5 posts tagged “school”
I’m nearing the end of my first week of teaching at Lycée A, and so far, so good. This is the fourth school I've worked at, since my second year teaching I was assigned to two collèges. Out of the four, this is by far my favorite. I don’t want to jinx myself by breathing a huge sigh of relief, but the past three days have been really enjoyable.
A huge part of this happiness is my awesome commute. Assuming that one were to wake up on time, one could walk to Lycée A from my apartment in about 12 minutes. If one were to, say, shut off one’s alarm without actually getting out of bed two mornings in a row and then spend too long catching up on one’s blog roll on the third morning, one would still not be screwed. There just happens to be a bus that runs directly between one’s house and the door of the school that shaves five minutes off the normal seven-minute trip. So, one has not yet been late to work.
Okay, back to the first person.
My students are universally respectful in class, and the majority is interested and participates. Some of them have a truly abysmal level of English, considering the number of years they’ve been taking English class, but they do seem interested in improving.
I’ve had some really funny moments so far this week, too. During the first lesson I say something like, “My name is Sophie, I’ve lived in Paris for three years, I love to travel, I like to go to the marché, and I hate to get up early.” And then I ask them to introduce themselves. I get a lot of, “My name is Laurent, I’m 16, I have 2 sisters and I like music.” But this one girl, one of the not-so-interested ones, said her name and then just looked at me. I said, “okay, what do you like, what do you not like, what do you do on the weekends?” and she just replied, “I have no passion” in a completely monotone voice. It took a lot of will to not laugh, although I couldn't quite stop myself from blurting out, “that’s sad!”
Another kid, Akim, forgot to turn off his cell phone in class. Normally I would have chastised him, but his ring tone was the theme song to the Fresh Prince of Bel Air, so I just burst out laughing. Akim is memorable for other reasons, too. When introducing himself, he said that he loves his girlfriend of two years. He then proceeded to hit on me THE ENTIRE CLASS. He was very charming about it, and obviously joking, but when it was time for the kids to practice their question skills, Akim’s questions were: How long have you had a boyfriend? How far is your apartment? Do you have a roommate? How big is it? Big enough for me to come over? Oh, Akim.
A nice bonus of teaching in the same arrondissement as the two collèges from 2007-2008 is that I’ve seen several of my old students. While setting up my desk for Akim’s class, Antoine, whom I taught when he was in 4ème (or 8th grade) came up to my desk and timidly said, “Madame?” When I looked up I was so happy to see him. He was part of a class of all 8th grade boys. You’d think that would have been a nightmare, but we always had a great time, perhaps because I hated their English teacher even more than they did, and didn’t hide it. He said he remembered me, and even remembered my last name, and that he was really happy at Lycée A even though no one else from his collège class ended up there. He had always been a kind of stuttering, shy kid, and now seemed much more confident. It was nice to see.
Also nice to see was Pauline, a girl from my favorite-ever class. She stopped in the hallway and said “je la connais!/I know her!” which is not very elegant, but it got my attention. We didn’t have a chance to talk, because the bell rang so we both had to get to class, but I really hope I see her again soon. The school’s not that big, so I’m sure I will. I adored that class, and really want to find out how everyone is. They wrote me the nicest letters at the end of the year, and we always laughed a lot.
My private lessons are going well, too. Tonight was my first lesson with a great Franco-American family with five kids. I’ll tutor three of them, ages 9, 7, and 4. The two little girls (ages 7 and 4) sent me out the door with hugs and kisses and at one point Caroline actually got down on her knees and bowed to me.
So, I’m happy. Financially completely insecure, but happy.
Yesterday my friend Grant emailed me, saying, "I already read the ice cream thing weeks ago so get off your ass and write something cool." Simmer down, Grant.
But he's right, of course. I haven't written anything in over a month, mostly because I was in the States for over three week. Mostly in New York, with a quick three-day visit to my maternal grandparents in Los Angeles. Even though this trip was significantly longer than most of my trips home, I still didn't get to see everyone or do everything I wanted to. I was particularly looking forward to catching up with one of my childhood friends, Jade. She's one of the friends I mentioned back in this post, and we haven't seen each other in way too many years. Hopefully next time . . .While I was in New York, I reached the three-year anniversary of my arrival in France. It was hard to celebrate while not in the country, but it is amazing to me that I'm still here. And entering my fourth year of teaching! So, happy third anniversary to me.
I don't think I've actually written here about what I'll be doing this year. Back in January, when my job with the cool educational non-profit fell through, I had less than a week before the last deadline for the assistantship. This program is what brought me to Paris back in 2006. Technically, you're only allowed to do it twice. Which I have already done. In 2006 I was accepted through the US embassy in Washington, DC, and then my contract was renewed for the 2007-2008 school year through the rectorat in Paris. The program is so insanely disorganized, however, that I thought there was a pretty good chance that there is no master database, and so I figured I’d take a shot at applying again. I had to rush to get my recommendations and fill out the paperwork, but managed to get it done in time. It’s funny, ‘cause when I applied in the winter of 2005 I spent SO LONG on getting the application just right, and this time around I just threw it together. I didn’t think it would work, especially because the supposed overnight express envelope that I sent ended up taking two nights, and so my application got in a day late.
The stars were shining on me, however, because I was accepted. Once I moved apartments, I called up the lovely new lady at the rectorat (I’m still sad that Madame Dionis is gone, but the new Madame Couetdic seems to be more on the ball) and asked if it was possible to assign me a school near my new apartment, rather than the one they had on file. She said she’d see what she could do, but no promises. And then, score! The high school I’ll be working at is a 12-minute walk from my place!
I went by to meet the headmistress back in July, and we really hit it off. Then yesterday I met the English teacher in charge of me, Solange. We had already spoken on the phone and emailed a few times, mostly to discuss my scheduling preferences. I have been nothing but impressed with the school’s organization, so far. I already have my finalized schedule for the year, and received all my paperwork from the intendance and secretariat. I’ve been given a tour of the school, my own whiteboard markers and attendance book (ooh, the power I wield!), and met three of the six English teachers I’ll be working with. All of this makes me think that I’ll probably hate the students, as in my experience it’s impossible to like both the staff AND the students in one school.
I’m really happy with my schedule, too. Every other week I have to work one hour on Fridays, from 11 am to noon, but other than that I have four-day weekends and never work before 9 am or past 4 pm. And eight of my 12 classes are in the same room, which is really nice. Of course, the other four classes are in the amphitheater, which will be interesting, to say the least, but you can’t have it all.
Tomorrow is orientation, which I’m not looking forward to that much since I have a feeling I’ll know most of the information. But I can just play Scramble on my awesome new iTouch.
I’ve already had two hours of tutoring since being back: one with Lucas, and one with the hot pilot. Both went really well, and I had a huge smile on my face when I rang the doorbell at Lucas’ house and heard him squeal “it’s SOPHIE!” His reading has advanced so much; I have a feeling that soon I won’t have much more work to do!
I’m still in the process of scheduling all of my private lessons. I have to turn down quite a few people, since I won’t have the time or energy to take on all the clients that contact me. I’m having trouble figuring out how many hours I should do in addition to the twelve hours of classroom time. It’s a bit frustrating, because if you break down the pay by hour, I get paid literally twice as much to tutor as to be an assistant, but I need the assistantship for the working papers and the paid vacation. It’s really a pretty good deal.
And I am SO relieved that my 15 months of being a sans papiers are over. I think the only reason I don’t feel guilty is that I earned this! Living illegally takes dedication.
Three days a week I tutor an adorable 5-and-a-half year-old boy, Lucas. Lucas is Irish/French, and I'm teaching him how to read. It's really satisfying work, and Lucas is very perceptive. Sometimes it's easy to forget just how little he is, 'cause he never lets me get away with anything: trying to let him win at tic-tac-toe ("but why did you go there?!"), making up the rules of a game as we go along, or trying to answer a question with "because."
I haven't seen him in three weeks, because of Christmas vacation, and today was our first day back together. When you spend three hours a week with a little guy like that, you get kind of attached. And I almost squeezed him when introducing me to his Christmas present, a really big stuffed dog. I asked if the dog has a name, and he said, "yes, his name is Big Dog."
And then he told me a knock-knock joke, and laughed himself silly.
Lucas: Knock knock!
Me: Who's there?
Lucas: Who!
Seriously, he thought this was the funniest thing ever. It made me really happy, and I wanted to freeze him in that moment. Or maybe I wanted to go back to when I thought knock-knock jokes were the height of humor?
When I was that age, I attended an Orthodox Jewish yeshiva. I was there from nursery four through third grade, and I was really happy. Half the day was in English, and half in Hebrew. I had lots of friends, and was good at school. I wasn't great at Hebrew, but I was in the gifted program for the English part of the day. I remember learning about Greek myths and Braille when the rest of the class was doing their Social Studies. Eventually my parents took me out, which they were very right to do. Math, History, English . . . all of it was getting short-changed in exchange for the Hebrew and Jewish studies. And seriously, I knew like four alphabets, and that's just not necessary in an eight year-old.
The school I moved to was a historically Episcopalian school, although it has been secular for about a hundred years. My mom always used to joke that half of my high school was half-Jewish, and she was probably right. Still, the parents of my former classmates were not very happy to let their kids play with me. And that really sucked. I stayed in touch with a bunch of them for a while, but then our lives just went different ways. Most of them went to Israel for a year between high school and college, and got married by their mid-twenties.
A little while back, I got a message out of the blue from my very first boyfriend. We were together in kindergarten and first grade (what can I say? I started young), and he was just the cutest. We would sit together on the bus for field trips, and I still have the birthday presents he gave me for my 6th and 7th birthdays. Somehow he found me on LinkedIn, and it was great to hear from him. He's married, of course, with two kids, and living in Florida.
Hearing from him inspired me to search for all the other friends I lost touch with ages ago. I found a bunch of them on facebook, and it's such a trip to see their faces all grown up. I have such vivid memories of that time: slumber parties, clapping games at recess, eating tuna fish sandwiches with potato chips smushed in the buns at Friday lunches, ballet and gymnastics classes after school, and the constantly changing alliances that are part and parcel of any group of young girls. Seeing pictures of them all in their wedding dresses and holding babies is just plain weird. And it really shows me just how far from ready I am for that life.
It's strange, since we all started out the same. We learned about sex at the same time and had our first crushes on the same boys. So when does the switch get flipped? How did they ALL end up married before 30, while I have no interest in even sharing a bathroom for the near future?
I was going to write this post last night, after a nice dinner with my cousins. Instead, I let Anna convince me to go to a club with her and some of her students, which turned out to be a very bad idea. I had mildly twisted my ankle in the evening, but didn't think it was a big deal. After two hours of standing and dancing, I was in pain and had to take a cab home. I woke up this morning, having slept with it propped up on a pillow all night, and realized that I'm fucked. I leave in under 20 hours for Croatia, and I can barely walk. I tried calling the two osteopaths I know here, but neither is answering their phone since it's a national holiday. Fuck fuck fuck. I also have no way to ice it, since my freezer is completely frosted over and I can't fit my ice tray in. I tried scraping off some freezer burn into a plastic baggy but it melts too quickly. Fuck.
Assuming that I'll be able to pack and get myself to the airport AND to my hostel, I'll probably spend the first two days in Dubrovnik recovering from all the strain. And I wanted to go hiking! and climbing over rocks on the beaches! and nude snorkeling! Fuck.
In other, less depressing, news, I have learned to knit. I was going to take a picture of my creation and post it, but it's all the way over there and I can't stand. So just trust me, Lee Ann is a very good teacher. So far I've only learned how to cast on and the knit stitch, but purl is coming and then I will be a knitting machine. Pics TK.
Last week's Parisist goodbye party was a big success, despite the unbelievably bad service at the bar. My favorite line, after we'd waited about 45 minutes to order more drinks, was when the waitress said, "What I don't understand is why you didn't order everything at once." Um. It's a second round. We ordered some drinks, and we finished them, and now we want more. So French.
Here's Michael giving me his sexy face, while Meg giggles at her incredibly long list of dirty French words:
I took a picture of the entrance:
And here are my two favorite classes, TES2 and 1ES2:
Assuming I can leave tomorrow, which I think I will (it's just pain, right?), I'll be spending the next 11 days on the Dalmatian Coast of Croatia. Beaches, seafood, hiking, and lots of lolling. I love lolling.
This week, my 4th to last teaching, has been really good. Yesterday two students voluntarily attended my class, despite the fact that this was not their assigned week. When I asked them why (normally kids like to CUT class, not attend it) they said they had nothing else to do. I was really flattered that they chose to sit in my classroom when they could have been at the cafe, library, study hall, or just hanging out with their friends.
Then today a girl actually laughed at my accent when I said a word in French, so I threw up a whole bunch of difficult English words on the board and made her say them (south, truth, etc). The whole class was laughing, and it felt so good to joke around with them. Later I walked down the hall with some of my secondes, talking about how hot Patrick Dempsey and Josh Holloway are, and exchanging the French and American names for TV shows.
Another class said that they're going to bake a cake for our last session, in three weeks. I just feel like everything is going really well, and that I finally have a good relationship with most of my students. We tease each other and spend a lot of time laughing. It sucks that there are some of them who I won't have again, and the rest I'll only have once or maybe twice more. It took so long to get them to respect, never mind like, me, but now it feels really good.
One of my adult students, aka the hot pilot, told me that he finds it difficult to speak like I do because he can't make Ts sound like Ds. He's referring to the way I say "buddon" instead of "button." I then had to explain about my dad's New York accent, and that he should NOT imitate that part of my speech! How embarrassing.
Anna flew to New York a few hours ago, to meet with her potential PhD program. That means that my big plans tonight include hand-washing and finishing The Queen on my computer. It's too bad that the weather has turned miserable, although it'll make it cosy to be in my apartment, with a nice cup of grog.
