Breakdown of Mi profesora no quiere poner un suspenso a nadie en la clase.
Questions & Answers about Mi profesora no quiere poner un suspenso a nadie en la clase.
Literally, poner un suspenso is “to put a failing mark/grade.”
In Spain, poner is very commonly used with school grades:
- poner un sobresaliente – to give an A / top mark
- poner un notable – to give a B / very good
- poner un suspenso – to give a fail
You can also sometimes hear dar un suspenso, but poner un suspenso sounds more idiomatic and natural in Peninsular Spanish when talking about teachers assigning grades.
They are very close in meaning, but there is a small nuance:
- poner un suspenso a alguien focuses on the act of giving a failing grade (one specific grade in an exam, assignment, or course).
- suspender a alguien can mean to fail someone more generally (e.g., “I failed three students this year”), and also “for a student to fail an exam”:
- He suspendido matemáticas – I failed math.
In this sentence, poner un suspenso a nadie en la clase sounds like talking about the grades the teacher is going to assign, probably for a specific exam or course.
In this expression, suspenso is used as a noun, not an adjective. It means “a failing grade / a fail.” As a noun, it normally needs an article: un suspenso.
Compare:
- Ha sacado un suspenso. – He/She got a failing grade.
- Ha sacado un notable. – He/She got a B / very good.
If you said poner suspenso, it would sound incomplete or incorrect in this context, because you’re missing the article that turns it into “a fail” as a countable item.
Here suspenso is a masculine noun meaning “a failing mark/grade.”
It is related to the verb suspender (to fail someone / to fail an exam), and there is also an adjective suspenso in other contexts (“hanging,” “left in suspense”), but in the school context in Spain, un suspenso is a standard noun for “a fail.”
So the structure is: poner + un + [noun] (grade).
Mi profesora means “my teacher”, so the sentence is talking about the speaker’s teacher, someone personally connected to the speaker.
If you said la profesora no quiere poner un suspenso a nadie, you’d be speaking more generally about “the teacher” (one already known in the context) or about a specific teacher everyone in the conversation knows about. Both can be correct; the choice depends on what you want to express: personal relationship (mi) or just a specific teacher mentioned in context (la).
Profesora is the feminine form, used for a female teacher; profesor is the masculine form, used for a male teacher or generically when gender is unknown.
If the teacher is male, you would say:
- Mi profesor no quiere poner un suspenso a nadie en la clase.
Everything else in the sentence stays the same, because there are no other words that need to agree with the teacher’s gender here.
You need a here because nadie is functioning as a person as the indirect object of poner un suspenso (to give a failing grade to someone). In Spanish, when the object is a person, you usually add the “personal a”:
- poner un suspenso a María
- poner un suspenso a los alumnos
- poner un suspenso a nadie
So no quiere poner un suspenso nadie is ungrammatical; you must say no quiere poner un suspenso a nadie.
In Spanish, using double negatives is normal and correct. When you use negative words like nadie, nunca, nada, they are usually combined with no before the verb:
- No veo a nadie. – I don’t see anybody.
- No quiero nada. – I don’t want anything.
So Mi profesora no quiere poner un suspenso a nadie literally uses “no … nobody,” but this is the standard structure in Spanish and simply means “doesn’t want to give a failing grade to anyone.” It is not considered incorrect or redundant in Spanish.
Yes, Mi profesora no quiere poner a nadie un suspenso en la clase is also grammatically correct and understandable.
Spanish word order is more flexible than English. In both cases, the meaning is the same. However, poner un suspenso a nadie is probably the more neutral and common order, and many learners find it easier to map:
poner [thing] a [person] → give [grade] to [person].
En la clase means “in the class” as in “within this group of students / in this course”. It’s talking about the context where she is grading.
If you said a la clase, it would suggest “to the class” as a group, more like giving something to the class as a whole. That doesn’t fit well with poner un suspenso a nadie, which is about individuals’ grades. So en la clase = among the people who belong to this class.
Quiere poner talks about the teacher’s intention or desire: “she doesn’t want to give anyone a failing grade.” It focuses on what she wants or doesn’t want to do.
If you said Mi profesora no pone un suspenso a nadie en la clase, it would sound like a general fact or rule: “My teacher doesn’t give anyone a failing grade in the class” (ever). That can be true in some contexts, but the original sentence is more about her reluctance to fail anyone, rather than stating a factual policy.
In this sentence, quiere is a normal verb of the main clause, stating a real, factual attitude:
- Mi profesora no quiere… – My teacher doesn’t want…
There is no trigger for the subjunctive here, because we’re not in a subordinate clause expressing doubt, unreality, or a wish about someone else’s action (like quiero que vengas – I want you to come). The structure is simply:
[Subject] + no quiere + [infinitive]
So indicative quiere is the correct form; quiera would be wrong in this sentence.