Okay, so I overestimated my capacity to get through these
couple of pre-vacation days in order to tell you about my trip to Houlgate, but
I really got into the descriptions of what happened in the classroom on
Thursday, especially. I promise that what I’m looking at when typing these
posts is usually a page of scribbled bullet points in my evening journal with
nowhere near as many words as I end up including in the online accounts of
these days. But as the memories of these moments return to my consciousness, I
just have to paint you the complete picture
sometimes. Besides, I’m here to be a teaching assistant, right? So I guess it
makes sense that that’s what I like to focus on in my blog.
But there’s no getting around it: the next entry (Lord
willing) will have to cover my first
real trip outside of Paris since I’ve already taken you to the town at the end
of this post. I apologize for not making good on my “promise” from yesterday,
but I hope you’ll still read this post because it’s pretty good, if you ask me.
But I might be a little biased. I don’t know…
Peace and love, Morgann :)
Thursday, October 25:
“Mrs. degree” + “Rudderless economy” + Candy for the 1% + T_ _ _ _ S_ _ _ _ _
·
Today was marked by memorable conversations:
o
Spanish kitchenmate told me about how her boss
always gives her more work than her peers as we ate breakfast
o
Mentor teacher, with whom I took the bus from
the train station to the high school in Aulnay, shared her very indirect journey
to becoming an English teacher
o
Some of my students and their friends begged me
to speak French to them as we took the bus together from the school to the
train station at the end of the day;
§
This was after they had been discussing (in
French) wanting to go to college to get their “Mrs. degree,” essentially
§
I refused to speak French even though we weren’t
at school, but I told them that I understood what they were saying and that
many girls their age in the U.S. had the same sort of aspirations
§
One girl who is not in my classes wanted to try
out her English, so she asked “Why do you live?”
§
Everyone burst into laughter because she meant,
of course, “Where” and not “Why”
§
I told her that that was a pretty big difference…perhaps
I should’ve answered the original question: “I am crucified with Christ:
nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I
now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and
gave himself for me” (Galatians 2:20, King James Version).
o
While eating dinner, compared notes with a
French kitchenmate who studied abroad in the northeastern U.S. on which sports
are played in which seasons in the southeast at the high school level
§
Also laughed at the fact that she was surprised
when she got in trouble for missing a practice as a track and field team member
§
Apparently they’re a little more lax over here
about extra-curricular participation
·
In terms of my school day:
o
Another portion of a U.S. election article
called “Down to the wire: Campaign enters stretch run” from CNN.com (http://edition.cnn.com/2012/10/23/politics/campaign-stretch-run/index.html)
with the BTS students, but some were not as cooperative as last week
§
One asked if this was a class on elections,
which reminded me of my lead teacher’s warning to keep everything related to
their International Trade course of study
§
Tried to emphasize that the skills they were using in quickly reading and developing an oral
summary of a text with unfamiliar words and concepts in English would help them
with a particular portion of their exam, which is true
§
Plus some of the students (mostly girls…sorry
for the males reading this) were actually interested in understanding what they
were reading
·
One girl asked about this sentence: “Romney's
latest campaign theme -- that he is a firm and resolute leader with a clear
plan to fix a rudderless economy -- infuriates Obama advisers, who scoff at the
idea that someone who has veered wildly from message to message throughout his
campaign is suddenly a more trustworthy option than the president” (p. 2).
·
I first had to draw a picture of a boat with a “rudder”
(like I even know what that looks like…but they got the idea right away) to
explain that analogy
·
I also had to act out a car “veering” off the
road
·
After that, I explained what the sentence (in
context) was saying about Gov. Romney’s camp and Pres. Obama’s camp so that
they could put the whole picture together
·
I felt like I had nailed it when they explained
this part of the article in detail on their own IN ENGLISH when it was their
group’s turn to present their page to the class
 |
| Care of Mike Luckovich of the AJC on 10/19/12 |
o
Same Halloween outline as yesterday with the regular
English classes, except that with the older students I added a couple of
political cartoons from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution that juxtaposed the
holiday with the election since the teacher had asked me to talk about the
election with them after the upcoming two-week vacation for All-Saints’ Day
(that still blows my mind, btw)
§
They didn’t really get the punchline of the
undecided voter cartoon on their own because they didn’t see “trick or treat”
as a choice, just as voters had to
choose between Gov. Romney and Pres. Obama
 |
| Care of Mike Luckovich of the AJC on 10/21/12 |
§
One male student (I’ll give my guys some credit)
explained the implication behind the cartoon in which Gov. Romney is
distributing candy to the 1% and ignoring the middle class very well, although
none of them knew that this was an image of the White House
o
Decided to make things a little more fun for my history/geography
class as we studied NYC this week since we’d focused on the earliest years of
the settlement last week
§
Started by asking them to shout out whatever
came to mind (IN ENGLISH) when they thought of New York City
·
Resulted in a list that covered the chalk board
and ranged from tourist attractions to sports teams to clothing labels to 9/11
·
A handful of students had been to NYC before, by
the way, but almost everyone had something to say whether they’d been or not
·
Favorite moment was when they couldn’t think of
the name of a particular place even though they were describing it very well,
so they asked me to give them the first letters of each word and tell them how
many letters it contained
·
I wrote T_ _ _ _ S_ _ _ _ _ >>> They shouted “Times Square!!!”
·
By the way, this had also happened in another
class when I asked for the Vice President’s name and someone had guessed “Joey”
off the top of their head before they asked me to play this game (J _ _ B _ _ _
_)
§
Next we looked at another “matching” handout
that I’d made with Manhattan icons and their descriptions, similar to the Halloween
one, except that some of these images weren’t as evident if you didn’t know
that Rockefeller Center had an ice skating rink in front of it, for example
§
After that, we looked on the other side of the
handout where I’d put NYC in context with a map of the U.S., then the state of
New York, then the 5 boroughs, then Manhattan, as well as a table indicating
the populations/sizes of the different boroughs
·
Mostly wanted to do this because we’d read last
week about NYC being an “island” so I wanted them to see this up close compared
to the map of the entire U.S. that was in the classroom
·
Also wanted them to see that most of the stuff
on their list of ideas about NYC was actually about only 1 of the 5 boroughs –
Manhattan (with the exception of the students who named boroughs like Brooklyn
when we made the list)
·
[Oh, and while I’m doing all this talking about
Manhattan, let me just say that I’m praying for my brother Michael and sister-in-law Kristina as you deal with all
of the crazy weather up there. A lot of people that I meet over here start
inquiring about NYC with great concern when I mention that I’m an American.]
§
Finally, I had them go around the room in order
to read the beginning of the Wikipedia article on New York City (1 sentence
each) and corrected pronunciation errors at the end
§
Had to strike up a little convo connecting last
week to this week in one of the two sections (I have 1/2 the class for one hour
and then the other 1/2 for the second hour of their 2-hour class) b/c my
planned activities didn’t last long enough, but they were cooperative
o
Felt like I was losing my voice at some points
during this long day with 6 hours of teaching, but I thanked God for the creative
energy that He gave me at just the right moments
·
After dinner at my residence hall:
o
Originally
went online to check weather in Houlgate, Normandie (or Normandy in English)
since I was heading there for the weekend for the American Church in Paris
retreat
o
Ended up researching the Public Service Commissioner
and State Senate (47th District based on my address in Athens-Clarke
County) candidates since I was planning on mailing my ballot before leaving for
school in the morning
o
Got very excited when I changed the batteries in
my camera, which, as I mentioned briefly in yesterday’s entry, had fallen out
of my unzipped (!) jacket pocket on Saturday evening onto a tile floor and
appeared to be broken, and successfully took 2 photos of my (messy) room
without the camera cutting off as it had done when I took the kitchen photo
from the last post
o
Also read a little more about the small town of
Houlgate on Wikipedia so that I would be ready for my trip…or, should I say, so
that Houlgate would be ready for me ;)
Friday, October 26 –
UOCAVA ballot + Troy Anthony Davis + “Worth it”
·
Even though I’m about 4300 miles away from
Athens-Clarke County, I cast my votes for the 2012 Presidential election as
well as several local races and a couple of constitutional amendments
 |
| You're more than welcome to ruin your eyes figuring out for whom I voted |
o
Had to sign an oath stating that I was truly
eligible to use a “UOCAVA” (Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act
)ballot, that I was of age, that I wasn’t voting in any other way for this election,
and that I really was a registered voter in this district prior to being
overseas
o
Bit the bullet to mail the ballot in an
expedited fashion (2-4 days) since I’d put it off for so long thinking that I
would be able to return it electronically since they had sent it to me
electronically
o
Stopped by Office Depot (yes, this chain exists here
and has a store right around the corner from me) first since they have a
partnership with UPS here, but they actually sent me to the regular post office
b/c they said it would be cheaper to mail a document rather than a package that
way, which it was by a few euros
o
The trip to Office Depot was not in vain,
though, because I discovered a new hair salon that I ended up going to on
Halloween and that will hopefully save me some money!
o
Also, I needed to go to the post office anyway
to retrieve the care package that my family had sent me, complete with individual
cups of American cereal (my favorite food group) and 5 Cobalt gum (my favorite
flavor)
·
Did some quick packing of my stuff for the
weekend as well as a meal to eat while traveling from the school after classes
ended at 5:00 pm to the American Church to meet the bus at 7:00 pm since I
wouldn’t have time to go home
·
At
school:
o
Just enough time to create lesson materials for
my last class on death penalty (in accordance with theme given to me by lead
teacher) incl. Troy Anthony Davis case from Georgia & make photocopies
before my classes started at 2:55 pm
o
Had to lug my duffel bag from class to class
since there was really nowhere else for me to store it during the afternoon,
but it wasn’t that bad
o
1st class: oh wait, this class was
cancelled! This was a major Muslim holiday, and the teacher had told me in
advance that a lot of students would be missing. So I guess she decided to skip
out to get a head-start on her 2-week vacation…
o
2nd class: had to split up 3 chatty
groups of students (I think thoughts of vacation were in the air) so by the end
of class they were not very engaged after a very enthusiastic start with the
shouting out of Halloween terms in English for our list, which involved another
guessing game with “pumpkin” because they didn’t know the last letter
o
3rd class:
§
So few students present due to Muslim holiday
that it wasn’t worth splitting in half so I actually ended up taking all of
them (per their request!) while the lead teacher just sat in her classroom
doing work
§
She had asked me to do a debate, but since I’d
done that last week with gun rights, I kind of minimized that portion of the
class
§
Started by having them read aloud
(sentence-by-sentence) part of the article about the case of Troy Davis from
Wikipedia to see a real-life death penalty story that happened recently in my
state and gained a lot of media attention
§
They didn’t have a whole lot to say, so I moved
on to the modified debate activity in which they worked in small groups to
argue for or against the death penalty with a moderator (per the lead teacher’s
instruction, although none of us really understood what the moderator was
supposed to do), partly using the general information on the death penalty that
I’d given them from Wikipedia
§
(By the way, I’m using Wikipedia because it’s
usually at a reading level that I think is appropriate for my students and
because it often provides the broad overview that I’m looking for; I always
read through it first to make sure it’s not crazy and tell my students that it’s
a Wikipedia article)
§ At
the end, I let them have a treat for 2 minutes as we looked at the Halloween
handout I’d given to the younger students, which they really enjoyed…I mean,
studying the death penalty right before vacation? That’s just wrong. So I told
them it was our little secret, which they really liked ;) Hope that teacher
doesn’t come across this blog…
·
Rather than waiting for a later bus that would
be less crowded with high school students in order to go to the train station,
I squeezed onto the first one that came after 5 pm and, thus, caught an earlier
train into Paris.
o
Walked in the freezing cold with my duffel bag
from the Invalides stop on the RER C line that I’d transferred to at the St
Michel – Notre Dame stop to the American Church, where I arrived at around 6:25
pm.
o
Ended up talking to 2 girls my age from South
and North Carolina, the former of whom I’d already met at movie night, as we
waited for the bus to leave…late
o
Stopped maybe halfway at one of those “nice”
service stations with lots of food and many restrooms on the way, so we didn’t
arrive in Houlgate until 11 pm, where they had snacks waiting for us at the
retreat facility
o
Thought about going to bed, but stayed up to
talk to two other girls in my room from California and Baltimore who are
studying abroad in Paris (the South/North Carolina girls were also in my room)
o
In my journal entry that evening, I reflected on
the fact that I was in a summer camp-style room with 5 other young, Christian women
from the States who are either working or studying in Paris, and, when I put
that in comparison with the (very reasonable) price I’d paid for the trip or
the trouble I’d gone through to get on the bus straight from work, for example,
I had this to say: “Worth it.”
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