French Schools and all that Jazz

I began teaching the week of October 6. I am teaching at two schools, one in St Jean de Braye called Collège St Exupéry (St. Ex for short) and Collège Pierre Mendès France in Chécy. I teach only 12 hours a week, 6 hours at each school, but my hours are spread out so I have to pretty much spend most of the day Monday and Tuesday at St. Ex and Thursday and Friday in Chécy. So what is Collège you ask? It is the equivalent to our middle schools (or junior high schools). It serves 6eme, 5eme, 4eme, and 3eme students (6^th through 9^th grade, 11-15 year olds). I am teaching mostly 3eme classes (14 and 15 year olds), a few 5eme (12-13) and one or two 4eme (13-14). Both of my schools have two types of English classes: the European Section (also called bi-langue, bilingual), which are those students who from 5eme on have decided to take both German and English and spend a lot of their weeks studying these languages (in short, it’s the students who really want to learn the two languages) then you have the other students who are just taking a few hours a week of English. As you can imagine, the ability of these students is quite different. I can have one 5eme European class who can speak as well as if not better than my regular 3eme (who have taken more years of English, presumably). Additionally, I find that the younger students are sometimes more excited about English and are less shy, probably because the teenagers don’t want to embarrass themselves in front of their friends.

The school day is looong. They start at 8 on most days (some of my students don’t start at 8 on Fridays) and go until 5pm. Wednesday being the exception, where students only go for half days; the day is short because it is supposed to be a day of religious teaching in the extremely secular French society (most students do sports and other extracurricular activities during this time). They have two ten minute breaks, one in the morning and one in the afternoon, and 1.5 to 2 hours for lunch. And Lunch (for me, because of my low salary, is only 2 euros) is a classic French affair: salad, meat and vegetable main dish, dessert, fruit, yogurt and of course cheese and baguette. For the teachers there is a bottle of wine on the tables (not kidding) and coffee in the teacher’s lounge during breaks. Teachers accompany the students to class after breaks, where they wait to sit until the teacher tells them to do so (and after they have said “good morning/afternoon Ms.”). The one thing I would say I noticed that differs from American schools is the heavy reliance on written materials. NOTHING is electronic; this means schedules, lunch payment, rosters, even assignments are hand written by the teachers. When trying to find a classroom for me to use, my teacher flipped through this huge notebook of each week where teachers had written which classrooms they would be using. I was thinking, yo a database would be so easy to set-up… Additionally, substitute teachers are rare. If a teacher is sick, they have to get a doctor’s note and the students will either just have a free period or not even show up. Needless to say, it’s not often that teachers miss school.

I must admit, I am very jealous of the language learning that is available to these students in France. My teacher once asked me how many languages middle schoolers in the U.S. were required to take. I felt ashamed telling her that in middle school language is not required, and that only 2 years of a language is required to graduate from high school. Students in France often graduate from high school having taken at least two languages (required in high school), some taking more than that. And I don’t just mean graduating with the ability to pull together a few sentences of English. In France, to finish High School you have to take the Baccalaureate exam (the bac). The exam for English (which is required for almost all types of students) consists of a written exam and a strenuous oral exam where a student is given a piece to read over, then has to summarize and express their opinion of it in grammatically correct English. Even my 3eme classes will have to do a similar exercise at the end of their Collège studies, describing a picture or scene orally and expressing their opinion or feelings about it. Yo, I can’t even do that in French. I wish I had had been forced to study a language in such an intense atmosphere.

So back to my schools. I learned that at St Ex about 60% of the students are low income, whereas Chécy is majority middle class. I can’t say that I can tell the difference between the two schools, but my teacher believes that it affects how the students behave at school. I think all of my students are excited to have a young person from the US breaking the monotony of everyday English classes. Sometimes they are quite funny and of course I have those students one would deem “goodie goodies” or teacher’s pets, and of course those who would rather cut up then pay attention. For the most part, my classes are fairly small ranging from 7 to 15, though I do have two enormous classes of 22 (which I suppose isn’t bad, except I AM supposed to just be an assistant…). What does my job entail, you ask? Well my sole purpose is to be an ambassador of my country and to motivate the students to speak English. When I asked about lesson plans, my teacher just said make them speak English. Easier said than done. Often they try to speak to me in French, and though I understand them and it’s tough, I pretend like I can’t and tell them to please say it in English. We as assistants are not supposed to talk to the students in French at all. I told all of my students I don’t speak French but I am pretty sure they know I am lying because I speak to the other teachers in French in front of them. Nevertheless, they do have a good grasp of the language. One lesson I have done with two of my 3eme classes was about the US elections. These students have kept abreast of US politics probably better than many American citizens. And as you can imagine, they have all selected a favored candidate. For the lesson, I first asked them about policies in France (for example, Me: if you are sick here, what do you do? Students: go to the hospital. Me: and how much does that cost? Students: it cost 22 euro but then you are reimbursed. Me: so in the end it’s free? In the US, you have to pay for insurance and if you can’t afford it, you might have to pay a lot for healthcare. Student: what if you can’t pay $5000 for a surgery? Me: sometimes you have to sell your house… Student: well that’s not fair…) Of course that is a bit of an oversimplified explanation (the student s knew that in some ways they already paid for the healthcare through mandatory high taxes) but they understood that it could be hard on some Americans if they didn’t have insurance. Gun control (or the lack thereof) was another thing that really surprised them. But the thing that really got their gander was the Electoral College system. I assigned them each a state and had them look up how many votes their state got. They of course were perplexed as to why some states, say California, were more important to win than Alaska. One student even said “isn’t someone in Alaska the same as someone in California?” It was hard for me to defend a system I personally don’t agree with, so I didn’t (haha) I just explained that most of the time the winner of the 270 Electoral College votes wins the popular vote, with the 2000 election being an exception. They weren’t bought by this argument. Even though they were operating in their second language, I am certain they understood the issues. Each student was given an identity and had to decide based on this who they would vote for. For example, one student was an American who supported the war in Iraq because they thought it was the best way to fight terrorism (the student said they would vote for McCain). Another was a person with cancer but no health insurance. She said she would vote for Obama so she wouldn’t die. I hope I didn’t give them any biases that they didn’t already have. One interesting thing I noticed though, everyone knew who Sarah Palin was (and expressed their dislike of her, one student said she was a witch, not sure where he got that from), but not a soul in the class knew Joe Biden. I don’t know if that’s good or bad.

My final thoughts are about the English language itself. The students learn British English and I never really realized the fine differences that exist between American and British English. I mean I knew chips are called French fries (which by the way is extremely difficult to explain to French students… because not only do you have to tell them we have a different name for them, but you have to tell them why they are named after their country, which I don’t know), but things like “have you got any brothers” and “I like swimming” instead of “do you have any brothers” and “I like to swim.” Colour versus Color, Centre versus center, better pronounced “bet-ter” versus “bedder” etc. Plus, I have decided that you can say pretty much anything in English. The teacher will ask me, do you say this in English? And I think, well sure, you can say that, it makes sense. Here’s an example: “It’s raining today, but I’ve got my umbrella.” The teacher said this was incorrect because “but” is used to connect two opposite ideas. But then I thought to myself, well you could say that, if you put emphasis on I’ve (implying something like “well AT LEAST I’ve got my umbrella”). So when she asked me, I didn’t know what to say. I am surely not an expert on English (apparently, “I like to swim” is counted as incorrect on the students’ tests….). Well, whatever, we don’t talk like British people, so I just have to let the students know some of the main differences between the two types of English.

Next week we’ll talk about Halloween in the US. And the week after that is our first vacation, Toussaint (all saints day). A week of no classes will be nice. This was a lengthy post, but just wanted to let you know what’s going on here!

Orléans... photos

From Orleans

Over the last few days I have been exploring the city of Orléans, visited the rue de Bourgogne which is jammed packed with restaurants and bars from all over the world, and even visited a cute park. For most of the days I have been here, however, it’s been cold and rainy. Ugh.
Saturday, it was actually quite pleasant, and I strolled along the river to a marché (market) where you could purchase anything from apples to goat cheese to live rabbits (for eating of course) to sausage. I just bought some huge, locally grown apples before heading to the Mediatheque, library, to use the wifi. It’s a bit unfortunate; it appears that all the IUFM students leave for the weekend, meaning no internet or people to hang out with. Perhaps I will use this time to travel.

Zut, Je dois parler Français…

Translation: Crap, I have to speak French

Paris was my vacation from reality… that I was living in France and surrounded by French people toujours (all the time). It all began when I got on the train to head to Orléans… instead of asking someone, I just got off the train when it stopped, because I thought that it was only making two stops (Orléans and Blois, which is a bit farther). Boy was I wrong. Apparently there are two train stations near Orléans, and I of course got off the wrong one. Cursing myself, I got on the tram and went to the right station, where my ride, Madame Richer, was waiting. Madame Richer, my contact at College Pierre Mendes in Chécy, spoke to me in French only, though she is an English teacher. We get to the IUFM (teacher training institute), where my room awaited me, to find that the key doesn’t work. Instead we went to Madame Richer’s house in Chécy, where she kindly let me spend the night. I had a jolly (read awkward) time trying to converse with her husband who doesn’t speak English, I think a lot of his jokes went un-noticed by me, sadly. I got up the next day to catch the bus to St Jean de Braye and visit my other school, College St Exupery. Here I met a whole bunch of people, all who spoke French and said a whole lot to me assuming that I understood (and they probably thought I did, considering the fact that I nodded and responded in the affirmative). Madame Hernandez, my contact at this school, did speak to me in English, because we were discussing scheduling and I think it was important I understood. It appears that I will be spending Monday and Tuesdays at St Exupery, maybe Wednesdays, and Thursday and Fridays at Pierre Mendes. St Exupery has this weird schedule where classes are different depending on whether it is week A or B. So much for being a language assistant, it appears that I will actually be teaching the majority of the classes, with as little as 10 students and as many as 22. Madame Hernandez says that the 3eme (older students) are very interested in English/America and are good at English. The 5eme students are not as good, but still nice (though some may be shy). We’ll see how that goes. One of the English teachers is teaching about the elections in the US, so we decided we should sit down and swap ideas. Everyone I met was very very nice and friendly, even your classic school librarian.
After that, I finally made it to the IUFM and my room, merci to Madame Richer for the ride. My room is petite, but it’s just right for me. I realized I couldn’t unpack without hangers, so I headed out to explore the city of Orléans. Although it was cold and threatening rain, Orléans was a pretty nice looking city. I stopped at the tourism office for a map, checked out this huge cathedral and of course found the statue of Joan of Arc that is in the center of town. Tons of restaurants, cafes, cute boutiques, and other shops line the cobble stone streets. I found the 2 euro store and stocked up. I still need some things though, like a trash can. I found a small grocery store near the IUFM, but I made a complete fool of myself because I didn’t understand what the woman was asking me (but she was real nice about it and wished me luck with the middle schoolers). I additionally made a fool of myself when I walked into the SFR (cell phone company) store because I couldn’t get my phone to turn on. I hand it to the guy, who with such dexterity, held down the button and Voila it turned on. Wow did I look stupid.
Next week is the start of classes... eek. Hopefully all goes well!

Le grand tour de Paris

Justine's Séjour in France

(Click there for pictures)

Alas, after months of anticipation, I arrived in Paris on Thursday September 25. And I surely hit the ground running. Vincent, a French friend of mine from Elon, met me at the airport (I have entirely too much luggage). We then took the RER B to the suburbs of Paris, where my friend Kether (whom I know from Senegal) is currently studying (at a school called ENS Cachan). After a much needed shower, Ellen, a friend of Kether’s who was also staying with her for the week, and I took the metro into Paris to meet Kether for dinner. And that is when it hit me, whoa I am really in France! Ellen and I went to Place d’Italie and strolled around (code for got lost) and saw many cafes, “discovered” a hidden garden with wombats (aka le jardin du plantes), but no berets. We finally managed to get back to the meeting point and stroll around the Latin Quarter before heading back for the night.
Friday we headed to la Fontaine St Michel and strolled down avenue St Germaine, which is very touristy and full of cafes and bookshops. Oh yeah, and is right near Notre Dame. We of course sat down to café (coffee) and enjoyed people watching. As Paris is the most traveled to city in the world, you can believe that there were plenty of foreigners and lots of people speaking English. So in that respect, it was good to stop in Paris before heading to Orleans, because it was like slowly getting into the habit of speaking French. Next we headed towards the Rodin Museum (Rodin, most famous for his “thinking man” statue), along the river Seine, so I at least saw the Louvre from a distance. We then strolled around the area called the Marais, and then took the metro to the Arc de Triomphe. We ended the day near the Bastille, meeting some friends for drinks. Saturday, we had a classic French picnic (baguette, cheese, salami, and fruit) in a park near the Cite Universitaire. We then stood in line for a long time to reach the Paris Catacombs. I had been in Catacombs before, but these were particularly creepy. First, a priest back in the day had “reorganized” the bones into decorative patterns, such as hearts, crosses, and other shapes with skulls and femurs as the centerpieces. 6 million people are in the catacombs, but you wouldn’t know that because it’s nothing but stacks upon stacks of bones. And it’s deep down, below both the metro and the sewers of Paris. Plus it was dark, and every now and then, some philosopher had written some words of wisdom on the walls (things like, “When you wake in the morning, know that you might not live through the day; when you go to bed at night, know that you might not live through the night”). And then there would be a random altar where a priest back in the day gave mass. What’s extra crazy is the fact that the people’s whose bones form the shape of a star, their families can’t even visit their whole bodies.
I was grateful to get out of there and what do I hear? None other than a small brass/wind/drum band loudly playing MJ’s thriller to a crowd of excited onlookers. There was an art showcase going on in Montparnasse and the band was quite good. On the street I bought two books for 1.5 euros from a Senegalese man before we headed to (drum roll please) the Eiffel tower. Oh yeah, it’s pretty awesome up close. It was really pretty at night too; lit up in blue with a circle of yellow stars (France is this year’s president of the EU). Of course we took the elevator up to the second floor and had a lovely view of Paris. Sunday, after sleeping in a bit, we went to this huge flea market in the north part of the city, and I felt like I was straight up again in Senegal. You could buy anything in this market, from cute boots to antique post cards to crepes to African masks. It was a bit overwhelming, but it brought me back to ole Marche Sandaga in Dakar. After that we went to Sacre Coeur/Montmartre, which also offers a gorgeous view of the city from high above. Below this old church is probably the most tourist part of Paris I saw. Moulin Rouge, le Chat Noir, and a million sex shops were frequented by huge tourist buses. That night we went back to St Michel (near Notre Dame) and checked out an English book store that is pretty famous for housing writers, Shakespeare and Company. Apparently, authors such as James Joyce and Hemingway spent their time there. Monday, to thank Kether for her hospitality, Ellen and I stopped at one of the many floral shops and bought her two potted plants. We then headed back to Montmartre to the Salvador Dali Museum. Dali is probably best known for his surrealist paintings of melting clocks, but this museum was also full of his statues, paintings depicting Don Quixote, Alice in Wonderland, and biblical stories. And, for only 900 euros, you can have a lithograph of a Dali print. We searched high and low for a Senegalese/African restaurant, settled for Turkish, and then headed back to Cachan to get my luggage so I could catch the train to Orleans. BUT, Kether and I arrived at her place sans the key (Ellen had it and we both forgot to ask her for it). So, I missed my train, but it ended up being a good thing, because I caught the next one and saved 8 euros. I never really slowed down in Paris, and I didn’t want to. There was so much to see, and I didn’t even see it all! Having only spent 4 days in Paris, I of course know very little about living in the city, but I can offer my first impressions.
1. The metro system is intense. I don’t even know how many lines, but there are various colors, plus there are the trains that are “suburban” which bisect the city, and there are 4 zones that define how much a ticket costs. The good thing is, the price of the ticket is not determined by how far you travel as long as you stay in one zone. So you could essentially spend all your time in the metro for only 1.40 euros (and believe me, there is plenty to see down there!); photo booths, restaurants, shops, advertisements for everything under the sun, performers (we had two boys break it down while doing acrobatics on the metro). The system is not hard to navigate, maps are everywhere, but it is a bit of a maze for sure. And I can’t imagine what it must be like when there is a strike…
2. People aren’t that rude. I found that lots of waiters liked to speak English, as did random other people on the street, and I got lots of funny compliments from strangers (some old drunk man came up to me and told Ellen that I was “mignone” (cute).) I bought a sim card for my cell phone and I didn’t find the people there un-friendly at all. I think it’s important to follow cultural procedure: walk into a shop/restaurant, greet the employee and when you leave, say goodbye and thank you. Lots of stuff is in English, and there are a lot of workers who speak English too, so if you want to visit, you have no worries… 3. French people are confused about the weather. I understand that the beautiful weather we had was a bit of a fluke for September, but people in Paris really didn’t know whether it was cold or not. I mean people bundled up in huge winter coats and scarves walked alongside someone in shorts or a t-shirt (granted, it was in the 60s, and I quickly caught on to the scarf wearing, in fact I even purchased two more pashmina-esque scarves). Nonetheless, I never saw a beret or stripped sailor shirt, sadly. I did see two men playing accordions though, which I think is pretty French. That’s Paris for now, I am sure I will be visiting again though!