I use Spanish all the time. I talk with the families of my multilingual learners. I travel in Spanish-speaking cities. I can order food, ask for directions, and hold a conversation.

The thing is, I didn’t start from scratch. I studied Spanish for years in high school and college. But like many people, I had let a lot of it get rusty.

This summer, I decided to return to it—not to relearn how to order coffee or ask where the bathroom is, but to study academic Spanish.

And let me tell you: it was humbling.

For years, I’ve worked on supporting English learners and teaching multilingual learners. I’ve sat through and even led professional development sessions about cognitive load, background knowledge, and the importance of scaffolding grade-level texts. Intellectually, I understood all of those ideas.

Then, for the first time in a long time, I felt them.

The Day I Hid in the Bathroom to Play a Game on My Phone

I am slightly embarrassed to admit this, but one afternoon I escaped to the bathroom and played a game on my phone for a few minutes.

I wasn’t avoiding class. I was overwhelmed.

And the thing that pushed me over the edge wasn’t a particularly difficult lesson. It was the disruption of a routine.

Every other day, my teacher gave us a short afternoon break followed by some quiet worksheet practice before we jumped back into more demanding tasks. But on this particular day, we skipped the break and the worksheet wasn’t ready.

As a teacher, I’ve sometimes felt guilty handing students a generic worksheet. Compared to the collaborative projects and rich discussions we aspire to create, it can feel uninspired.

As a student, though, that worksheet was invaluable.

Why Predictable Practice Matters

As teachers, we sometimes feel pressure to make every minute of class engaging, collaborative, and cognitively demanding. But as a language learner, I discovered that predictable practice wasn’t competing with deeper learning—it was making deeper learning possible.

The worksheet itself wasn’t magical. In fact, I barely remember what was on it. What mattered was the role it played in my day.

The routine mattered. Knowing that the worksheet always followed our afternoon break reduced uncertainty and let my brain relax.

The cognitive load mattered. The worksheet gave me a chance to practice familiar skills without simultaneously decoding new instructions or producing new language.

And the transition mattered. That quiet work extended my break just enough that I could refocus for the final part of the lesson.

Looking back, I don’t think the worksheet itself was what helped me learn Spanish that week. What helped was that it gave my brain a predictable place to land before asking it to do something difficult again.

It made me think differently about my own classroom. My students often thrive with a consistent do-now after lunch or during a later period of the day. Those routines aren’t necessarily the most exciting part of class, but they provide something just as important: stability.

Sometimes predictability isn’t boring.

Sometimes predictability is what makes difficult thinking possible.

The Teaching Move I’ll Never Take for Granted Again

The most valuable part of my classes, though, was surprisingly simple.

Every day—sometimes multiple times a day—my teacher and I would discuss a topic, and then she would give me quiet time to write about it.

I kept a running word bank throughout the week, jotting down new vocabulary and phrases as they came up in conversation. Then, when it was time to write, I had the chance to process at my own pace.

Oddly enough, writing felt like a break.

Of course, it required effort. I still had to think about vocabulary and conjugations. But unlike conversation, where ideas disappear if you don’t keep up, writing gave me time to think.

What made the routine especially powerful was the feedback cycle that followed.

My teacher would read what I had written and make corrections, asking questions whenever she wasn’t sure what I meant. Then—and this is the part I know I don’t make enough time for in my own classroom—she would have me read the revised version back to her.

Sometimes I copied the corrected sentences first. Sometimes I simply read them aloud. But every time, speaking those revised sentences helped the language stick in my brain.

The process served two purposes at once. It allowed her to check my pronunciation, but it also gave me immediate practice using more accurate language.

Obviously, most of us don’t have the luxury of providing that kind of immediate feedback to every student. But there are ways to approximate it. Small groups can do it. AI tools can help with parts of it. Even if feedback comes later, I’m increasingly convinced that we need to make more time for students to revisit and read their corrected work aloud.

I will never take that time for granted again.

What This Means for Supporting English Learners

Returning to academic Spanish reminded me that when students struggle, the issue isn’t always motivation or effort.

Sometimes they are carrying more cognitive load than we realize.

Sometimes they need a predictable routine before they can tackle something difficult. Sometimes they need a quiet moment to process at their own speed. Sometimes they need a chance to revisit their work and hear themselves say something correctly.

I already knew that learning in another language was hard.

But this summer, for the first time in a long time, I felt it.

And while I’m still very much a student, every difficult paragraph and every moment of frustration has made me better at teaching multilingual learners—and, I hope, better at supporting English learners in my own classroom.