I know, I know. I completely fell off the face of the earth
for a minute there. I tend to do that sometimes as far as social networking /
general Internet presence is concerned. This is probably going to be the last
in-depth look at a day in my life for a while. Although I love writing these
long entries, they take waaaay too long to write, and then I look up and it’s
been days or even weeks since that day actually occurred. I’ll never get you up
to speed on what I’m doing now if I continue at this rate! So here’s the plan,
Stan. (Do I actually know anyone named Stan?) I’m on a two-week, paid (!) vacation
right now because school is not in session in recognition of All-Saints’ Day
(today 11/1). So I’ll do my best to have at least some bulleted lists up here
before my schedule resumes on Wednesday the 14th filling you in on
my involvement with the American Church in Paris, the Équipe d’Acceuil et d’Amitié
Pour les Étudiants
Étrangers
(a club for foreign students and teaching assistants), and more. I’ve actually
been to Houlgate in the north of France with the American Church since the last
time I’ve spoken with you, which was very different from Paris, so I’ll have to
tell you more about that later.
For now, please enjoy reading as much or as little as you’d like
about my first day leading classes on my own. I’ve written this over the course
of a few different sessions, so there’s some slight blurring of days here, but
in general I’ve given you an impression of what happened on that particular
day. Hopefully I’ll be able to keep the shorter posts coming pretty steadily
over the next few birthday-filled days. So for today, let me go ahead and give
my birthday shout-out to Aunt Norma!
Hope your day is going well :)
Peace and love, ML
Thursday, October 11 –
Handling classes independently, all day long, with limited technology
As I told you in my last post, I had a migraine on Wednesday
10/10, which means that I went to sleep really early that night. In theory,
then, I should have been able to wake up really early this morning (Thursday
10/11) in order to get my act together before having to stand up in front of 5
different classes (or more, depending on how you count them) today. But, alas,
I pressed snooze at 5 am and again at 6 am because I didn’t feel that it was
yet “natural” for me to get up based on my REM cycle or whatever.
Wee-hours-of-the-morning Morgann convinced the more sane version of myself that
I only needed one hour of lesson planning (because you can just do the same
thing with the vast majority of the classes anyway, right?) and then 30 minutes
to get dressed, leaving food (eating breakfast AND making lunch) out of my
routine entirely.
So, I finally got up during the 7:00 hour. Well, “got” is
probably giving myself too much credit. I “woke” up but didn’t budge from my
bed. The Internet was finicky in my room, of course, but I finally saved 3 articles
from CNN.com to my USB/flash key/drive (whatever you like to call it) while
frantically outlining what to do with these 5 classes: a short article called “BAE,
EADS $45 billion deal collapse” for the associate’s degree-level students on
the International Trade track as well as a longer article called “5 Things to watch
for in vice presidential debate” (which would occur that evening) and another
short piece called “National polls indicate dead heat in Obama-Romney battle” for
the regular high school English conversation classes. I also chose 5
classroom-sized photos from the Department of State kit that I received at my
Fulbright ETA orientation on 10/2 that had the potential to spark discussion
about the students’ perceptions of America. “Potential.” Hang on to that word,
because that’s exactly what I had on this my first day as a real teacher.
I finally left my
room around 9:00 with a class to teach at 10:35. This was definitely cutting it
close considering the fact that I was hungry and had printing/photocopies to
make with a journey out to the suburbs ahead of me. I stopped at a bakery on my
block for a croissant and pain au chocolat (pastry with chocolate filling) for
a breakfast that was much more French than my normal scrambled eggs/toast with
jelly/cereal/orange juice approach. They didn’t have sandwiches available for
sale yet (freshness is overrated!), so I wasn’t sure what I was going to do for
lunch. I just missed a bus at the
stop that isn’t the closest one to me but that has a greater number of buses
coming by, which maximizes my chances. I saw on the digital bus stop sign that
the next one was coming in about 7 minutes, which meant that it was worth
waiting instead of walking to Gare du Nord. As I stood there, I noticed that
the grocery store behind me had pre-packaged sandwiches for sale right in the
display window. I wonder if they did that on purpose to attract the attention
of us bus stop folks. Well, it worked in my case, because I had just enough
time to run in and buy a jambon-crudités (ham + veggies) before my bus came.
I already had grapes in my bag from my fridge because that was the only
“grabbable” option I had seen that morning. (I thought I had learned from my
2011 internship experience in D.C. that I have to make lunches the night before
if I don’t want to risk pressing snooze and spending money the next day. Alas,
I guess I’ve forgotten about the money I wasted that summer.)
Bus 26 took me down the street to Gare du Nord where, you
guessed it, I just barely missed a direct
train to Aulnay-sous-Bois, and then it was déja vu all over again [ ;) ] as
I exited the train station in the suburbs and saw bus 615 heading down the
street towards the high school. It was totally my fault for sleeping in
so late, but it was still frustrating all the same. I arrived in the teachers’
lounge (or “room,” as they often translate it) at 10:10 for my 10:35 class. I
hurriedly made my way to the computer area and sat down to print my documents.
Just as I started to enter my log-in information, a woman at the long
conference table in the center of the room said “Bonjour” to me, which I found
a little odd since I had entered the room probably 30 seconds before, and told
me that we were not allowed to use the computer network that day. I was just
like, “Oh, I didn’t know,” and promptly left that area of the lounge feeling a
mix of shock and incredulity. As I entered the section with our teacher
cubbies/mailboxes (or “pigeonholes” as they call them in British English), I
saw a notice posted that said the network was experiencing problems that day
and that we were asked not to use the computers. I had actually passed this
sign on my way in but had paid it no mind since I had been in such a hurry.
Soooo I headed out to Building C where my mentor teacher had told me to make
photocopies (although there was 1 photocopier in the teacher’s room in Building
A) and made copies of my voter registration form and absentee ballot form,
which I had printed the day before upon receipt of my log-in info because a
student had asked me specifically about the overseas voting process. I knew
that these forms were very boring and had a lot of words that many of the
students would not understand, but I prayed for mercy as I headed to my first class.
Thankfully, I serve a prayer-answering God. My journal entry
from this evening states very simply: “All the classes went well.” This would
probably be surprising to all of the Frenchies who have reacted with
pity/shock/concern when I’ve told them that I’m working in this particular
suburb of Paris. While it would be tempting to attribute this success to my
American identity, because a lot of the students paid attention because they
wanted to ask me about life in my country of origin, or even, some might say,
my African-American identity, because
this school is heavily populated by students of color who may have appreciated
the chance to interact with an authority figure who looked a little something
like them, I want to be sure, to “be very
sure,” as the hymn “In Times Like These” says, to give all of the glory, honor,
and praise for my successful start in the classroom to God, my loving Father.
The first class (10:35-11:30 am) on my schedule was an
International Trade course taught in English for BTS (equivalent of an
associate’s degree) students in their second (and thus, final) year of study.
The class had twenty-eight students, so the teacher and I had already decided
in advance that I would take about 1/3 of them because taking 1/2 would break
my teaching assistant rule of not having more than 12 students under my charge.
Plus, these students are practically my age in some cases. The class roll I was
given actually has their dates of birth, and I noticed a whole lot of 1992’s
and 1993’s in that column. Actually, there’s one « 25/08/1990 » on the
list, which means that I have a student who’s less than 5 months younger than
me. (Clearly, they put the day before the month when writing a date if you’re
wondering. No, they don’t have a special French calendar with 25 months.)
I first reported to the classroom where the students
normally meet with their regular teacher so that she could call the roll and
make general announcements. Then she told them that the first third of the
class alphabetically would be going with me to a different room for this
period. (By the way, I had emailed the school earlier in the week from Paris to
request my own classrooms because they had not done this on their own, and they
had responded immediately.) They pretty much knew the alphabetical ordering of
their names by heart, so the students were anxiously getting up to go with me
before the teacher (I always want to say “professor” because the French word
for teacher is « professeur » and because I just left a university
environment) even finished! We walked down the hall together from room 303 to
room 309 of Building B where I successfully unlocked the door (I had tested my
key and checked the chalk supply a few moments before) and told the students
that they could be seated rather than remaining standing as they typically do
during the roll call at the beginning of a class period.
My lesson plan for this class, as written on a sheet of loose-leaf
paper while sitting on my bed earlier that morning, was as follows:
a) Current Events Update: World (failed
merger article maybe?), Country, School, Personal Life
b) Business Trip to Turkey: Basics (W’s),
Task/Responsibilities, Successes, Failures, Overall Gains, Would You do it
again?
c) Scenario:
Representative from Coca-Cola planning to open new distribution plant in Île-de-France; choose a city in groups
& create a short pitch to me about why I should locate my plant there
I modeled part (a) off of the way that some of the other
English teachers at the high school level began their classes, but I added
specific spheres/domains (wow, I just spelled that with an “e” after the “n” as
it’s spelled in French) to encourage more students to speak up even if they
didn’t know what was going on in the world at large. Part (b) was based on a
conversation that I had with their teacher the week before in which she
mentioned a field trip that they had recently taken to Turkey (!) and how they
were supposed to be able to talk about it in very specific terms (she gave me a
handout) for the oral part of the exam that they will take at the end of this
year in order to get their degree. And part (c) just came from my
first-thing-in-the-morning imagination because she told me to think in terms of
real-life, business-world scenarios. And I thought Coke would be appropriate
since I had told them it was headquartered in Atlanta, where I’m from, last
week. (BTW, yes, I’m claiming the ATL and not Roswell as my hometown while I’m
over here. It’s very rare for me to encounter someone who knows enough about
the metro area for me to go into that much depth about exactly where my family lives or where I’ve spent the past four
years living during my UGA career, for that matter. Plus, I think putting in 13
years as a student at The Westminster Schools at 1424 West Paces Ferry Road NW
Atlanta, GA 30327 gives me some sort of claim to the capital city. In fact, I
probably spent more of my waking
hours inside the perimeter than “OTP” during that period of my life, especially
if you consider extra-curriculars….)
Anyway, obviously the article on the aerospace industry
merger was out the window since I hadn’t had computer access to print it out
that morning. But, after I reminded the students of my name by putting it on
the chalkboard, I went around to get their 9 names. They confirmed the name of
the 1 absent student who was supposed to be in our breakout section, so I wrote
it on the little attendance form that the teacher had given me in case a staff
member came to my door to collect it, although they were really supposed to go
to the main teacher for that. Then I wrote “Current Events” on the board and
asked if there was anything that they wanted to talk about within any of the
four categories that I mentioned in the preceding paragraph in part (a), which
I also wrote on the board. They immediately brought up the U.S. election of
their own volition, and we were off to the races! I had to keep in mind that
the ultimate goal of these sessions was for them to speak as much English as
possible, not for me to talk at them. Someone wanted to know the difference
between Democrats and Republicans, for example. Rather than me just rambling, I
drew a quick table on the board and asked what they already knew – or thought
they knew – about these 2 parties. I would basically take their answers and
rephrase or add to them as needed before putting them in the table. I did my
best to dispel stereotypes, such as the idea that Republicans care more about
their country than do Democrats, which I framed in a different way after
providing the word “patriotism” for them. We also discussed the Vice
Presidential debate that was going to occur that evening and how the VP isn’t
exactly the same thing as the Prime Minister. A common trend that I found in my
classes is that they didn’t know Joe Biden’s name or, if they could come up
with that, they definitely didn’t know Paul Ryan. This is where technology or,
at least, handouts with printed images would’ve come in handy. All I could do
was to encourage them to watch the debate on their own.
When this conversation naturally drew to a close, I decided
to move to part (c) of my lesson outline. They were pretty much already seated
in three groups, so I told them the instructions for the activity verbally and
then wrote only a few key words on the board. I found out that this was a very
presumptuous move on my part when the second group began presenting Rio de
Janeiro, Brazil as their city of choice at the end of the activity, which is clearly
not in Île-de-France
= the region of France that includes Paris and its suburbs, like
Aulnay-sous-Bois where this school is located. I noticed that I had only
written “choose a city” for that part of the instructions on the board, but the
members of the other two groups immediately started making fun of this group in
French for not listening to the oral instructions, so at least I’m not crazy.
They then switched mid-presentation to Montpellier, which is waaaaaay in the
south of France, far from the assigned region as well, but it was a nice save.
The first group had chosen Paris and struggled to understand (because of their
level of English) the concern that I expressed about space for a plant in such
a heavily concentrated city. I used a lot of sign language and acting. I
pronounced the third group as the winners because they chose
Tremblay-en-France, which followed the directions for one thing, and had the
most persuasive presentation. I definitely learned that I should make the
students come forward to the front of the room for presentations in the future,
though. In this case, because I was worried about time and didn’t know if they
would listen if I asked them to come forward, I had them remain in their seats
and went around to them as if I were an executive entering a meeting , ready to
get down to business (handshakes, hands bearing down on desk). They thought it
was funny at first, but it was hard to them to hear what the other groups were
saying from across the room. (Hmmm. “Across the room.” Reminds me of another
song from the rehearsal dinner DVD that Mallory and I put together for a
certain wedding that took place right before I came here: “I don’t know your
name, but excuse me Miss, I saw you from across the room. And I gotta
admit that you got my attention, you’re making me wanna say yo! I know you’re
tryna leave, but excuse me Miss, I saved the last dance for you.” – Chris Brown)
Speaking of dances, one trend
that surfaced in my regular high school-level English classes on this day and
future days was that the students wanted to move away from my lesson outline to
ask about a recurring list of items related to life in American high schools:
Prom, lockers, cheerleaders, and graduation. [I feel a book title coming on… ;)
] Of course, they didn’t always have the right words in English on their own,
but my job is to encourage any sort of oral production in English and to try to
get the class to work together to express a comprehensible idea without relying
on my French knowledge. Even as of the end of October, my students have no actual
experience with my level of French ability. When I introduced myself, I told
them that I studied French from elementary school through my university
training, but I’ve never spoken it in front of them, even when we’ve been on
the bus together or when I’ve had to interact with a staff person at the door
or another teacher who has taken my classroom since my newly scheduled
assignments have not been added to the posted room schedules outside of each
door. But they would say things like “In American high school (never plural),
you have zee ball?” (which I would have to figure out meant Prom) or “In the
hallway, you have zee…(hand gestures) where you put zee book?” (which meant
lockers). Hey, as long as they were interested, engaged, and attempting to
speak English, I was happy.
 |
| A quick shot I snapped after school ended at 5 pm: locker-less hallway |
I guess I’m kind of conflating a
few days into one because I had this same sort of conversation several times, especially
because the classes are split up into groups that I see on alternating weeks, but
I’m not planning on talking about the other days in this much detail. The 2
other activities from my lesson outline that I mentioned in the preceding
paragraph were as follows:
a) Imagine that I am going to spend a day in
Aulnay. What are your suggestions/recommendations for things that I should see
or do?
b) Which of these photos [from the U.S. Department of State packet]
best represents your impressions or ideas or stereotypes about what America is
like? Why?
A lot of students (I’ve gotta stop calling
them “kids”) were reluctant to respond to the first prompt because they said
there was nothing to do in their town. However, I said that every pair/group
had to give me an answer. Over the course of this day and the ensuing ones, I
heard about the “cinema” (which I changed to “movie theater” in good ol’ American
English when I wrote it on the board), an actual theater with arts events, a
couple of parks, a few restaurants (McDonald’s, a Greek place) and the “commercial
center.” What is this, you may ask? It’s the literal translation of the word
for “mall” or “shopping center” in French. In most cases, there was someone in
the class who was change “commercial” to “shopping” when I pointed out that
there was something wrong. Some of them furiously started taking notes when I
said that the most common term for people their age to use would be “the mall.”
In one case, I think I tried explaining the difference between a shopping
center and a mall by describing the fact that you can stay inside when going
from store to store in the latter case but not in the former case, but I found
that they weren’t following. So I’m just gonna be satisfied if they don’t say “commercial
center.”
The second activity was
successful as well. The 5 photos were of:
-
A downtown square at night with an illuminated 3-D
art display and skyscrapers in the background
-
A White cowgirl on a horse throwing a lasso
around a calf at a rodeo
-
A small-town, “Main Street” row of storefronts
with cars parked outside and mountains in the background
-
A roller blader at a skate park in the
foreground with a hockey game in the background
-
A close-up shot of a group of Black jazz
musicians in an outdoor urban environment
Students pretty much chose all
of the photos as representative of America in their individual opinions as I
think back over the classes. They tended to prefer the downtown scene over the
small-town one. Some people even had intelligent things to say about jazz music
coming from America, for example. Having these images definitely gave me good
reason to breathe a sigh of relief since I had no other materials besides the
chalkboard. We still talked about the election in very general terms at the
conclusion of the three regular English classes that I taught (excuse me, assistant-taught) on this day (one at
the 12th grade level and two at the 10th) in order to
fill the extra time that remained after the two more-structured activities.
Finally, in order to clarify why
I’ve been talking about the “regular” high school English classes, the fifth
class on my schedule for this day (which was third chronologically, but fifth
here because I haven’t yet mentioned it) was the History/Geography course for
12th graders that is taught in English as part of an advanced track
known as the European Section. I didn’t really feel comfortable using the
activities from the other classes because they had nothing to do with History
or Geography. I had planned to do a current events update followed by an
in-depth discussion of the election and then a brief return to the subject of
voter registration/access that I had broached the week before when the teacher
had asked me to talk about the Old South vs. the New South on the spot after
introducing myself as being from Atlanta. There was a really funny moment at
the beginning when I asked for the names of the Vice President and for Mitt
Romney’s running mate and then walked over to “high-five” very dramatically the
student who gave me the right answers, congratulating her for being the only
one in Lycée
Jean Zay (the name of the school) to know that information so far. The girl
next to her ratted her out, though, because she told me that her friend wasn’t
actually that smart; it was just that she was in the English class that I had
just taught right before the 25-minute lunch break we had had between classes.
It hadn’t even occurred to me that I could have the same student twice! I asked
if anyone else was in that class, but she was the only one. I told her that she
still deserved the high-five, which is a very American gesture of course,
because she was paying attention earlier and remembered the names. (Now this
group of students always tries to come up with answers that are worthy of a
high-five from me. It’s hilarious.)
So we talked for a long time
about the aspects of the election that interested them as well as other events
that were occurring in France, such as the capture of suspected anti-Jewish terrorists,
and in their school, such as the elections of their class representatives. Thankfully,
they had a lot to say. I passed out the voter registration forms as well as the
absentee ballot request forms and asked them to look over them in groups to see
what they understood and what questions they had. They wanted to know why they
asked about the color of your skin (race) and for your social security number.
(I told you, these were the advanced students!) I pointed out the fine print
that explained that the question on race was optional but that it was asked in
accordance with the Voting Rights Act of 1965, so it was actually trying to
help ensure that people of color had access to the polls and that states like
Georgia were not implementing practices like the grandfather clause or the poll
tax that I had mentioned to them the week before. They wanted to know if your
race is on your ID card. I said that I didn’t think so, but your photo is
there. Somehow this led to passing my driver’s license around the classroom. I
figured the worse thing they would see would be my date of birth, but they already
knew that roughly since I said I had finished university but was not yet a
teacher in my intro. Plus it’s the little things like that that make the
students like you.
 |
| Cute placemat at restaurant |
 |
| The couscous was on the plate & I added veggies/meat |
Thanks for reading :)
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