The first few days of teaching...

I don’t feel like I’ve stopped since Thursday....

Let’s start with the dull academic stuff and then move on. In all fairness, neither of my days of teaching were dull at all! On Thursday I went to Courçon, which is a tiny tiny tiny rural high school in the middle of nowhere, a town that a lot of French people in this region refer to using a phrase not dissimilar to “the arse-end of the earth”... but i was pleasantly surprised! I was driven there by a teacher who lives in the same village as me; a PE teacher with a facial tick - it was a perturbing situation speeding down the motorway at 120 km an hour as he twitched and I flinched...

I arrived at 7.55am, only 5 minutes before the start of class - oh yes, in rural schools, classes start at 8am! I was taken to the staff room to meet my responsible, Elisabeth. I’m one of only 3 English teachers, and I find it fascinating that they can all vary so much from teaching just one subject. One is fantastic and the kids love her, one is mediocre and a bit soft on the kids discipline-wise, and one is old, rude, stuck in her ways and archaic in her teaching methods – needless to say, her 5e are awful at English, so they may be a bit more of a challenge for me.

(Just for reference, in France, the 'college' goes up to just before GCSE age, with classes being called 6e (year 7) and going up to 3e (year 10). They don’t do GCSEs but they do a small assessment upon going to the lycée, which is y11 and then 2 years of the Baccalaureate, the A-Level equivalent.)

First thing in the morning, I was helping in two classes of 5e, year 8s, one of which was top set and brilliant, and the other of which were bottom set and stereotypically badly-behaved, French chav-equivalent (lots of large silver chains and talk of Tupac) and generally rude. These were taught by the best of the 3 teachers, who commanded a lot of respect from both classes (although i feel that the bottom set would fail to be controlled by even the very strict headmistress who ironically looks sheepish and tiny like Anna Wintour, with the same hair and trousers suits, but can shout like a foghorn) The next class were year 9s and taught by the not-so-great teacher, so the class was a bit lacklustre; then my next class were also year 9 but taught by the useless teacher. I think she is just so stuck in her ways, and I think, after doing some amateur psychology, that she feels demeaned and almost threatened by having me in the class, as her English isn’t terribly good. She used me to read paragraphs out and not a lot else. In all of these 4 hours of teaching here, I was used to interact with the classes as at the moment they are learning about personalities and how to describe yourself, so they were asking me questions; then I was allowed free reign of teaching and so fired some questions back at them, introducing some new vocabulary too. The questions of “Do you play a musical instrument?” got quite tedious after a while but it was only my first day and i am only meant to be observing at the moment. I spend 2 hours that afternoon recording numbers, texts and poems for the kids to listen to and use for years to come in their listening exams... so sitting in the staff room with a ‘casque’ on, a sort of skype headset with microphones and earphones and portable recording equipment, was highly embarrassing, as at times the staff room was packed and some teachers laughed at me... but it was even funnier when the English teachers came back from classes and played back some of their year 8 speaking exams; one of the best sentences being “I play often the vélo”, which none of us could work out what it meant. I just hope that that never happened when i was in school... mortifying!

On Friday i went to Surgères. I had a bit of a downer on this place, even being my principal college, as when I went there last Tuesday, they didn’t seem to even know I existed. But I put on a brave face and went in to start. I had to get another lift from another teacher, except this one is a real Frenchie, for those of you that have seen Les Choristes, he looks like Clement Matieu but a little rounder! I started my day with 2 hours of classes with Nathalie, a FANTASTIC teacher. I will be teaching only 2 classes, but twice a day, in this school, and both are “Euro” option classes, meaning they are the brightest students in their year and were given the option to move classes and study politics and European history from the age of 12, and have 4 extra hours of English and 2 more of French per week, so they are super intelligent! Nathalie and I teach the Euro 4e, year 8s, and she is so fun and makes the lessons hilarious, but she takes her lessons all in English, which would NEVER happen the other way around in England (making me lament our terrible comprehensive school language teaching in comparison). The class was so happy to see me, reeling off perfectly-formed English questions about where I live, the English school system, English food, asking why I am here in France etc... I was stunned by their level of English and their behaviour! Year 8s in England would sit there and sulk, muttering that they didn’t want to be there and would refuse to speak French... very sad really.

I then had lunch in the canteen, getting funny looks from all of the pupils (in all fairness, I look younger than a lot of them and I'm by far the shortest ‘teacher’ in any of my schools!), then started lessons with Laurent – Laurent is amazing, very young, speaks English with a cockney accent (!) and he teaches the 3e Euro option, and once again teaches totally in English, doing subjects we’d never think of studying in our own language, let alone another one! I helped do a mainly speaking-orientated lesson first of all, getting them to ask questions about my life at uni, my friends etc, as they were studying ‘being a teenager’, and wanted to know if i went to parties, if i drank, if i had a boyfriend, all really quite hilarious stuff when i thought about it! In the second class, they study a different country every week, concentrating on the politics and culture and differences to France - this week was Ireland, so I told them about the Potato Famine and St. Patrick's Day, despite not being Irish! Aafter worrying so much about being in this school due to their lack of organisation, I felt like i was welcomed so wonderfully into such intelligent classes and fantastic teachers!

Saturday, we went for a long bike ride to the shops then to Chatelaillon-Plage, took some photos and felt sorry for the poor sods who thought it was a good idea to go in the sea on such a blowy day! Sunday, we were woken up very early to go to a market in La Pallice, which was interesting, but nothing special, and then dragged to a car-boot sale in the early afternoon... oh, such is the life in a tiny village! It is nice to see 'real family life' in France and not just avoid the local culture. Sunday evening Caroline and I took the train to Poitiers, as we had a Stage d’Accueil on the Monday at the Poitiers Rectorat and we were going to stay at Steve’s apartment, a friend from uni who is also doing a British Council Assistantship in Loudun, just north of Poitiers. We arrived, then decided to go out for dinner – whilst at the restaurant we ran into 2 other assistants, Brian and Natasha, who were staying in a hotel for the weekend and also due to go to the Stage the next day, so we ate with them, went back to their hotels for a few drinks and then eventually made it back to Steve’s. The Stage itself was insanely dull, full of seminars and talks about stuff Caroline and I had already done, like opening bank accounts, getting la Sécu and applying for the CAF (up to 70% of your rent reimbursed by the government, just for being a student!) We got taken to the Rectorat office place where we had out official welcome with a small buffet of lots of wine and homemade biscuits and cakes! We went out later on to celebrate Caroline’s birthday, had a huge meal (complete with smuggled vodka) and met up with more assistants for drinks etc....

It’s Tuesday afternoon, we’ve just got home and it’s lovely, so we’re planning on taking the bikes out to do a bit of shopping then maybe go to the beach... it’s a hard life! Plus we have a day off tomorrow, no school on Wednesdays... even better!

A plus x