In which I teach (sort of)

Okay peeps, I've kept you waiting long enough. Here, at last, I will tell you a bit about my 'job' over here. I say 'job', because thus far, I have pretty much done nothing that warrants the title. Due to much confusion regarding my work schedule (confusion which is still very much there), I have only taught at actual schools a grand total of four days. As such, I don't particularly feel I've earned even the 70% of my October salary I'll supposedly receive at the beginning of November, especially since, it being the end of October, it is obviously time for vacation. Yes, after teaching for four (nowhere near full) days, I am now on vacation until November 3rd. I hope France knows what it's doing.

Anyway, I will tell you what I have actually done so far in the teaching department. The first school I went to was Les Chevillettes in Fourchambault last Thursday (Oct. 13) in the afternoon. I was supposed to help in three classes, CM2, CM1, then CE2, which is equivalent to 5th, 4th, and 3rd grade. However, the CM2 teacher had to leave for some reason that still isn't quite clear to me, so instead I helped in the two classes which follow that, the first of which actually overlaps in time with the CM2 class. Not sure how that's going to work out... I did manage to see the first teacher before she left, though, and she commissioned me to prepare something about Halloween for the following week. So, after sitting in the back of the CM1 class watching them finish up a geometry lesson, I introduced myself to the class, and we worked on numbers. They knew up to 20, and that day learned up to 99. Quite a jump there, but I suppose our numbering system is fairly intuitive once you know the rules. So we spent some time playing little number games, and then their class was over. It turns out the CM1 teacher also does English for the CE2 class, so the CM1s left the room to go do art or something, and the CE2s filed in. They were also working on numbers, but only knew up to 10. So I again introduced myself (in French this time), and we had a little Q&A session about me and about Washington. One little boy asked if there were sharks where I lived. It was pretty cute. Then we played a few number games again, and the class was done. In total, I was there for probably two, maybe two and a half hours. Not a real strenuous day.

The next week was when, I supposed, the real work would commence. Not so. I am scheduled to be at André Cloix on Mondays, because the director had said at the orientation that Monday was the only possible day for me to come. However, when I arrived Monday morning, he took me around and introduced me to each class, then proceeded to tell me that there's only one teacher who does English on Mondays, in the late afternoon. Then he sent me on my merry way and told me to come back at 3:15 for that class, saying he would ask if any of the other teachers would be willing to switch up their schedules a bit. I'm not sure I understand, I wanted to say. You have said I can only come on Mondays, and yet you have nothing for me to do? What, then, is the point of me coming to your school at all? I kind of get the feeling you don't want me here at all, so I would rather just split my time between the two schools in Fourchambault, where they at least want me to come. What's more, I only have that very small block of time at Les Chevillettes on Thursday because they do English on, guess what!, Mondays and Thursdays, and were told I couldn't come on Mondays because I was already scheduled to be at André Cloix!! Another prime example of the administration's formidable organizational skills. I'm supposed to be teaching 12 hours a week, which already isn't that much. At present, I have around 7 hours scheduled, and no visible solution.

At any rate, I did go to that class in the afternoon, and it was an absolute catastrophe. For starters, the teacher doesn't speak English and therefore expected me to look at the subjects for the day and plan a lesson on the spot. On my first day. Secondly, he had absolutely no idea how to control his class, believing it to be sufficient to shush them occasionally as they were running about the classroom, talking to their friends, hitting each other, doodling, staring off into space, and generally doing anything except trying to learn English. And I was powerless because the assistant has no authority in the classroom to hand out punishments, exacerbated by the fact that I didn't know anyone's name and was therefore unable to tell anyone off. The lessons for the day were supposed to be learning greetings/goodbyes, and then colors (not a lot of connection there, to start with). We didn't get much past reviewing what they'd learned the week before, how to present yourself, and then copying different greetings from the board in a rush at the end of class. We never did colors. And this was in an hour and a half's worth of class time.

Needless to say, I was apprehensive the next day when going to Vieux Moulin for the first time. I didn't need to be; for the most part, the teachers are much more organized there (except for the director, apparently). In the first class of the day, a CM2 class, there was a test which I corrected out loud at the end. After that, there was a CLIS class (I still don't know what it stands for), which is for students with learning disabilities. They don't do English in that class. Sooo, I sat at the back for a while watching them generally misbehave before leaving and hanging out with some of the teachers during recess. I later learned that there were two more classes after recess that I was supposed to go help in, but I only had what information Françoise had sent me, and they weren't on it, so I missed them and didn't find out until later that afternoon. The director gave me a paper with all the classes I'm helping in on it saying it was what he sent to Françoise, so I should've known. However, the class I missed was simply written in in red ink, and was clearly not what he had emailed to her. I also told him at that point about the impossibility of doing English in the CLIS class, and he feigned deafness or stupidity or something, and simply kept repeating that it must be done (despite the fact that the CLIS teacher doesn't know English).

Besides these little misunderstandings, though, the rest of the day went smoothly. I helped with two more classes that day, CM1 and CP (CP is 1st grade equivalent— very young), and the CM1 class was very well-behaved, the teacher was organized, and she spoke English fairly well and clearly. They were working on The Very Hungry Caterpillar, so I went around and helped with that. And in CP, they barely knew anything beyond "Hello, my name is ___", but I read them Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?, and we worked on colors. It was amazing. They're at that age where the simple fact that I speak English was enough to hold their attention. We also talked for a long time about Halloween, and what kids in the US do to celebrate it. I'd have to say that was my favorite class so far, and it was a lovely way to end the day, compared with the previous day.

Thursday (yesterday) was also pretty good, not that I really have any standards to judge by yet. I was at Vieux Moulin in the morning, where in one class they were doing English civilization, and in the other they were working on introducing yourself. That was funny, because they only know two phrases. So I ended up going around to each student and holding a conversation which consisted each time of:

Me: "Hello"
Student: "Hello"
Me: "What's your name?"
Student: "My name is ___."
Me: "Nice to meet you. Are you a boy or a girl?"
Student: "I'm a ___."
Me: "Ok. Goodbye!"
Student: "Goodbye!"

I can't say I've ever posed that second question before to someone's face. It was a bit bizarre, to say the least.

Yesterday afternoon, I was back at Les Chevillettes, where we played Halloween Bingo in CM2. It got a bit out of hand at the end, but they knew most of the vocabulary already, which was encouraging, and most of them understood the instructions when I gave them first in English. I went back to the classes from the week before after that, just in time for CM1 to end, but in CE2 we worked on numbers again, and they seemed to be retaining what they'd learned.

And now I'm on vacation. I'll leave you with a picture that some of the girls from my CM1 class at Les Chevillettes gave me:


On the back it said "Pour Maîtresse". Heart exploding from the sweetness :)