born with blood infection, developmentally delayed and hard of hearing.) My parents expected her to teach all of us. It did not go well at all.

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Osniffable@reddit

When I was in public school, all my teachers were English first. When I switched to private school, all the language teachers were English as second language.

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DonChino17@reddit

For Spanish: Non native in high school but she had lived in mexico from early childhood up to young adult years. In college I had a native speaker professor from Spain.

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VanillaCavendish@reddit

I went to high school in Maryland and learned Spanish from non-native speakers. I studied more in college from native speakers, but I went to college in Los Angeles, where it’s a lot easier to find native speakers of Spanish.

Interestingly, when I studied Macedonian in the Peace Corps, my instructor was a native speaker of Turkish. Later, when I studied Albanian, my tutor was a native speaker with plenty of experience as a language teacher. But his entire experience as a teacher was teaching English and German to Albanian speakers. I was the first person to whom he taught his native language.

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PAXICHEN@reddit

Ok. In Germany in gymnasium the English teachers rarely have a good command of English and really get annoyed with native English speakers in their classes. My kids are native American English speakers which seems to doubly annoy the teachers.

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wandrlust70@reddit

Non-native Spanish teacher here. Been teaching Spanish in the southeast for almost 30 years. The vast majority of language teachers that I have worked and meet at conferences and other networking events were all non-native. Getting native speaking instructors is ideal and not uncommon, but the most common, based on what I've personally experienced, is non-native.

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chaamdouthere@reddit

My high school teacher was non-native but spent time in a country that spoke the language every summer. My college professor was a native.

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ShinyHouseElf@reddit

I think it's very common depending on the area. I grew up in rural Appalachia, and all my Spanish teachers were from the area. Actually, my dad was a hillbilly Spanish teacher but quit when I was a baby. But he was fluent - spent college summers in Spanish speaking countries, did translating for the courts in our area, etc, when needed. The only other option we had in school was French and I believe they were all native US English speakers.

My kids grew up in a city with a large Spanish speaking pop., so I believe at least one of them was a native Spanish speaker.

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MarqiMichelle@reddit

My high school Spanish teacher was just like Peggy from King of the Hill. I have no idea how she got her job or how she kept it for so long.

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Unable_Pumpkin987@reddit

I took 4 years of Spanish in high school and 3 classes in college, with a total of 5 different instructors, only one of whom was a native speaker.

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ogorangeduck@reddit

More common in high school than in university for me. I took Latin in high school so I can't accurately assess for living languages; my brother took French and my impression was most of his teachers were nonnative speakers. In university I took a few different languages and only two of my instructors were nonnative (both were graduate students)

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DarkSheikah@reddit

I'm a white American, native English speaker, and I teach both English and Spanish. I can speak Spanish at a professional level and German at a conversational level; I'm currently learning Portuguese, Italian, and Japanese. I hope to learn French, Arabic, and Russian someday.

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SinfullySinless@reddit

I’m a teacher in a upper middle class suburb:

All of our immersion classes are native speakers (they teach social studies in Spanish for example). For our world language teachers, 2/3 are native speakers.

It’s hilarious when the Latino Spanish teacher and the Spain Spanish teacher get into arguments over the Spanish language.

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nogueydude@reddit

My middle school Spanish teacher was American. In high school all three Spanish teachers at the school were from latin America. 2 Mexicans and one Colombian. My grandma was also a Spanish teacher in the US and she is Puerto Rican.

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BBallsagna@reddit

My high school Spanish teacher was a white American woman who lived in Spain and married into a Spanish family.
In college I took Ancient Greek. So, no native speakers anymore. The professor was a retired Cuban priest who taught Ancient Greek, Latin, and Spanish

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StolenPies@reddit

I lived in the South, but my German and Spanish teachers were all born in the US, as was the French teacher.

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redditreader_aitafan@reddit

Extremely common in K12. Being a native speaker doesn't change state law regarding certification to teach and most states require courses in the language that native speakers wouldn't take. Can't speak to college courses, but I was a Spanish major for 2 years, had half a dozen teachers, not one was a native speaker. Colleges also require degrees in a field for you to teach it so it wouldn't surprise me if most college language courses are also not taught by native speakers.

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willtag70@reddit

My 7th to 12th grade Spanish and German teachers were native speakers, my college French teacher was not.

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tn00bz@reddit

Most Spanish teachers I've had in California were native Spanish speakers, but for most other languages, they are not.

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the-almighty-toad@reddit

I took French and German in school and all of my teachers were non-native.

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Aggravating_Branch86@reddit

My school had a west German immigrant teaching German, a white woman teaching Spanish, and an Indian immigrant who barely spoke English with a very heavy accent also teaching German.

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PuzzleheadedAd5865@reddit

My high school Spainish teachers were not native, bar 1 that came to the school after I stopped taking Spainish who was from Venezuela. All of them were fluent

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AuroraKayKay@reddit

I have had 10 language teachers in 4 different languages. 4 in high school, 6 in college. Only 1 was a native speaker from Mexico. The rest were American by birth.

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Terrible_Role1157@reddit

At the university level, my Spanish professor was a non-native speaker, but my Japanese teachers were all from Japan.

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MrLongWalk@reddit

Yeah, fairly common

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Syndromia@reddit

I had one native speaker. The rest were native English speakers who learned the language as a second language.

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randomthoughts56789@reddit

Very common.

My high school Spanish teacher - spent most of college in Spain. Also fluent in Japanese as she married a Japanese man.

My high school Japanese teacher - American, got a degree to reach German, married a Japanese lady and taught Japanese and did our exchange program.

My college Japanese professor - is forget what nationality he was but he was teaching Japanese and it was 5th or 6th language.

All of the foreign language teachers in my high school were non-native speakers.

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Positive-Avocado-881@reddit

I only had 1 out of 5 where that was the case

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theniwokesoftly@reddit

My main French teacher in high school was born in the US but had a French parent so she wasn’t quite a native speaker but close. The other two French teachers I had were not even close to native, and one of them mainly taught German and so had a weird accent.

My German prof in college was German but she was from Landau and had an accent that my German friends considered provincial. I remember doing a partner exercise and having my partner correcting my pronunciation of dich and I was like no. I want to keep my northern accent thanks.

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Continent3@reddit

If by native you mean someone that country, then the number is smaller. There are a lot of teachers who are native born Americans who grew up speaking the language. In California, my Spanish teacher fell into that category.

It can depend on the language. The Chinese and Japanese teachers at my son’s high school are both natives who immigrated to the US as adults.

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Purplehopflower@reddit

I went to a small somewhat rural high school in the Midwest. Although, it was adjacent to a medium sized university town. Our German teacher was from Germany. One of the 3 Spanish teachers was from Argentina. The French teacher was definitely not French. I majored in Spanish and French at university, and I think I only had one native Spanish speaker as a professor, and she was a graduate student. None of my French professors were native speakers. All of them had lived in countries where the language they taught was the primary language though.

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Cruitire@reddit

In my high school it was about 50/50

We had two French teachers, both American but they both studied in France.

Our German, Spanish teachers were all from those respective countries.

Out Latin teacher was American, which is irrelevant for Latin anyway.

In college I minored in linguistics and took a number of languages.

My Italian professor was from Italy.

My first Chinese teacher was American and had lived in China for many years.

The Chinese professor I had for the rest of college was Chinese.

My Japanese professor was from Japan.

My Irish professor was from Ireland, but she wasn’t a native speaker, although she was perfectly fluent.

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TricellCEO@reddit

In my middle school, the sole Spanish teacher (and the only foreign language teacher) was Greek.

She also taught a required elective for 6th graders called Multi-Cultural where they learned a little bit of various languages, one of them being Italian.

She was a damn-near polyglot.

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CluelessSwordFish@reddit

Both my Japanese teachers in college were from Japan.

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AdeptTomato8302@reddit

My Spanish teacher in middle school was native. My French teacher in high school was not native, but she had lived in France for a number of years and was definitely fluent.

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lithomangcc@reddit

Very common none of my Spanish teachers were native speakers

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GiveMeTheCI@reddit

In my high school all foreign lang teachers were non-native. 2 I had in college were native. Where I work 1/4 are native

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mangomoo2@reddit

Most of my Spanish teachers were non native speakers. The worst one I ever had though was one who was a native speaker of both English and Spanish (one parent spoke English another Spanish). She spent one class talking to us super slowly and was happily surprised when we mostly understood her. Then she decided we all understood everything and would just rapid fire Spanish at us the rest of the year. The worst was vocab quizzes where we were being tested on 100 vocab words at a time. I would be able to list all 100 words then wouldn’t understand the random other words in fill in the blank sentences (not part of the vocab we were studying) and would get 70s on the vocab quizzes. I suck at grammar in general but especially in other languages and usually counted on vocab quizzes to bring up my score. I was very discouraged to say the least and that was my last Spanish class luckily.

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DizzyLead@reddit

Very common, though living in Southern California where Spanish is usually taught, often there are plenty of Hispanic teachers who grew up with it. At a school that I worked at, one of the Spanish teachers was a native French speaker, and she spoke with a heavy French accent. I remember feeling sorry for what her students probably had to deal with

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thosmarvin@reddit

My German teacher was a German native and she also taught French. She was not from Alsace or anywhere near there, and she would have come here in the 50s so not from a world where English was ubiquitous.

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Cheap_Coffee@reddit

My Latin teacher was not a native latin speaker.

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windowschick@reddit

The Latin teacher was not, for obvious reasons.

The German teacher was.

My first Spanish teacher was not. He himself was likely a B2 level speaker and only taught the first year. The other Spanish teachers I had were native speakers. The college professor was from Spain, the others from Latin America.

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GlasKarma@reddit

My highschool Spanish teacher was born and raised in El Salvador, and the French teacher at my school was fluent and of French descent but not physically from France herself, and the ASL teacher wasn’t deaf but had deaf family members so I turn was fluent.

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BirdsEverywhere-777@reddit

All of the language teachers in my high school were native English speakers.

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adultdaycare81@reddit

My French teacher was not a native speaker.

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smartfbrankings@reddit

Extremely common to not be native speakers. Although we had a French guy who taught French, German, and Latin, and knew like 10 languages or something.

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tsukuyomidreams@reddit

That's how all the teachers were in my highschool. Just bilingual Americans. I don't think they were fluent

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yuukosbooty@reddit

I took French and my middle and high school teachers were all non-native except for the one I had freshman and sophomore year of high school I think? She didn’t have an accent but I think she mentioned having dual citizenship. But in college we actually had a native speaker I think he might have been from Quebec

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jennkaa@reddit

Spanish was a mix for me. Some Spanish native (Mexican Spanish, Spain Spanish) and some English native speakers. I took Spanish 9th grade through college. I live near Chicago.

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mothertuna@reddit

My French teacher was not French or foreign at all. One of the Spanish teachers at my school spoke Spanish and French fluently. She was from a country in South America.

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Avery-Hunter@reddit

The Spanish and French teachers at my highschool were both native speakers (only two languages offered). French is probably less common to have a native speaker but I happen to live in a state with a lot of native French speakers and my Spanish teacher was from Puerto Rico.

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PsxDcSquall@reddit

I had one French Canadian French teacher in 6th grade but other than that every other foreign language teacher i had was a non native speaker.

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Hot_Car6476@reddit

K-12: very common. University: less common.

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Happy_Confection90@reddit

I had 4 teachers for Spanish. Only one of them was a native Spanish speaker. New Hampshire is a pretty far move for most native Spanish speakers, so that probably influenced that heavily.

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Reader124-Logan@reddit

My high school and university Spanish language teachers were American, but dedicated to ongoing learning and practice. Both frequently travelled to Spain.

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ReactionAble7945@reddit

When I went to high school 50/50.

When I went to college, all the foreign language teachers, TAs, ... were native speakers. My girlfriend at the time spoke multiple languages. She wanted to make some money assisting, but being from the USA, she couldn't get her foot in the door. I got the impression that it was one of the few jobs the foreign students could get, so the school basically didn't allow Americans to do it. The girlfriend ended up working for the school admissions. Where the foreign students had problems she would terp for the school.

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Imaginary-List-4945@reddit

My Spanish teacher in high school was a native speaker. I don't think any of the French instructors I had in college were.

I was also in a bilingual Spanish class in elementary school, and that teacher was a native speaker as well. However, she wasn't teaching Spanish as a foreign language, she was teaching ESL students (plus me and a handful of other native English speakers) a full curriculum in a combination of English and Spanish.

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Express-Stop7830@reddit

In middle school (6-8), the Spanish teachers were English as first language. High school was an amazing, fiery Cuban.

In University, all but one of my French and Spanish instructors were English speakers. One grew up in Chile, so was raised bilingual. (Coincidentally, he was my favorite )

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Any-Concentrate-1922@reddit

I never had a native French speaking French teacher until college.

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btnzgb@reddit

My French teacher was actually French but I don’t think that is very common.

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Kaz_117_Petrel@reddit

My middle school French teacher spoke with a heavy southern accent. I called it Franglish. It was terrible to listen to, and worse to be told to repeat.

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Vachic09@reddit

It was about 50/50 in my experience. My high-school Spanish teachers were native speakers but my college professor was not.

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Carinyosa99@reddit

When I was in school (middle school, high school, and college) learning Spanish, I had a mix of native and non-native speakers. But that was quite a while ago and the Hispanic population wasn't as large as it is now (and also, Hispanic enrollement in college wasn't as high as it has been in the past 10-15 years). My son has been taking Spanish classes for the past four years and this past year was his first time having a non-native Spanish.

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OldLeatherPumpkin@reddit

I took German for 7 years in middle school, HS, and college, and had 2 teachers who were native speakers (one teacher was raised bilingual in the US, with one German and one American parent; the other was a German professor who moved to the US for work). The other 4 were Americans who had learned it as a second language in school.

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guywithshades85@reddit

I started out going to school in New Jersey, nearly all of the teachers were native Spanish speakers, including the Spanish teachers.

When I later moved to the suburbs of Buffalo, NY, the Spanish teachers were not native speakers.

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Blutrumpeter@reddit

I haven't had a Spanish teacher who wasn't native. Though my third teacher was from Spain and got a little mad at the way my Mexican and Puerto Ricans taught us

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RodeoBoss66@reddit

In my experience it varies, but the nonnative speakers are comparatively smaller in number.

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B_O_A_H@reddit

Small town Iowa, the only foreign language offered was Spanish. The teacher was also an Iowa native, with a 100% white European ancestry.

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therealbamspeedy@reddit

In my rural high school in the early 90's, the spanish teacher was not born in the US. I'm guessing it is very common. Spanish was only foreign language class offered. My mom going to school back in the 1950's had French and German as foreign language classes offered.

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gummi-demilo@reddit

My Japanese instructor in college was a white American dude who had lived in Japan teaching English.

Most of my Spanish teachers were Mexican-American and had grown up bilingual, with the exception of my first HS Spanish teacher who was a white guy also fluent in Russian.

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No-Statistician7002@reddit

I had an Austrian for my German class. But my French teacher was an American.

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Konigwork@reddit

In middle school my French teacher was Italian, it was certainly interesting.

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TheOnlyJimEver@reddit

I grew up in a small town in the northeast. Our foreign language teachers were native English speakers, but they'd all studied, lived, and worked abroad.

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JoulesMoose@reddit

I’ve never been taught by a native speaker, though i took French and as others have said it’s much less common to have native French or German speaking teachers. Our first language class was the basics of Spanish, French and German so that you could choose which to continue with and that teacher wasn’t a native speaker of any of those languages.

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Joliet-Jake@reddit

My Spanish teacher was an American and didn’t come off as being particularly fluent, though we really didn’t give her much to work with.

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realnanoboy@reddit

It's very common. I think one of the three Spanish teachers at my high school is a native speaker. The French speaker is a native speaker. I don't think the German speaker is. One of our voice principals was a Spanish speaker. She's not a native speaker but is very fluent. It's hilarious when she surprises Spanish-speaking kids in the hall when she chastises them for conversations they shouldn't be having at school.

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MuppetManiac@reddit

I never had a native speaker in my cumulative 8 years of learning 2 different foreign languages. In high school all my teachers were English native speakers, and in college, my Spanish teacher was a native German speaker and I had the hardest time with his accent.

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manicpixidreamgirl04@reddit

All the foreign language teachers I had were either native speakers, or started learning at a very young age.

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llamadolly85@reddit

This is pretty regional, but it's very common.

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Samiam2197@reddit

FWIW, I went to a small high school in NY, so we only had 3 total foreign language teachers for the entire 7-12, but none of them were native speakers of the languages they taught. It’s worth noting that some states have strict requirements for teachers, so it isn’t as simple as hiring native speakers of the language for the job. They need certifications and master’s degrees in some states.

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sneezhousing@reddit

Very common in my experience

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SublimeRapier06@reddit

Hell, my high school French teacher had never left the state of Tennessee in her entire life. My middle school French teacher, on the other hand, went to France every summer. I had a better French accent after middle school than my high school teacher did.

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Yeegis@reddit

Technically it was his second language but he learned French when he was a toddler so he might as well be a native speaker.

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GreenWhiteBlue86@reddit

In some cases classes are taught by native speakers, but in many other cases it is common to have an American teacher whose mother tongue is English. In my high school, for example, the Spanish teachers were native speakers of Spanish, but the teachers of German, Italian, and French were all native English speakers who spoke those languages as second languages.

I have also never had a teacher of Latin who spoke it as his or her native language.

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