Thursday
Started my day at 6am with some caramel coffee. Anyone else hate mornings no matter their caffeine level?
My coworker had agreed to drive me to Charvieu for Thursday classes, so I walked over to the L’isle aux enfants (a kindergarten) to get picked up. I got to watch the sun come up over the horizon. On the car ride to work I got to know Géraud and his wife. They met in Scotland on their study abroad in college! So cute.
I started my day with the 4ème (7th grade) kids. The class was split in half so I had two groups of 15 for about 25 minutes each. They were great. I started class by telling them I had three rules: don’t talk while others are talking, know that everyone is required to speak a minimum of 1 sentence of English per class (more is preferred), and I refuse to yell over loud students so I’ll stand and wait for them to quiet down. It worked really well! When they got rowdy, other students policed the loud ones and I didn’t have to do anything. I got them more comfortable and engaged as we went on. They loved having pictures on the slides and getting to guess the French equivalent to new English words!
There was the morning break for about 20 minutes. I went down to the teacher’s lounge where we all had coffee together while the students played outside.
Classes started up again and I had two hours with Catherine’s class of 5ème (6th grade) students. I had about 16 kids for an hour before getting the second half. She had me rate the kids red, yellow, or green for behavior so she’d know who would be allowed to come back to work with me in following weeks. Both groups were pretty good. I was feeling more confident, so I separated the two groups of boys. It went super well! Everyone spoke at least twice during class and I was keeping them on task!
I had a nice hour for lunch alone before I moved out of the classroom and went down to hangout in the staff room while I waited for Géraud to be done for the day.
I met with the principal in the afternoon and learned she is close friends with my soon-to-be neighbor. I got to know a little bit about the area and was invited to join the rest of the staff on future bar nights. She told me that if I wanted to, I could join her family for Christmas. Pretty cool!
I rode home with Géraud and his wife. She works at the local elementary school and also teaches English! Students as young as 6 years old are already learning their numbers, simple phrases, and songs in English. I thought that was so cool. They insisted French foreign language programming was bad, but wow- if they knew about the language programming in the US they’d be horrified.
I spent the rest of the night sleeping and recovering. It’s tiring to work with kids!
Mary-Est-En-France 