So after years, decades, I’ve returned to the location of my first teaching job, when I was 22 years old. Concordia Language Villages. Think summer camp, but in one of several different world languages. I’m at El Lago del Bosque, the Spanish Village. They just announced the morning activities and I chose to tag along with the group headed to the far end of the soccer field. Tiro con arco. “Archery.” Such a typical summer camp activity in Minnesota! What isn’t so typical is that the counselor, Mateo, an Argentinian, is giving the instructions in Spanish, and the students understand him.

Together they blow up several balloons and, leaving the bows and arrows lying in the grass, tie them to the center of five large targets. Then they retreat past the bows and arrows to a line marked with string. I’m guessing this is the safety line because now they are standing several meters behind the bows and arrows. So in summary, to set the scene: I’m looking at the high school kids, who are standing in a line next to me, then a ways in front of them there is a shooting line marked with orange cones, where the bows and arrows are, and then beyond that the large square targets with the balloons. It’s windy and some of the balloons blew away while Mateo was covering vocabulary words and a bit of technique. 

The pulga he tells them, has to be touching the boca. He does the entire explanation in Spanish, “thumb” to “mouth.” He demonstrates this technique, then backs up as the students nock their arrows and let them fly. None of the remaining balloons explode, but a couple of arrows hit the large targets the balloons are attached to. A couple arrows flew past the targets, too, into the backdrop suspended by trees. One sadder attempt landed limply in the grass far in front of the targets. Room for improvement. La práctica hace al maestro.

There’s some sort of ball game going on behind me, out on the soccer field. “¡Cuidado!” someone yells from afar. “Heads up, heads up,” says a tall teen as he chases the ball up to the half of the archery group standing behind the safety line. That’s language immersion for you. Leaders are native speakers or quite fluent non-native speakers, they stay in the target language. Learners are at all kinds of levels, some who can yell cuidado, some who, for now, are sticking to “heads up.”

The two groups of archers keep trading opportunities to practice, Mateo gives individual advice before their shots, the wind keeps the leaves shimmering and at this moment it feels like all is right with the world.

I worked here long ago, but with the German Village. We didn’t have bows and arrows that I remember, but the counselor, Jane, really impressed me with her fencing activity. She knew just enough, I’m guessing, to teach a little something and to make sure no one got hurt. She also knew several phrases in a dialect from Southern Germany, which impressed me a lot.

Even longer ago, I was at summer camp myself, the summer before eighth grade. We also shot arrows, but with far less safety and not any particular instruction that I remember. Nothing like the pairs of students Mateo has now created from the two groups, with one student standing behind their partner, looking at technique, checking the aim, giving suggestions. I’m not close enough to hear if their suggestions are in Spanish, I’m guessing it’s a mix depending on their comfort levels. “Bien, muy bien,” Mateo tells a last student as her arrow strikes the target. She’s the one whose first shot arced weakly into the grass. “Bastante mejor.” How satisfying for her. For Mateo, too, for that matter.