On the Path to Becoming a Teacher

*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

 

Monday, October 8 – Navigating to teacher training session; Learning to simplify and help students

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.

Looking down the hall from my room towards stairs/elevator

The session didn’t begin until 2:00 pm (or 14h, as they normally say here), but I had to leave my « foyer » (residence hall) by around 12:45 pm in order to have any hope of arriving on time.  So I pretty much just had time to eat breakfast, pack a lunch, get dressed, and make sure I knew exactly where I was going using the public transit websites since we were meeting at a new place.
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.

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 9^th 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 4^th 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.

Platform of tram station on rainy day in Gargan

Approaching tram on opposite platform

Afterwards, most of us took the same tram + RER train back into Paris, so we were definitely the group of English speakers standing together. I guess the training session had been in a mixture of French and English, but due to the various levels of French in the group, it’s hard to imagine us speaking French exclusively when it’s not required. Most of the people in my group are actually British women, so I asked them more about the ERASMUS program through which many of them are teaching abroad for a year during their university careers. We also discussed the types of food that are available in England, France, and the U.S. Perhaps it was this conversation that led me to get something to eat while I was still out and even grab a crêpe for dessert because I was still a little hungry. The grocery store near me was out of the 6-pack cartons of eggs that I normally buy for my small fridge, so I had to go to another one around the corner. Oh, and it was raining or misting pretty much all day, as it does every day here, so this made it particularly sad to have to walk a little further away. But I guess it’s good to add a little variety to my routine every once in a while instead of going to the same store all the time. Plus, I found a slightly cheaper variety of eggs here, which was worth the extra effort!

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 9^th, the date on which my scores from the September 8^th 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 9^th” 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.

Ah, laundry.

Looking out one window of the laundromat...

...and the other

I ended up having to leave the building to do laundry because our machine was temporarily out of service. Some other girls found that out the hard way a few days ago when they put a euro or two in and didn’t get to wash clothes. They suspected that the coin depository was full – like, overflowing – because they couldn’t hear the coins falling down as usual. (I’m always in the know regarding the laundry room for the building because it’s right next to my room.) So until that got straightened out, I needed to find a Plan B since it had been about 12 days since I last washed clothes, and I was about to enter a three-day stretch of teaching. I loaded up my hiking backpack with my laundry plus detergent, dryer sheets and reading material because I planned to wait for my clothes instead of leaving them there. Realized that I might get kind of hungry during that long period of time (40 minutes wash + ??? drying), so I grabbed a sandwich before heading into one of the biggest laundromats that I’d seen in my neighborhood with a large waiting area that is very visible from the busy intersection just outside the floor-to-ceiling windows. I paid €4 to wash 8 kg of clothes (just about everything I’d brought in my backpack) instead of the €3 that I would’ve paid in my residence hall for an unknown weight of laundry. This time the dryer time was available in 8-minute cycles at €1/cycle. I just did the math on my laptop’s calculator to be sure, but this is only 1/2 a centime (cent) more per minute than the other place I’d used to dry clothes, which charged €0.60 for 5 minutes, but didn’t have a very large waiting area. I paid for 3 cycles and was out of there.

At least the sandwich I bought to eat while waiting had freshly-made bread!

 In terms of more expensive items on my ledger, I had to pay October rent sometime between Monday and Thursday of this week during the office hours of my residence hall staff. It turned out that they accepted checks and debit cards, but I kind of wanted to use a check since I had just ordered a checkbook for my new French account with the idea of paying rent in mind. After I brought my laundry back to my room, it looked like I had just enough time to walk to the main branch of my bank where I could pick up my checkbook before they closed and still pay rent before the office hours ended for that day. Too bad when I got there they didn’t accept my U.S. driver’s license and/or the copy of my passport ID page as proper ID to pick up a checkbook. I honestly didn’t know that I needed ID to get a checkbook since they’re normally mailed in the US. And I don’t just carry my passport around like that. The folks from the American Consulate who gave our security briefing at the Fulbright orientation actually confirmed that carrying a driver’s license and passport copy should do the trick. Apparently, that’s a general guideline rather than a hard and fast rule. So I decided to pay my rent by debit card this time just so I wouldn’t forget to do so once my work “half-week” started. It was certainly a faith step, though, because I had yet to get paid by either the Fulbright folks or my school district, so I was still drawing from my American resources (graduation gifts, summer job income, mutual fund earnings, generosity of my parents). But I’m thankful to have a roof over my head in one of the hardest cities in which to find housing, especially affordable housing! Getting a room here has certainly been a blessing thus far.

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 » (11^th 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 » = 10^th 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.