*Meant to post this before
going to bed on 11/5 France time, but the Internet wasn’t cooperating where
I live, even in the common room. However, I guess it’s still technically 11/5
in the States, even on the East Coast, right now!*
Hey, folks, I’ll be honest: This may be the last post for a
few days. Tuesday evening through Wednesday morning, actually, I’m planning to
get together with a couple of different groups of Americans to follow the
election returns, so I won’t be able to write at my normal time. And after that
I’m planning to go to Bordeaux in the southwest of France for a couple of days
as I try to expand my horizons beyond Paris and its immediate surroundings. (I
try to avoid saying that I will do this or that on a particular day in the
future because the Bible reminds us in James 4:13-15 that we have no idea what
tomorrow will bring.) Please pray for my sanity as I go without much sleep
during the election festivities and for my safety as I travel!
I’d say that you should expect to hear from me again on
Saturday, Lord willing, at the earliest. I’ll try to do my best on
Saturday/Sunday/next Monday/Tuesday to get you up to speed on my trip to
Houlgate in Normandie with the American Church in Paris, Halloween inside and
outside of the classroom, and my trip to Bordeaux. But I also have to get back
in the zone during those days for going back to work, so we’ll see what
happens. For now, I’m just picking up where I last left off, minus all of the
context for the classes that I’m teaching. So if « Terminale » means
nothing to you, for example, then I encourage you to refer back to earlier
entries that cover teaching days (Wednesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays) to get
caught up.
Also, I apologize for the lack of photos in this post.
It seems I didn’t use my camera on this day.
Peace and love - ML
Thursday, October 18
– Fistfight + “Bruising” + “T[h]ugs” + Socialism (Now if that doesn’t get your
attention…)
·
Weather.com showed a high in the 60’s and a low
chance of rain, so I pulled out my brown flats instead of boots for the first
time when getting ready for work. My sister Mallory will appreciate the fact
that I wore the fancy leopard-print dress from Kohl’s that we agreed
immediately transformed me into a teacher, but that may have been more
appropriate for ATL weather. Of course, I added a few layers to it, as is the
case with most of my outfits.
·
Had woken up late, so stopped at a bakery for a
croissant + pain au chocolat and then the grocery store for a packaged sandwich
and bottled water, as on last Thursday 10/11. You would think that starting classes
at 10:35 would give me plenty of time to get it together in the mornings in
terms of eating breakfast and making lunch, but it seems that I do better with
the 8:25 am starts on Wednesdays. Plus the whole Sister Act outing the night before had thrown off my routine a
little bit in this case, I guess.
·
Saw a minor fistfight break out between a cab
driver and some sort of delivery truck driver as they both tried to enter the
special bus lane at the same time and narrowly avoided an accident. This was
right at the intersection that I needed to cross in order to get to my bus stop
(thus, the bus lane). So I just walked waaaaaay around them to avoid giving
them any ideas.
·
For the first time ever, no RER B train going to
Aulnay on or approaching the platform within the next minute or two at Gare du
Nord! I was already kind of cutting it close on time, but I’d never even
thought of this possibility since Aulnay-sous-Bois is one of the major stops
along this line. The only train that was coming was an express one heading to
the airport without stopping at any of the towns along the way. Usually, when
there are trains heading to Charles-de-Gaulle Airport from Gare du Nord, they
might skip a few of the smaller towns (say, Le Blanc-Mesnil), but never Aulnay-sous-Bois! I was almost
offended! But actually, I was kind of afraid of being late to work.
·
Had to wait a little bit for a bus in Aulnay as
well. Remembered that another teaching assistant at my training session on
10/16 had mentioned something about certain bus drivers being on strike because
they were demanding better protection following an attack on a driver somewhere
in France. It had affected her commute to school, and she wasn’t too far from
me. I was starting to wonder if I should look for a Plan B bus on my side of
the station (I knew of at least 2 buses that went to the school, but they pick
up on opposite sides of the station, so you can’t look for them at the same
time if they aren’t on schedule). But the 615 finally came. I only made it to the gate of the school 10
minutes before class, but I thanked God for His mercy in spite of my laziness!
·
Class 1: 2nd year BTS, International
Trade
o
8 young women and 1 very intelligent young man:
I accidentally said that we were in the process of electing a new leader in our country as I attempted
to introduce the topic of the U.S. elections, and he interrupted me to say:
“Are you sure it will be a ‘new’ leader?” I was like, Look at you listening and being on point! If you knew what the
other 18-20-year-old males in the larger class were like, then you would
understand why I was especially pleased by his engagement.
o
Since the small group of students last week had
asked me so many questions about the election when I had intended to talk about
it only for a few minutes before moving on to activities more relevant to their
course of study, I had prepared an excerpt from a CNN article published the day
before about the 2nd Presidential Debate (http://edition.cnn.com/2012/10/16/politics/debate-mainbar/index.html?hpt=hp_t1 – first two pages). My hope was that these
students would be just as interested in this topic as their classmates had
been. If not, then I would move on to the Coca-Cola scenario and, if needed,
ask them to tell me about their recent business trip to Turkey using a certain
set of questions that will be on their exam.
o
To my surprise, the group sat and read the
article very quietly and obediently for a very long time! I had told them to
discuss certain sections in groups so that they could present their section to
the rest of the class, but they weren’t even talking to each other.
o
I floated around to ask what words they didn’t
understand because I thought maybe there was a comprehension problem. They
asked about “a bruising, argumentative debate” “a cliffhanger
presidential vote,” “the president’s lackluster performance [in the
first debate],” “a snap CNN/ORC International poll,” “anemic
economic growth,” and “gasoline at four bucks.” I had foreseen
challenges with some of these words, but I thought that the vast majority of
this article would be comprehensible for these students, so it would be a good
way for them to acquire new vocabulary. Plus I enjoyed finding ways to explain
the words to them using gestures, analogies, drawings, or other creative
methodologies other than French translation. I love the moment when a student
goes from looking at me sideways with skepticism to drawing his or her head
backward to begin what I’ve begun to recognize as “the slow nod and sigh of
comprehension” that soon speeds up into a faster nod accompanied by an “OK” (or
« D’accord » since they still respond in French most of the time).
o
The young man in the class wanted to know what
Governor Romney’s “one-point plan” was since the caption in one of the photos
showed President Obama making reference to it. This was a moment in which I
wished I could have shown him the clip from the debate, but I just told him
briefly that this was an accusation that President Obama made because Governor
Romney talks about having a “five-point plan,” but President Obama wanted to
say that this was not true during the debate. It’s hard to avoid generalizations
at times like this, but I tried to characterize the sort of rhetoric that is
often exchanged between the candidates regarding the different socio-economic
classes in America. Mostly, though, I encouraged the students to watch this
debate on their own and to continue following the election outside of class.
Besides, I had only watched highlights of the debate myself, not the entire 90
minutes, so I didn’t want to say anything too specific on what had occurred at
that particular juncture.
o
Overall, I was very pleased with each of the
three groups that went forward to present their sections of the article excerpt
to the rest of the class in terms of their grasp of the basic concepts and
their level of English. I made a few corrections, but only at the end of their
presentations. Our teacher trainer told us never to interrupt a student’s flow
because we don’t want to ruin his or her self-confidence. It takes a lot of
courage to express yourself in a foreign language! I attended a workshop on
that topic as part of the Minnesota Council on the Teaching of Foreign
Languages Fall Conference in October of 2011. [Shout-out to my former roommate
Hillary who’s probably colder than I am at the University Minnesota right now
;) ]
·
Class 2: Terminale, Littérature
o
Brought in a short article about a girl in
Florida who wasn’t allowed to attend Homecoming because she forgot to return an
overdue library book (http://www.fox4now.com/news/local/174301151.html?hpt=us_bn8
). Thought this was appropriate since many students had asked me about school
dances in “zee America.” (I have to remind them that America doesn’t take an
article in English. The United States, sure, but not The America.)
o
I read the first half of the article and left
about 10 sentences for them to go around and read a sentence each. So they had
no choice but to speak English that day.
o
Students had different levels of engagement with
the article. Some wanted to talk about ideas of justice/injustice or and how
the girl had to be very daring in order to talk about her school administration
in a negative way in the newspaper. Others were just sitting there quietly
until I started asking them about whether or not they liked the idea of having
a school dance or if they agreed with the idea of spending so much money for a
dress that you will only wear once. Then I asked everyone to talk about what
they were each willing to spend a lot of money on, so they conversation progressed
naturally.
·
Class
3, after quick lunch: Terminale, Histoire/Géographie, Section Européenne
o
Divided students into 3 groups to look at
materials I’d gotten from pbskids.org about the history of early New York City
(see 10/15 to see why this topic). Pictures and text. Same idea as in Class 1,
where they were responsible for sharing info with their classmates in an oral
presentation at the end of class. Of course, I gave all of the students all of
the information eventually, but they only looked in-depth at one of the three
handouts.
o
The one primary source reporting on the purchase
of New Amsterdam/New Netherlands was confusing, as I’d anticipated, but at
least they learned what primary and secondary sources are in English. And they
all thought that “Dutch” people were “German” because the word for “Germans” in
French is « Deutsch ». So this was a moment when I allowed my French
brain to intervene and caution them about this mistranslation.
o
Trying to get them to pronounce the “h’s” in
“Henry Hudson” was amusing for us all. And it was also fun to get them to tell
me what they thought “furs” were without translating to French as they read
about the start of the fur trade.
·
Classes 4 and 5: Seconde
o
This time I had handouts to guide our activities
rather than just using the chalkboard. This was good and bad, though, because
inevitably a student would look ahead and ask me a question about Activity 3
when we had only just started the first one.
o
Kind of presumptuous of me to put 3 activities
(introduce me to your partner, talk about photos of America, tell me what to do
in Aulnay – see 10/11 for when I did this with the other half of the class,
minus intros) on there in the first place, but I didn’t want to waste paper by
printing separate sheets for the activities and then distributing them as we
had time.
o
Intros took longer than I thought. Some students
didn’t know basics of English, like how to say their age (French uses the verb
“to have” + # of years rather than “to be”) or how to say what their parents do
for a living. Instead of being a human dictionary for them right from the
start, I tried to encourage them to talk about the type of work that their
parents do using words that they do
know at first. Some students also mixed up words like “his” and “he’s” because
they pronounce them the same way.
o
A student asked me the cutest question at the
end of the photo activity: “Miss, why you only have five picture?” (They often
call me “Miss” as a translation for « Madame » = much more acceptable
as a stand-alone title for a teacher in French than “Miss” in English.)
I said I would do my best to bring him more photos later. He then specified
that he wanted to see photos of Tupac. I’ll have to work on that. It might be
music instead of pictures, though.
o
Another
student in this class suggested that I go to the hood, basically, when we did
the activity on things I should do as a tourist in Aulnay. First they were
using the word “apartment,” but I told them that in English that was just a
regular place for someone to live. Then then tried to clarify by saying that
they meant a place with “tugs.” Please pray for these students and their
struggles with the “th” sound in English. I did my best to explain that “tugs”
are boats, and I’m pretty sure they got it, but they still couldn’t
differentiate between the words. And by the way, these students were not
speaking about their town in a derogatory way. It was more like the Sean
Kingston song in which he invites the girl to whom he’s singing to go to the
slums with him because that’s where he’s from, so he knows his way around. Some
students told me to go to the movies or the park, but these guys told me very
honestly to go to the ghetto. I might have to take a rain-check, though, since
that’s not where I’m from.
·
In the evening, I actually left the city limits
of Paris, just barely, to attend a lecture sponsored by the club that I just
joined on Monday for foreign students/teaching assistants (Équipes
d’Accueil et d’Amitié pour les Étudiants Étrangers) in Neuilly/Seine.
o
Topic was essentially the socialist approach to
solving problems such as unemployment in our society. At least, that’s how it
sounded to my American ears. I took a lot of notes because the whole point of
going was to expose myself to a native speaker of French in a formal setting in
which my linguistic wheels have to turn at maximum speed, as at the Baptist
Church that I attend on Sundays.
o
Afterwards, I accompanied an older lady
(probably a donor to the group) to the métro stop after she shouted to me as I
walked out of the event ahead of her. She was a little bit turned around, it
seemed, but we got there, even though she told me I was walking too fast.
People on the subway were trying to figure out our relationship to each other
because I started looking for an empty seat for her as soon as we got on, but
we clearly didn’t know each other very well. I pray that she got all the way
home alright. She was very sweet!
·
Speaking of public transportation, I got
“controlled” (to use wonderful translation) twice
today, meaning that they checked my transit pass to make sure it was valid for
the zones in which I was using it: once as I exited the bus that took me from
the high school to the train station in Aulnay and again when changing lines on
the métro
at Concorde after the lecture that evening. Thank God everything was in order!
Paying a fee twice in one day may have actually cost more than the €100
that I pay each month for access to Zones 1-4.
Thanks for reading! I hope to be back in touch soon :)
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