*Note – I know that this post doesn’t bring you all the way
up to date to the present, as I typically try to do, but since it’s taking me a
while to get this week’s report together, I thought I’d go ahead and provide a
partial entry from last week so that my Monday morning folks (East Coast time) have
something new to look at while I work on the rest. The report from Thursday
10/11 onward is forthcoming, and you don’t want to miss it since that’s when my
real teaching responsibilities began. Thanks for reading! - ML
In case you’re thinking that I, as a French and
African-American Studies major, am being thrown to the wolves with absolutely
no training on being a teacher, then fear not! My school district (referred to
as an « académie » or a « réctorat ») requires me, as
an English teaching assistant, to attend four (four!) three-hour sessions led by teacher trainers throughout the
first school term so that I can learn tips and tricks about my new trade and
share insights among my colleagues – the other 20 or so folks who are assigned
to high schools in the Seine-Saint-Denis « département » of the school
district of Créteil. The first of these was held after our general
orientation session (and hearty lunch) last Wednesday 10/3, and the second
occurred today.
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| Looking down the hall from my room towards stairs/elevator |
Oh, but I did snap a couple of shots in the hallway to try to give you an idea of the quality of the place I live in before leaving. I will try to continue this effort around the building as I remember to do so. I actually made you a video clip of the kitchen too, but it wouldn't upload. Might have to go elsewhere for a better Internet connection.
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| Showing you proximity of my room (foreground) to kitchen (to the right, next to light switch) |
In order to get to Lycée Boulloche in Livry-Gargan (« lycée » means high school), I first took a bus from the street where I live in the 9th arrondissement to the Haussman-Saint Lazare RER station (the « RER, » with the r’s pronounced in a French accent, is the commuter train between the city and the suburbs as opposed to the « métro, » which is the in-town subway). Then I took the RER E train towards Chelles-Gournay and got off at Bondy, where I changed to the Tram line T4 and continued to Gargan. Alternately, I could’ve gone to my normal stomping grounds of Aulnay-sous-Bois and taken the tram to Bondy from there, but I wanted to do something different. Plus, this way was faster. I’m really enjoying figuring out all of these routes and connections! Might have to move to a big city when I return to the States, Lord willing…
On the tram, I actually saw 2 other people in my group – 1
of the other Fulbright grantees and the guy from Colorado that I met last week
when I was relieved to find an American among the group of Europeans/Australians.
Of course, the Fulbright is a bit like the Foundation Fellowship that I had at
UGA; we don’t announce ourselves as recipients of this extra
money/non-financial support in public for reasons of sensitivity. So I didn’t
want to be too “buddy-buddy” with the other Fulbrighter since we, in theory,
had only met the other day at the general school district orientation, not at
our other three-day event. Plus he was far away on the train. The Colorado guy
actually recognized me, though, and started asking me in English about how
things were going at my school, which immediately attracted the attention of
the Frenchies on the tram. I tried to keep my voice low so they wouldn’t hate
us.
Once we got to our stop, we caught up with our colleague,
and the three of us made our way down the road to the high school, thanks in
part to the directions I’d written down and in part to the confirmation of a
friendly passer-by who pointed out the way because one of the road signs was
confusing. Along the way, the two of them started discussing a country that
I’ve never visited (shocking, I know) in great detail, so I decided to eat part
of the lunch I’d packed since it had been a little while since breakfast.
Finished my sandwich just as we approached a tall building with clusters of
young people socializing out front. The guys were going to keep walking, but I
was like, “Um, this is a high school.” We joined up with a few others in our
group, and I switched to French to tell the receptionist that we were there for
« une formation » = a training session. She told us to go to room
313, which is what we had been told in advance, so we headed upstairs to what
would be considered the 4th floor in America (the ground floor is
like floor 0) and logically followed the sequence of room numbers.
Too bad this building wasn’t logical. We wandered from one
end of the small third floor to the other and became convinced that 313 didn’t
exist because the numbers didn’t go high enough. Finally I asked a teacher who
was alone in a classroom (why did I do everything?) for help. He said we had to
go downstairs and cross over to the other connected building, which he
indicated out the window behind us, and then go upstairs from there. We were
like, Maybe the receptionist should’ve
hinted at this particular configuration before sending us upstairs… By the
way, we weren’t too worried about being a few minutes late, because someone in
the group had called our teacher trainer when we were entering the building
since it was a couple of minutes after 2:00 at that point anyway. Buuuuut
apparently there was some teacher using the classroom that we had reserved for
months and refusing to leave, so we had to wait until class ended at 2:20 or
something anyway in order to have space in which to work. So we just all just
gathered in the stairwell and got informal advice from our teacher trainer
there.
In the actual session, we had to talk about how our first
week of observation had gone and whether we had encountered any major
obstacles. I talked about the English-language History/Geography class (part of
the « section
européenne »)
in which the instructor asked me to talk about “The New South” on the spot
after I introduced myself as being from Atlanta, Georgia last Thursday.
Everyone laughed in shock at the thought of having to talk about an actual
topic without advance preparation. I told them that I mentioned concepts
related to Reconstruction, but then I had to keep working backwards to see what
the students already knew about the preceding era. For example, I asked when
the Civil War had occurred, and someone said “the 60’s.” I was like, “Which
60’s? The 1960’s? Actually it was about 100 years earlier.” He was probably
thinking of the Civil Rights Era. So
that was the most interesting reflection I shared with the group.
The main take-away from this session was that we have to
keep everything very, very simple while working with our students. We can’t say
too many words at once, and we have to write the key words on the board for the
folks who may not understand our accents. If we use “documents,” which is a
broad term that they use for any sort of audio-visual intervention, including
videos, sound clips, and images, then they must not be very complicated, or at
least should fit the level of our pupils so that they will not become
discouraged. We also discussed the idea of creating suspense by cutting out
part of images and having the students imagine what is missing, for example.
Another important piece of advice was to give definitions (synonyms) of new
words that approximate their French equivalents, meaning that they are based on
Latin roots. Also, we should allow students to help each other with corrections
if someone makes a mistake while speaking to
an extent, but after 2 or 3 attempts, we should just go ahead and correct
them so they don’t get overwhelmed or frustrated.
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| Platform of tram station on rainy day in Gargan |
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| Approaching tram on opposite platform |
Tuesday, October 9 –Timely
devotional on God’s sovereignty; Hangin’ out at the Laundromat; Rent
Upon waking up this morning, I was particularly preoccupied
by the fact that it was finally October 9th, the date on which my
scores from the September 8th administration of the California
Subject Examinations for Teachers (CSET) would be released. Of course, due to
the fact that they weren’t going to be emailed until 5:00 pm Pacific Time, I
would not see these scores on my “October
9th” but this was still the date that had been in my head for a
while. Many of you probably don’t know that I flew to California the weekend
before Michael and Kristina’s wedding in order to take French Subtests I, II,
and III of the CSET, which assessed my knowledge of French linguistics &
literature as well as French and Francophone culture in great detail through
multiple choice questions, essays, listening comprehension, and even a spoken
component. (Anyone who looks at the free study guides should know that this is
the sort of material covered by the exam, so I’m not giving away confidential
info.) This is typically a test that you take in order to become
licensed/credentialed as a French teacher in the state of California, but
Stanford University requires that applicants to their Secondary Teacher
Education Program (STEP) pass at least 2 of the 3 subtests in order to be
considered for admission in the first place. I guess this makes things easier
for them down the line so that they can rest assured that the folks in their
program will, in fact, become licensed teachers. So, yes, I’m applying to
Stanford as well as Northwestern, UVA, and Wash U. And so far they’ve all asked
me on their applications which other schools I’m applying to, so I don’t mind
if they stumble across this blog and find this info. It’s not a secret or
anything.
But anyway, I was so overwhelmed by the thought that I might
have gone all the way out there to California and not passed 2/3 tests. I ended
up reading the next devotional in sequence from Sarah Young’s Jesus Lives: Seeing His Love in Your Life with
the goal of putting my mind at ease before beginning my day. Well, let me tell
you, this was not a selection that was chosen at random; these words were
pre-ordained for me to encounter on this day with this issue on my heart. The
topic was “Depending on Him,” which was obviously an important reminder that
this entire process was and is out of my hands, so I just needed to “let go and
let God,” as the old church adage states. However, the part of the devotional
that really stuck out to me and that led me to write in my journal – my preferred
method of communicating with the Lord – was the end: (the author takes the
perspective of God) “You need to remember that I am Sovereign. I will not help
you go along a path that is not My choice for you. So it’s vital to commit your way to Me, asking Me to lead you each step of the way.” The
accompanying Scripture on which this reflection was based was Psalm 37:5:
“Commit your way to the Lord, trust also in Him, and He shall bring it to pass”
(New King James Version). It was at that moment that my focus shifted from
worrying about my scores to realizing that I had not really consulted the Lord very specifically regarding my next step
following the Fulbright. So I ended up asking Him to show me very clearly both
through my teaching experiences beginning this week and through my performance
on this exam whether or not I was being obedient to His will in my efforts to
apply for Master’s degree programs that will provide me with the credentials I
need to become a K-12 French teacher in the States. It was a wonderful period
of Spirit-filled introspection and reflection, and I got up feeling like no
matter what happened with my scores, I was going to keep trusting and believing
that the Lord has a plan for my life, and that my best move is to stay in line
with it at all times.
It’s really gonna go downhill from here content-wise, folks.
Let’s see. I remember having an interesting conversation while washing my
breakfast dishes with the French kitchenmate who studied abroad in Nebraska
about college life in America. I think she asked me if I was homesick, and I
told her that it wasn’t so bad
because I hadn’t lived exactly at home for the past four years during my time
at university, which was about two hours from my house. She thought it was odd
that people in America lived on campus, or, at least, in the same towns as
their universities so often, even when their parents’ homes weren’t that far away. I reminded her that we
didn’t have trains to shuttle us back and forth efficiently, so I would’ve had
to drive. She asked about buses, but I said that even that system isn’t very
popular for the sort of daily, long-haul travel she was describing. She then
asked if I was in a sorority, and I quoted her some statistic that I heard one
time about only 27% of UGA being Greek. She said she felt like it was the
opposite at the University of Nebraska – 27% are not Greek – but I think she was including the honors/service frats
and stuff.
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| Ah, laundry. |
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| Looking out one window of the laundromat... |
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| ...and the other |
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| At least the sandwich I bought to eat while waiting had freshly-made bread! |
Wednesday, October 10 –
Timing commute to Aulnay; From observer to true teaching assistant
Well, today started out much more victoriously than it
ended. (Started “off” or “out”? Now I’m constantly questioning my English!) I
woke up at 5:00 am because my first class out in the suburbs started at 8:25 am,
and it was the first time I had to try getting there so early since orientation
had replaced my regularly scheduled events last Wednesday. Since I had already
successfully logged on to the Internet from my room to check the weather, I
decided to look at my CSET scores really quickly (see yesterday’s entry for
explanation). I saw Subtest I – Pass and felt a rush of relief because I knew
that I had not failed all three subtests, as I had secretly feared, which would
have signaled that I may have been headed in the wrong direction professionally
speaking. When I saw the same result listed for tests II and III, it was as if
I could hear the Holy Spirit asking me, “Was that clear enough?”
Finished getting ready, ate breakfast with a book rather
than human company given the early hour, and decided to add my name to the list
on the whiteboard of kitchenmates going to see Sister Act next Wednesday. (By the way, I use the term “kitchenmates”
rather than “hallmates” because our hallway has 2 kitchens, so there are people
who live on my hall who don’t share my kitchen, and I don’t know them very
well. So out of the 87-odd women in the residence hall, the 12 other people who
share my kitchen are the ones with whom I interact on the most regular basis.)
Going to see the play that night may not be the best idea schedule-wise (or
money-wise) from my point of view, but I felt very convicted about my need to
integrate myself into a community before it’s too late and to do so not just
for the “big” events, such as the ski trip that someone proposed for winter
break (Feb/March), but also for the smaller ones that pop up here and there.
Took out the trash and recycling that was illegally left
overnight from Tuesday (ahem, Tuesday trash people) since I’m assigned to
Wednesdays and exited the front door of our courtyard at 6:52 am, which was
exactly 1 hour after I’d left my room from getting dressed to head to the
kitchen. (I usually allow 45 minutes for breakfast (making food, eating it, cleaning
up) plus 15 minutes to make a lunch if I haven’t done so the night before and
then return to my room to gather my belongings for the day and leave.) Walked
to the bus stop (5 minutes away; the one right in front of my place is going the
wrong direction since it’s a one-way street) and waited in the mist for a few
minutes with the other early-risers until one of the buses that went to Gare du
Nord came at 7:03. I actually got off 1 stop too early because I had never taken
this particular bus route to the train station, so I just got off when I could
see the imposing structure looming right in front of me, not knowing that it
was going to stop again 2 seconds later. So, given that I was inside the station
by 7:09 am, this leg of my trip took about 17 minutes (from leaving my front
door to arriving at Gare du Nord), which means that I really could’ve walked
and gotten there in the same amount of time or even a little faster, but
obviously the bus ride is more comfortable and possibly safer at that time of
morning. Plus it could be quicker if I don’t have to wait at all for a bus.
I did get right on an RER train with no wait at 7:13 am.
Very few of us were headed from the city out to the suburbs; as we slowly
passed trains headed in the other direction; I noticed that they were
overcrowded whereas there were plenty of seats around me. I actually worked on
some lesson plan ideas very calmly during my pleasant ride out to Aulnay, where
I arrived at the station at 7:32 am. There appeared to be several high school
students at the bus station as well as a teacher that I recognized from the « salle
des professeurs » (teacher’s lounge). We all boarded a bus at 7:42 am and
arrived at the school ten minutes later, which meant that I was three whole
minutes early of my goal! You see, since my first class started at 8:25, I had
intended to arrive at 7:55 am in order to be 30 minutes early. (Oh, 7:55. How
this time reminds me of running in the door at Westminster, my high life
school.)
I noticed that the students all just congregated at the bus
stop to socialize because I don’t think they’re allowed to enter and exit the
school grounds as they please; there are certain time periods when the gates
are open and they show their ID’s to come to class. The teacher from the bus,
however, went up to the security portal and they let her in, so I did the same
thing. Of course, it was a staff member whom I’d never met, so I had to
introduce myself, but she didn’t make a big deal over it, thankfully. I swung
by the administrative wing in Building C to see about turning in paperwork to
get partial reimbursement for my transportation from the school district, but a
member of the housekeeping staff was basically like, “Who are you looking for?
Cuz they ain’t here yet.” So I went to Building A to hang out in the teacher’s
lounge, which was very sparsely populated. However, I had username and password
info in my « casier » (mailbox/cubbyhole), so I could actually log on
to the computers and have access to (dun dun dunh) printers! I printed out a voter
registration form from GA as well as an absentee ballot request form since I
knew that some students had asked me about how I could vote from overseas last
week, so I wanted to follow-up with them later in the week. (Shout-out to Mom
for helping me get this taken care of, by the way, because I didn’t wrap up
that process fully before leaving the country.) Otherwise, I was just going to
print and then photocopy other materials as needed on Thursday and Friday
before classes.
As I hinted before, I had never actually met the students in
these three classes before because of orientation, so I had decided through
prior email correspondence with the lead teacher that it would be best to
observe their classes on this day as I had done with the other classes last
Thursday and Friday rather than taking them into my charge in breakout sessions
right away. In the first class, which consisted of « Première »
(11th grade) students, the “document” (I told you that they use this
term differently than we do) under inspection was actually a Young Turks video
about the New York City soda ban. My exposure to the Young Turks is through
their production of very informal YouTube video debates/humorous takes on
current events that are informative but certainly not unbiased, as in a regular
news broadcast. I was surprised that the students were being exposed to a video
with so much talking at such a fast rate that included so much colloquial language and so many nuances. I mean, this was like
an 11-minute video of a man and a woman going back and forth, rapid-fire, on
this topic and cracking jokes, some of which were not appropriate for polite
company, and I was thinking that this would be almost an engaging video for me to watch and discuss in one of my
classes, so…what were these French students getting out of it?
Actually, it turned out that the extreme body language and
mannerisms helped the students understand or, at least, infer the points of view that the speakers had in the debate. Some
of them were able to reiterate the basic points that were being made as the
teacher made opposing columns on the board, but others had trouble even picking
out words in English that had been said in the preceding clip when the teacher
randomly called on them. Basically, she played the video once through all the
way and then repeated it, stopping every once in a while for a class analysis.
I guess the lessons that I garnered from this were: a) it’s okay to broach
complex and interesting topics rather than “babying” the class BUT b) you have
to be careful not to leave “Suzie” in the dust while “Johnny” blazes ahead with
his advanced grasp of the topic at hand. The only somewhat strange part of this
classroom observation was that I was not afforded the occasion to introduce
myself formally and allow the students to ask me questions about the USA/my
personal background, as the other classes had done last week because we ran out
of time. So they probably thought I was a representative of the school district
who was assessing the performance of their teacher or something since I just
sat quietly at the back taking notes until the very end when the teacher
briefly said my name and that I would be working with them this term.
In the second class – « Seconde » = 10th
grade – the students used a set curriculum in which the current unit focused on
teenagers defining their own sense of style. The teacher created a list of
vocabulary by part of speech as the class discussed the concept of “being
yourself”: looks, fashion, a trend, a brand… (nouns); to wear, to spend, to
model (verbs); usually (adverb); addicted, lonely, shy… (adjectives). I thought
it was interesting that she had to help them understand the difference between “lonely”
and “alone” because the French equivalent is the same – « seul(e) ».
This is a teacher who really tries to stick to speaking English at all times
rather than resorting to French to explain stuff, which I admire. At first the
students struggled to differentiate the two words. But then she asked, “Which
is a fact, and which is a feeling?” and a student correctly
identified being “alone” as a fact and being “lonely” as a feeling. She
reinforced the concept by providing them with the English expression, “You can
be lonely in a crowd.” Now that’s foreign language instruction at its best.
Even when the power in the building cut off in the middle of the video that she
was showing for the second time of an interview of a teenager describing her
personal style, the students were very cooperative, and class proceeded without
problems. I did get to introduce myself, and they pretty much asked the same
questions as the students last week. (See previous post. Also, more on the power
outages later.)
I met with this teacher during
the break between classes that we share during third period and was glad that I’d
brainstormed some lesson plans on the train ride there because she definitely
asked me about my ideas for the future. I actually have all three of my
Wednesday classes with her and one on Thursday, so we talked about all of them.
For the third Wednesday class, which was at the « BTS » (technical
college) level, the teacher actually asked me to intervene in one of the
activities rather than just sitting at the back and taking notes because she
realized that these students are going to be away on an internship for the next
two weeks, so I won’t have another chance to work with them for a while. At
first, one student was giving a summary of an assignment at the front of the
class, and I had not yet introduced myself. There was a vocabulary word that he
was having trouble describing related to the place where a company’s
representative would distribute samples of a new product in a grocery store. He
called it a “stand” but then felt that that wasn’t the right word and asked the
teacher for help. She looked at me and asked for my suggestion, so then the
whole class turned around to look at me. And the guy who was speaking was like,
« Oh! Bonjour! ». I offered “display” as a possibility, which they
accepted, and he continued with the report.
Afterwards, the teacher
distributed two different articles on eco-friendly businesses and said that the
class had to work on summarizing them diligently if they wanted to have the
chance to hear my introduction and ask me questions at the end of class. She
and I then floated around and helped with vocabulary and such. Some of the
students kept raising their hands to ask me questions whereas others were wary
of me and waited until I passed by to ask their regular teacher for help. I don’t
blame them! They didn’t know who I was and whether or not I was qualified to
assist them. I enjoyed trying to find ways to get them to understand unfamiliar
words, such as “overdue,” in which case I used the illustration of taking a
book from the library or a video from the video store for a period of time, but
then having to take it back before a certain date or else it was __________.
One girl in the group of two got it right away, and she explained it to her
partner.
So the reason that I said this
day didn’t end as victoriously as it had started with the notification of passing
scores on all three subtests is that I started developing a migraine during one
of these classes – probably because I had woken up so abnormally early – and realized
that I hadn’t restocked the emergency medication that I carry on my person
after the last time I had one = worst. feeling. ever. There wasn’t much I could
do, especially since I couldn’t go straight home due to an appointment I had
with a Fulbright staff person to take care of some paperwork that hadn’t gone
through properly towards getting my equivalent of a work visa validated, which
is important. So I treated myself to dinner, at least, and didn’t do much else
that evening other than paying my kitchenmate who is organizing the outing to Sister Act because she’s buying the
seats together. The only saving grace was that it was just a half-day of work
rather than one that lasted until 5:00 pm. Now I know to get my bedtime/wake-up
schedule organized, even when I’m not working, and to make sure I’m always armed
in case of migraines.
