Good News

Written on Wednesday 12/19, Thursday 12/20, Saturday 12/22, and Sunday 12/23

Season’s greetings to all! Good news – those of you who aren’t Facebook friends with me may not know that I submitted my first graduate school application to the Master of Arts in Teaching program (foreign languages subject area) at Washington University in St. Louis on December 18th. This actually involved creating a recording of me speaking French for the purpose of evaluating my language proficiency, which I ended up having to burn to a CD and mail to the States in an expedited fashion in order to meet the Jan. 1st deadline because the file was too large to send by email given that I’d talked for too long. (Hard to imagine, isn’t it?) Rather than saying less about my teaching and travel experience and future plans, I decided to go with the CD option. But thankfully, waiting until “the last minute” to make this recording turned out to be a little over 2 weeks in advance of the deadline, so it was still okay, by the grace of God. And, in all truth, I waited until this point in the term to compile the better part of my application so that I could include reflections about my current position in a foreign language classroom. It would have been a shame not to do so! And now, thanks to the comfort of online delivery confirmation that allowed me to follow my package all the way to St. Louis and even see who signed for it in the Dept. of Education office, a heavy weight has been lifted off of my shoulders. Hopefully the other three applications, all with (slightly) later deadlines and no audio recording requirements, will go much faster now.

You want some more Good News? This actually happened a while ago, but it’s still worth sharing now. Perhaps I should set the scene first:

…there were shepherds living out in the fields nearby, keeping watch over their flocks at night. An angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified. But the angel said to them, “Do not be afraid. I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people. Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you; he is Christ the Lord. This will be a sign to you: You will find a baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger.”
Suddenly a great company of the heavenly host appeared with the angel, praising God and saying,
“Glory to God in the highest,
and on earth peace to men on whom his favor rests.” 
(Luke 2:8-14, New International Version, emphasis added)

Don’t know if that’s what you were expecting me to “announce” as my second piece of good news, but this is truly what I’m celebrating at this often-overly-commercialized time of year. And I also think it’s important for us to recognize that Jesus wasn’t – and isn’t – just a cute little baby in a manger in a nativity scene whom you sing about in December and then check off of your list-of-things-to-do, especially for those of us who consider ourselves to be believers in Christ. So instead of only highlighting the “traditional” narrative from the Gospels (as told from Luke’s perspective above), I’m choosing Galatians 4:4-5 as my Christmas motto: “But when the time had fully come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those under law, that we might receive the full rights of sons.” Here we have the infant (almost spelled that like « enfant », as in the word for “child” in French) Jesus put into a context of purpose that has to do with granting us access to God’s family. The Scripture talks about the law because, without the grace demonstrated to us by God through the (Christmas) gift of Jesus (Ephesians 2:8), there would be NO WAY for us to be declared righteous (or justified) as it relates to the laws of the covenant between God and His people due to the original sin committed by Adam and
Eve that tarnished mankind and all of the sins that we have subsequently committed ourselves. Blood has/had to be shed to pay the price of redemption, but thankfully it doesn’t have to be our blood: “For the wages of sin is death: but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord” (Romans 6:23, KJV).”

So Jesus came to earth – yes, originally in the form of a baby – with the ultimate purpose of dying in our stead in order to bridge the otherwise-unbridgeable gap between imperfect humankind (for all my feminists who feel excluded by terms like “mankind” and “sons”) and a perfect God. This gift of fellowship with God is offered to us not just at Christmas, but every moment of every day. The Bible says “That if you confess with your mouth, ‘Jesus is Lord,’ and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For it is with your heart that you believe and are justified, and it is with your mouth that you confess and are saved” (Romans 10:9-10, emphasis added – didn’t want to overlook the crucial resurrection aspect of the story!). If you don’t unwrap any other gifts this year, please don’t miss out on the FREE gift of eternal life offered to you by God, your Creator and Father, and made possible by Jesus, whom I know not only to be a Redeemer, but also a wonderful Best Friend: (His words to His disciples) “I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master’s business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you” (John 15:15).       

The following entry was SUPPOSED to be a highlight reel of BRIEF memories that picked up where I left off (post-trip to Bordeaux from November 7-9) and took you AT LEAST through the end of November, but it’s been hard balancing graduate school applications, normal lesson planning, holiday festivities, and preparations for my family’s imminent arrival! Plus once I start telling you about something, I always feel like I have to give you the whole story. Perhaps my New Year’s Resolution needs to be about improving this blog…Seriously, though, please know that I’m doing the best I can to keep in touch with you here. If you’re ever like, What is crazy Morgann doing? Why hasn’t she posted anything here? I want an update NOW!, then feel free to post on my Facebook wall (preferably no FB messages because I can’t always access them from my home Internet connection) or send me a message at morglyles@gmail.com. I’ll likely get back to you faster than you’ll hear from me here. And please, if you have any questions or doubts about what I’ve written above about THE GREATEST CHRISTMAS GIFT EVER GIVEN, then definitely hit me up so we can follow-up and I can help lead you to other resources, if needed. Because maybe the world didn’t end on 12/21/12 ;) …but I’m not sure that we have a whole lot of time to play around with such a serious question of where we will spend our eternity.
   
Gosh, I have so much to tell you. I just thought of so many memories within these last few minutes that I wanted to share. I’d better get to it! Merry Christmas and happy holidays to all! I hope to post again just before the New Year, Lord willing. May you all treasure the gifts that really matter this Christmas – peace and happiness, good times with family and friends, and the baby in the manger who grew up to be the man on the cross.

In His Love,

Morgann A. Lyles

• Lunch at a (well-to-do) French family’s home (with magic tricks) [Saturday, November 10]
• Invited due to membership in EAAEE = club for foreign students/teaching assistants that I joined to practice my French (http://equipe.accueil.free.fr)
• Family was rolling! Big, gated house in western suburb of Rueil-Malmaison
• Father = lawyer
• Mother = former executive for major American car company
• 3 daughters: ages 11, 13, and 17
• 1 played piano for me before lunch
• 1 did silly card tricks for me after lunch, such as smelling the deck to figure out which card was mine; the oldest one left to do her homework…ah, maturity
• Family was surprised/relieved that I spoke French so well; guess they were expecting to have to break out their English for the American guest
• Had chicken and potatoes cuz I’d asked them to go easy on the dairy for me
• Overall, great conversation about everything from weather (Celsius to Fahrenheit conversions on the father’s iPhone) and politics to my family and my activities in France
• Got an invite to come back any time and even got a little tour of the town on the drive back to the RER (suburban train) station
• Back to school after 2-week « Toussaint » vacation: teaching material and highlights [Wednesday 11/14-Friday 11/16]
• WHAT I TAUGHT
• U.S. Election, with varying degrees of specificity depending on the level of the students and, in some instances, the desires of the lead teacher; most advanced treatment included 3 groups analyzing 3 strands below then presenting at end:
• Background – primary process in general, then specifics of 2012 Republican process
• Election itself – results, meaning of electoral college (really hard for students to grasp) [groups at all levels got at least a taste of this strand]
• Looking ahead – international reception of re-election, second term challenges for Pres. Obama
• Workplace Scenarios, for associate’s degree students studying International Trade (I’ve been told to focus on practical life application/hands-on activities); students worked in groups to prepare to come to my office (I was their boss) for one of the reasons given below (made these up riding the train to work, btw)
• You would like to receive a raise (an increase in salary).
• Over the course of using this activity with different classes for a few weeks, some students focused more on the overall success of the company during that fiscal year as the reason for why they should receive a raise whereas others emphasized the fact that they had been faithfully working hard for the company for a long time in spite of offers to work for industry competitors.
• You would like to present a new product. [Of course, we had to specify the company as a group.]
• I heard about a watch on which you can “watch” TV (they thought this was a clever play on words); an electric truck that companies could use to make deliveries; and a coat for children with gloves attached so they won’t lose them, just to name a few.
• You would like to tell me about a problem in the office. [This required a little creativity. It could be anything.]
• Problems I heard about ranged from a man who wouldn’t allow a female colleague to work on a project to inadequate heat in the office. Of course, the purpose of the activity overall was to practice using English in a professional setting, so I only corrected them in terms of register/tone, for example the girls who were very accusatory about my not fixing the heat. I told them that I might be tempted to fire them if they came into my office with that sort of attitude.
• Hurricane Sandy, for the Terminale (12th grade) students who take History/Geography in English and with whom I’m supposed to focus on the history of NYC and the relationship of the citizens therein to their heritage
• We read aloud (1-2 sentences per person, going around the room) a recent (at the time) article about the efforts to rebuild the city post-catastrophe
• You’ll see more about this in a moment under “Random sparks of enthusiasm”…
• Poems about NYC, for the same group
• Wanted to present a somewhat non-traditional take on the city to these very-by-the-book history/geography students, so I chose 3 short, modern poems from http://www.beautyofnyc.org/poems.htm for them to look at in small groups
• Louis Dienes: “Energy of New York”
• Robert Clairmont: “These Ever Just So Six Million New York Hearts and Dorothy”
• Martha Baird: “Balzac In Bloomingdale's” (They were like, “You mean, our Balzac?” I was like, “Yep, we read him too.”)
• Task was to find iconic NYC elements and present to the rest of the class the poem’s treatment of those elements. Obviously, I was there to help out. But it’s best when they come up with things on their own that I wouldn’t have thought of. Like saying that the speaker in “Balzac” needed a friend in the big city, like the people in the aftermath of Sandy came together to care for each other, as shown in the article we’d just read. It was cute because I hadn’t explicitly asked them to connect the two topics :)
• Halloween/Thanksgiving, particularly for the Seconde (10th grade) and Première (11th grade) students
• 1 teacher had cancelled class just before the Toussaint holiday because of a major Muslim holiday that would cause a lot of her students to be absent anyway, so I hadn’t gotten a chance to discuss Halloween with them, thus the carry-over here into a joint discussion with Thanksgiving for that group
• (P.S. This is why it’s crucial for me to keep up with exactly what I do with each of my roughly 18 groups of students that I see on a rotating basis. For one thing, I want them to have approximately the same experience, but also one of my greatest fears is beginning to teach a group something that I’ve already gone over with them and looking really foolish/unprepared.)
• First, class generated lists of words (by just shouting stuff out rather than raising their hands) associated with the holiday/holidays & I wrote them on the board, with question marks if they were…not quite right. For example, a lot of students thought we gave gifts at Thanksgiving. (I mean, come on, it’s got the verb “give” in it! What else could you possibly give on this holiday?)
• After, I gave out a handout that involved matching for Halloween or just reading aloud a few sentences about Thanksgiving (including the origin of the holiday with the Native Americans and Europeans – a story which a good number of the students mentioned on their own) and looking at a lot of pictures of food.
• The dish that surprised/disgusted them the most was actually one of my favorites, sweet potato casserole with marshmallow topping. They were like, “Madame, marshmallow…is candy?” You have to understand that the French make a dramatic distinction between « sucré » (literally, “sugary,” so dessert items) and « salé » (“salty,” what we would consider entrées or main courses). You don’t mix and match foods from these categories! So this dish was incomprehensible to them. Still, I thought it was cute that some of them asked me if I had eaten it with my friends at our Thanksgiving dinner (sponsored by the Fulbright Alumni Association…more on that later, I hope? And yes, I did eat some there.)
• Sadly, we only had black and white copies to work with, so for some of the foods, I had to make sure that they knew what I was talking about by asking what color it should be, such as cranberry sauce. But those who were listening answered correctly.
• Death Penalty, with the Terminale (12th grade) students on the Sciences track whose teacher actually gives me a set topic to discuss each week based on what will be on the students « bac » = graduation test/college entrance exam, rather than just saying it’s up to me; only wish she would tell me the topic sooner…
• Was handed a document during the 10-minute afternoon break before this class that was a photocopy from the student’s textbook with an anti-death penalty article from The Economist and a political cartoon of sorts from Amnesty International with the heading “End the Death Penalty” as well as the teacher’s handwritten notes on the back of the terms I should highlight in our discussion; basically I think she wants what I do with my half of the class to mirror exactly what she does with hers
• Did my best to get the students to talk and to lead them towards using the given vocab, such as “noose,” but I think they could tell I was following a script
• Talked about Thanksgiving with them at the end, because I normally do what this teacher asks and them give them a taste of what I do with my other classes; after all, I’m there to provide a unique cultural perspective rather than just being a generic robot, right?
• HIGHLIGHTS
• English teacher from classroom next door rushing in at end of one of my BTS (associate’s degree program) classes to say she’d heard my accent and knew it was me in the next room; wanted to ask how things were going; told me that as students were leaving, one was talking about how fast I spoke (please note that I speak rather slowly compared to my normal rate of speech; this is still challenging for many students, even at this age)
• “Random sparks of enthusiasm,” as I called them in my nightly journal:
• One of top students in Terminale (12th grade) – History/Geography quickly rejected my claim that we could draw a comparison between Hurricane Sandy and 9/11; said the causes of these events were different; I affirmed his statement and modified my position to say that we could see echoes of 9/11 in the Hurricane Sandy response since the article I presented focused on FDNY members as tireless heroes.
• One of top students in Seconde (10th grade) rejected my claim that the reason so many students at our school said that they had predicted President Obama would be re-elected and were surprised to learn that 59 million Americans had voted for Gov. Romney was that they were unfamiliar with the latter’s policies; student said something like “French people are well-informed about Mitt Romney! He’s a Mormon…” and a couple of other biographical/clichéd bits of info; charisma was on point, though, so I built on what he gave me until I could feel that the rest of the class was totally lost
• For Friday the 16th, I’ll just have to give you three of my favorite pieces of information from my journal entry:
• Sub-40° when I left at 10:30 am to teach my afternoon classes. Pretty sure that’s colder than it was in ATL on this day in November.
• When I answered affirmatively to the question of a student in Première (11th grade) regarding whether or not I had voted from France, another student excitedly shouted: “Can I vote (implied: in the American election)?” It was such a let-down to have to tell her that she had to be an American in order to participate because her bright smile was immediately erased.
• After work, I usually wait for the bus to the train station in front of the middle school just down the street because 2 bus lines overlap there whereas only 1 picks up just in front of the high school where I work. I have grown accustomed to letting 1 bus that is overflowing with high school students pass by either because it won’t stop for me anyway or because I’m not in enough of a hurry to be crammed like a sardine. On this particular day, there were 4 or 5 little boys (6th or 7th grade? but really short with high-pitched voices) waiting with me when the filled-to-capacity bus kept cruising by without stopping, in spite of their best attempts to hail it, as is custom here when waiting at a bus stop. They were SO mad, especially a red-headed one, who was more concerned about what his mom would think when he was late getting home from school than anything else. After we waited a few more minutes for another bus, he lamented: “My mom is probably there biting/eating her nails!” I smiled to myself at the fact that the verb – « manger », normally “to eat” – was used in this context.
• Musée Jacquemart-André: what you think of when you think of France [Saturday 11/17]

…I guess that’s where I’ll have to pick up next time. I have a few photos of that visit, at least. My family’s flight leaves ATL in about an hour, which means that I need to finish cleaning my room (just for Mom!) and get some sleep so I can be at the airport at the crack of dawn to meet them. I want us to be able to hit the ground running for their week-long crash course in all things Paris.

Until next time, Lord willing. Be blessed :)