By Thea Jarvis

Gathered amiably around some pushed-together tables in the Catholic Center’s second floor library, an eclectic group of teachers and students struggles to communicate to one another the idiomatic expressions of the Spanish tongue.

“Que tiempo hace?” asks an animated Gisela Garcia, who has joined forces with five other teachers to present an intensive four-week course in conversational Spanish.

Around the table, students answer, without bravado, perhaps, but with more confidence than ever in their ability to undersand and speak the Spanish language.

“Hace calor, hace fresco, hace sol, hacia viento.” Despite the fact that Atlanta has been simmering under a week-long heat wave, the weather is capriciously undecided when you’re studying a foreign tongue and determined to make weather, time and travel idioms work for you.

Fifteen stalwart students, including priests, religious, deacons and a layperson, spent 20 hours a week pursuing such study this summer, in the main because their personal contacts and ministry dictated an increasing need for knowledge of Spanish. The course targeted those involved with the Hispanic community through service organizations or parish outreach.

“The (Spanish) language is coming on so strong in the metro area that we should be familiar with it,” said Dick Narey, a deacon at Holy Cross Church in Chamblee. “The opportunity was there to participate in the class, so I took it.”

For the first time in years, in fact, members of the archdiocese who wanted or needed to take an intensive course in conversational Spanish didn’t have to fly to Puerto Rico or Miami to get it.

Father William Hoffman, director of the Archdiocesan Hispanic Apostolate, looked around to see what was available when he learned several local priests were interested in studying Spanish. He discovered that between travel expenses and matriculation costs, it seemed “better (that) we should try to do something here."

Alerting the archdiocesan Hispanic community, Father Hoffman and his hard-working “Comite” found six able and willing teachers, all with very respectable professional backgrounds, to field the classes. With 12 initial sign-ups and three more added students, the course was ready to go.

“I’m enjoying it greatly,” said Maria Miranda, a teacher in Seaborn Lee Elementary School in Fulton County, during the last scheduled week of the course. Although she usually teaches Spanish to sixth and seventh graders and English as a second language to Laotian refugees, Ms. Miranda found the summer stint rewarding.

“It makes a big difference to teach people who are so willing to learn,” she said earnestly.

Joining Maria Miranda in the teaching ranks were Gisela Garcia, who coordinates the Archdiocesan Hispanic Comite and has taught Spanish in the Fulton County school system for 17 years, Angela Alonzo, a teacher at Christ the King School, Lazaro Herrera, a teacher at the Westminster School, Luis Fraisse, a retired professor from Georgia State University, and Margarita Bolet, who holds a master’s degree in business administration.

The teachers all received a grade of “excellent” from their students and, in turn, showed real affection and concern for their budding linguists.

Since some members of the group already had varying degrees of Spanish study to their credit, the course basically covered three levels of instruction.

Small class sessions with a ratio of one teacher to two or three students insured progress and hourly breaks with teacher changeovers varied the daily schedule.

Morning Mass in Spanish served to reinforce the learning process and a daily group session encouraged informal dialogue.

Some students, owing to their former study, were more adept than others in catching on to lingual sounds and rhythms, but nearly all hope to continue cultivating their mastery of Spanish.

“It’s given me confidence that I know the language,” said Sister Margaret McAnoy, who coordinates the Cursillo Movement in the archdiocese and has occasion to work closely with the Hispanic community. She has already participated in some Spanish Cursillo weekends and feels the course has given her more background for her ministry.

Father Hoffman, who himself spent 10 years in Peru and has been back in the States for about a year, thinks the conversational approach “encourages the pupil to learn some spoken Spanish and build up a confidence that they can say and understand something” of the language.

A two-hour class each Wednesday afternoon will continue through the year, led by Father Hoffman and, perhaps, one other teacher. Future sessions will focus on grammar and technical points as a means of “knitting all these things together,” Father Hoffman explained.

“We hit on something that is meeting the needs of some people,” he believes, and is pleased with the obvious success of the project.