8 Months in Paris: Minor Reprimand & International Interactions

Howdy! Just finished my three-day stretch of classes, which means that I actually have time to write to you again. By the way, I wanted to apologize for any typos that you may have found/may continue to find while reading these posts. I told you in my disclaimer in the first post that this is basically a “stream-of-consciousness” exercise; I often don’t have time to go back and read through these things very closely before sharing them with you. After all, this isn’t what I’m getting paid to do ;) But I was actually referring back to the entry called “REALLY Becoming a Teacher” to refresh my memory on what had occurred with a particular group of students on that day in class while doing my lesson planning this week, and the teacher in me started seeing “red flags” for needed corrections here and there. Hopefully those haven’t been too distracting for you. I’ll try to do better. Key word: try ;

Enjoy – ML

P.S. Keep scrolling down for photos!

Monday, October 29: Reporting to the Inspector General + « Jardin des Plantes » + Two New Phrases

· Accidentally woke up at 4 am instead of 5 am for my early morning “admin” session (sending/checking emails while I have a good Internet signal in my room) b/c I forgot to manually change the clock on the GoPhone that I brought with me from the States that currently serves as nothing more than a backup alarm clock to my French cell phone. I was totally up and about to get to business until I grabbed my watch on my way to the kitchen to eat my obligatory pre-admin apple. It was a true “smh” (shaking my head) moment. And yes, Daylight Savings Time is different over here if you’re currently checking your calendar.

· Since this was the first week of a two-week vacation that public schools in France took in recognition of All Saints’ Day (honestly, they’re on more of a year-round calendar than a traditional one, so this is just kind of an “excuse” of a label for this particular two-week break), the 6 of us Fulbright English Teaching Assistants had to report to the Franco-American Commission in the fancy 16^th arrondissement, right across the Seine River from the Eiffel Tower, to report on our experiences thus far (after 1 week of observation and 3 weeks of real work).

o The “Inspector General” for English (as in the school subject) came to our morning meeting, and we went around the table to tell her what was up in our particular schools. (Except we used much fancier language than “what was up” because she was a big-time superstar in terms of national school administration. And did I mention that this was in French?)

§ I ended up going first based on our seating arrangement, so I erred on the side of caution by providing her with sample handouts that I’d used and giving as much oral detail as possible.

§ Did this make my colleagues hate me? Maybe. One other guy had sample handouts, so that was good. And she didn’t keep them anyway.

§ I mostly had good things to say, other than about the strange experience with the history/geography teacher who prescribed the curriculum for me (NYC) in front of the class w/out a one-on-one meeting (see entry for Monday, October 15 in “Getting Involved” post for more info).

§ Oh, and I mentioned that the school had had issues with power outages right at the beginning of the month, which had been slightly challenging, technology-wise. She and the Franco-American Commission Director just kind of shook their heads and said something like “That’s Aulnay-sous-Bois for you!” (By the way, I’m starting to mix up certain letters on my laptop keyboard, such as “a” and “q” because I use a French keyboard on the computers in the teachers’ lounge at school. That’s weird!)

§ It was kind of awkward when the lady told me (and, indirectly, the others) that I should try to steer my lessons more toward the set English curriculum for every grade level, which I could learn about by talking to my lead teachers or by looking online, rather than just teaching them about Halloween in America, for example.

§ I didn’t tell her this (but I did mention it to my colleagues and to the Franco-American Commission Director later), but I actually was under the impression that our job as English Teaching Assistants was to provide a different sort of learning environment for the students in which the main goal was to encourage oral expression sort of “by any means necessary” to borrow Malcolm X’s words (which apparently he borrowed from Jean-Paul Sartre’s play Les Mains Sales that I read in college; I’d never made that connection before…thanks Google!).

§ Based on everything I’d been taught about this position, I thought we were purposely supposed to deviate from their regular curriculum to explore cultural topics from our countries of origin or whatever else the students wanted to talk about, as long as they did so in the target language; after all, their regular teachers are there to follow the prescribed curriculum. But I guess it’s literally her job to encourage its implementation, so I should keep that in mind.

o During the3-hour break we had between morning/evening meetings, some of us went to the Jardin des Plantes (Plant Garden…as opposed to all of those…other…types of gardens…actually, I just consulted a guide to Paris that I received at my Fulbright orientation and learned that it used to be called the Medicinal Plant Garden b/c of its affiliation w/ the Natural History Museum that it houses, which is actually what one of our group members who works outside of Paris wanted to see. This is such an educational blog session!)

§ So too bad e’rybody an’ dey mama was in line at the Natural History Museum! (Translation from African American Vernacular English to Standard English: So too bad there were a whole lot of people in line at the Natural History Museum!) We realized that it was, after all, the first weekday of the school vacation period, so pretty much all French families were trying to figure out what to do with their children during the day.

§ We ended up just standing around talking in the garden for a while and then walking around some more before it was time to go back. (Note that I was wearing a hat and gloves since it was cold by my definition.) We actually meant to go get bubble tea per the suggestion of one of my colleagues, but as we started heading to the restaurant he had in mind, we realized that it was going to take too long to get there and then back to the Commission. That’s the problem with living in a city as spread out as Paris; places can be very far away one another. In fact, we’d already traveled quite a ways to get to the Jardin des Plantes in the first place.

o For the evening session, we first watched our French equivalents (young people who had worked as French Teaching Assistants in middle/high schools – very few – and colleges/universities – most of them – last year) receive their certificates in a brief ceremony. Then we had a little “mixer” together with the theme (food/decorations) of “Paris, Texas” to celebrate US-France relations. Clever!

o Since we’d done introductions before eating, one of the “Frenchies” who’d studied at Georgia State (prior to his experience with the Fulbright program) spoke with me at length about living in the ATL and mentioned integrating into the Black community in his dorm as a White international student. It’s always nice to meet someone who actually knows something about my stomping grounds! I was even able to express my Bulldawg pride in a meaningful way. [9-1 as of 11/16? I see you, boys! GO DAWGS! Sic’ em! Glad I got to witness your victory over Buffalo at Sanford Stadium to kick off a great season :) ]

o Picked up 2 phrases from listening to my French peers that evening:

§ « Moi, c’est (+ nom) » = “Me, I’m (+ name)” for introducing yourself instead of something more formal, like “My name is (+ name)” (« Je m’appelle + (nom) »

§ « Donc, voilà » = “So, there you have it” at the end of…well, any sort of explanation or really to express to the other people in the conversation that you’ve finished what you have to say, I guess, if I think back to my linguistics courses. I heard this OVER and OVER. So I guess I’ll have to start incorporating it into my speech if I want to start sounding really French.

· Left this shindig before it concluded so that I could swing by my normal Monday club meeting of the EAAEE = social organization for foreigners in France as students or teaching assistants (see Monday, October 15 entry in “Getting Involved” post for first mention).

o Wasn’t able to get there early enough for the theatre class, but had planned to catch at least part of the special drawing class scheduled for that evening. When I showed up a little late, though, there was hardly anyone there (holiday!), and the lady who was going to teach us to draw was leaving and saying she would re-schedule.

o So I pulled up a chair to the table where a small group was playing Scrabble in French, which looked really hard from the perspective of the foreigners. Asked the French women about some of the words that they’d already put on the board and took notes about the definitions. Great way to build vocab.

o Ended up just talking to the other young people there after that Scrabble game ended, including another “sista” (Black woman) from California who is living in France while writing a book, but who doesn’t speak much French.

o A group of us from various countries walked to the metro together afterward, which was neat. I talked to an Algerian who moved to France for college and doesn’t get to go home much. Definitely made the mistake of mentioning that I’d been to Morocco before in an effort to make small talk about the North African region; it became very clear to me, very quickly that Morocco was irrelevant to the conversation. My bad! I guess that’s just as bad as when my kitchenmate told me she’d been to Nebraska when I introduced myself as an American from the state of Georgia, huh? What goes around comes around…

« Donc, voilà » :)