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Last week I had the unique experience of being in a school with almost no pupils in it. I decided to take the early bus to school so I’d have plenty of time to meet the new teacher I’d been working with and to find out what I’d be doing. It was still dark out and I noticed a banner in front of the school that included the word «mort,» but I didn’t really understand or think too much of it.
I hung out in the teacher’s lounge and waited for the new teacher to show up but by 8am, it started to seem like something was off: there were pretty much no students around. I found out that apparently, there were some demonstrations going on and students weren’t being sent to school. My understanding was that parents were protesting because the school was going to lose its status as a ZEP school and would therefore be losing funding. According to my new teacher, however, I had to stay in the building for the hours that I’d normally be working.
There were no students for the first hour, so I did some lesson planning. During the next hour, there were three students so the teacher had me play hangman with them for an hour. I tried to make it more challenging by telling them that they had to make a question, or to make a question without the word «what». I also tried to have them practice naming body parts as they were drawn on the board, but it was definitely kind of a stretch.
Another class had about four students in it, so they came up with questions and grilled me about my life. One student asked me about what color school buses were in the US, and I replied «yellow». He then asked what color taxis were and I repeated «yellow» and he excitedly said “C’est jolie, non?” Sometimes I forget how interesting tiny details about other countries can be.
With my afternoon classes, I did a game about the 3 R’s (reduce, reuse, and recycle) that ended up being a blast:Read more
This week was an especially fun one at school: I got to try out Beaujolais wine in the teacher’s lounge (naughty…); my students brought me snacks again; and I got to help set up the Christmas tree. Even though all the food and festivity was great, the highlight came in class: while discussing what we’re thankful for, a student told me “I’m thankful to be with you,” which totally caught me off guard and was really sweet.
Christmas tree take one
I ended up getting some other interesting responses for what students were thankful for when we created “Thankful Squashes.”Read more
Over the past week, I’ve been doing an environmental survey with the students, which was lots of fun and led to students shouting “greenhouse effect…OHHH!” and drawing farting cows and landfills on the board:
Finding creative ways to avoid saying “fart” in class
It was fun to see what the students already knew about and it didn’t hurt that a lot of vocab was pretty similar between English and French. I also got to try out some Beaujolais wine in the teachers’ lounge (apparently it’s the law here that employees are allowed to drink wine, beer, or cider at work)! Check out the lesson plan and some preliminary survey responses under the cut!
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Before leaving New York, I realized that my bedroom had over the years become an unintentional shrine to France, what with the posters on the walls of Paris and paintings of France, along with a few little statues of the Eiffel Tower that have found their way to me over the years. Like so many otherRead more
It’s officially been two months since I came to France! While the first month felt like an eternity, the past one has flown by and I’m actually a little sad that I only have five months left here. It’s been pretty amazing to me how quickly it was possible to feel at home in aRead more
I have this list on my phone of places that I want to visit, which incomprehensibly had “Le blanc nez” and “Cap Blanc Nez” on it for quite a few weeks. We had a Tuesday off and in the afternoon, my roommate was kind enough to take me on an impromptu roadtrip to the very tip of France! We wereRead more
This week with the students ended up being a lot of fun; I did two different lessons with the students, including one where we got to talk about the environment. It was interesting to hear what they already knew (such as climate change) and fortunately, there are enough words that are similar in French andRead more
One of the things that I’m particularly interested in looking at over the next few months is the environmental aspects of life in different countries. In Iceland, there was a heavy emphasis on geothermal energy, which provides a quarter of the country’s electricity (almost all of the rest comes from hydropower). Geothermal is also used extensivelyRead more
From Bremen, I took a bus to Amsterdam. As we were getting down, the driver told us to watch out since we’d be getting down on a bike path, the first indication of just how many bikes I was about to see. I met the other assistants at our hostel, which was actually a boatRead more
I had decided to do a daylong stopover in Iceland on my way to France. I’d agonized about it for weeks and then finally bought my ticket…only to have to start worrying about the fact that a volcano might erupt! I decided to do one of the Golden Circle tours and planned to spend the eveningRead more
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