Teaching in France

Tuesdays are my longest days of work but Wednesdays I only have one class – so here’s yesterday’s promised update.

The reason I haven’t talked much about the teaching job is because, well, it’s not easy. I’ve never been a teacher before – and probably won’t be a teacher again; I didn’t get the teacher gene from my mom. Unfortunately the job description implied that we would be assistants in France; at least the way I understood it was that we would be working alongside a teacher in his or her classroom or individually with very small groups. But that hasn’t been the case for me – or for many of my friends here. For nine of my twelve classes, I’m really a teacher, not an assistant, which has been frustrating (and exhausting!) for me because I was not at all prepared to be thrown into a teaching job.  I had no prior experience, and I’ve found myself preparing all my lessons alone and working by myself in a classroom with up to 18 students. The job is also doubly tiring because I have to spend at least half, if not more, of the time speaking in French with the students. In some ways that’s good because I’ve learned some new words from them – like the word for “creepy” (glauque) and the world for “octopus” (pieuvre) – and I’ve gotten to practice my French, which is always good. But when you’re already unprepared to be a teacher, it’s a bit unnerving, and utterly exhausting, to have to do the teaching in your second language. And as a kicker, the room I teach in isn’t equipped with any form of technology. I’ve been borrowing a projector from the library, but the computer that goes along with it (mine is too new to work with the projector) isn’t exactly stellar. I know that people learned without computers for years – but I never did, so it’s hard to come up with ideas for teaching that don’t require technology. And when you’re teaching about American culture, it’s tough not to need to show videos and pictures (and the printers at the school don’t print in color, so I can’t really just print pictures as an alternative). All that is just a bit of an added stressor.

In retrospect, I wouldn’t say that learning all this and dealing with all this means that I wouldn’t have done this program at all – but I do wish that the application had been clearer in describing the job. And, frankly, I don’t think they should accept people into this program who don’t have teaching experience if the schools are going to use us as teachers; it would be better for the students that way, too, to be learning from people who really know what they’re doing, or at least have the training and concepts.

Essentially all this means is that I’ve had to work pretty hard. Luckily I’ve come up with ideas to teach about (stereotypes, sports, American television, Christmas in the U.S.) – I just hope I don’t run out of ideas before the end of April. And, thankfully, a few of my classes are enjoyable. The middle school classes are my favorite - something that surprises me given how awful middle school was for me...and most of the world. But the middle schoolers are still pretty excited to learn and tend to want to participate. The high schoolers are much more difficult, particularly the tenth graders; I don't think 16 is a good age in any country.

It's all been quite a learning experience!

I'm also giving private lessons which I enjoy very much. Once a week I tutor two kids, a girl who is seven and a boy who is ten, who are wonderful. We have a lot of fun together and they love the lessons. I work with their mom also, and after the vacation I'll be starting with another student to help her with her conversation skills. Once a week I also meet up with a girl at the high school to practice conversation, though we split the time between French and English (so I can get some practice with a real-live young French person), and I don't get paid for that lesson. I'm glad that I've found all these lessons. Though, really, they've found me. Being one of the few native English speakers in a small French town has its advantages...

So that's my day-to-day life in a nutshell. Tomorrow I have a few classes and then it's only one week until my family gets here! Karen is visiting this weekend as well - so lots to look forward to!