Teaching

The students are still working on figuring out if I really don’t speak French and have been hard at work trying to get me to trip up. One persistent student’s attempt:

“So what do you watch on TV?”

Me: “Uhh…Friends?”

“What about when you go to the grocery store?”

Me: “Mmm…”

“Do you know what French kiss is? It’s very famous!”Read more

I have one class of 4emes and try to do something a little more challenging with them. Also, apparently their tastes are radically different from the slightly younger kids, so I try to take that into account too. This week, there were local elections going on, so I decided to do a lesson where we talked a little about current issues.Read more

I’ve been focusing on doing more games and avoided doing bingo all year, but decided to finally give it a try and was pleasantly surprised. I also got to prank the students and hear about what they’d do if they were president.Read more

I have one month of work left! And I’m actually wishing I had more time. I’m so lucky to like my students and co-workers enough that it makes me sad to need to leave.

Yesterday, I had what’s probably one of the worse moments I’ve had with a student in class; he called me something bad, which I didn’t hear, but all the students around him told him off and also let the teacher know before I even had a chance to see her (gotta love the kids’ need for justice at all times!). It was out of the blue, but it was so kind of everyone else to care so much on my behalf.

This week, we talked about St. Patrick’s Day and then played “Hot and Cold” with sources of pollution in rivers, which gave the students a chance to get up and walk around while learning new vocab.

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I finally called in sick for the first time this week, but my teachers were super nice about it (they even go so far as to try to get me more time off…what is this life?). When I went back in after, I felt pushed to the limit by a group of uncharacteristically uncooperative students, even though I almost always love the job and feel energized by it even when students are difficult. However, having other classes moonwalk and get really excited about telling me about environmental problems totally made up for it.

While I’ve been trying to avoid needing to take my laptop with me to class, I went with a lesson this week where I wouldn’t have to do too much speaking. A lot of students had been telling me that they liked music, so I decided to show them a clip of “Earth Song” by Michael Jackson and gave them a worksheet where they had to fill in certain words to keep them focused.Read more

This week was right before break, and like the last time I had class before vacation, even the students who are usually well-behaved were a little rowdy. I went in with a couple of different lesson plans and mostly ended up just combining some games to practice the names of body parts. Last week aRead more

Here are some lessons I learned by the halfway point in my time here: Sometimes (usually) lessons will not go the way they were planned. Even when I carefully pick the exact wording I’m going to use to make everything as clear as possible. And it’s better to roll with that and adjust the lessonRead more

This week, I’ve had students in both my schools again, but seeing how it’s right before Christmas break (and some of them have been out of school for a few days), even the normally well-behaved groups were off the walls.

It was my first time actually working with some of my students this week, and I ended up having them for 10 minute chunks instead of a half-hour, so I’d usually end up doing a little bit of intro stuff (what are your hobbies) and then do a shorter version of the lesson. I had hesitated to do a Christmas lesson, but one of my students specifically asked me to do one last week, so I decided to focus on a topic where I wouldn’t have to worry about laicete…Read more

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