I know I say that like I am surprised, but anyone who knows what has been going on the past month or so, would know that even though that was “the plan”, that it wasn’t necessarily what I thought was going to happen.
The first few weeks here have not exactly been easy. Contact before reaching France was minimal, I received my placement paperwork late (as in months late.. apparently there was a problem in my region) and found out even later that I was working in 3 schools, not one like I had thought. After emailing to introduce myself to those 3 schools, I got a response much later from 2, one of which only told me to email my main school instead.
I arrive in France on a Wednesday (and dragged 100 lbs of luggage uphill for about 30 mins.. did I mention I took a wrong turn… twice? Yeah, direction is not my forte, especially on no sleep), leaving me all day Wednesday and Thursday to house hunt before leaving for an orientation in Grenoble/Autrans on Friday morning. I arrived extremely overwhelmed and homeless, with mounds of paperwork to be done (immigration, health insurance etc). They told us to save the apartment search for when we arrived, which is understandable; visits and calls can’t really be done from abroad, nor can the paperwork. But the crazy frantic emails and internet searching? Yeah, I wish I had started on that a bit sooner, since I spent the majority of my first day in France on the computer, emailing and then waiting for responses, since I hadn’t gotten a phone yet. I finally started to get some leads, only to have to move to Grenoble for the weekend for the assistant orientation.
So two days in France pretty much completely alone, and then the next 3 with hundreds of other people from English speaking countries (and also Spanish/Italian/german etc assistants). Woah. It was a bit overwhelming. And also not super helpful. I felt, on more than one occasion, that it was a bit of a waste of my time, especially when I was at such a crucial place in my housing search. The first day in Grenoble was a 3-hour presentation on immigration paperwork, then we took a bus to Autrans, some middle of nowhere mountain top town, and stayed at the centre de jeunesse in some cabins with child-sized beds, no heat, and no hot water.
Most of the other assistants I met were settled, with places to live, contact with their schools, and many more days in France behind them than I had. It was hard to listen to their excitement when I personally was so stressed and homesick. I had luckily found a place to stay for the next couple of days (thank you couchsurfing) for when I got back to Aix, but I even just found that the day before I left.
The next day in Autrans, we were split by language of instruction and age group, so I was in a group with people teaching English in college (middle school). The first three hours we spent playing games that we could use in class, so games for beginning English speakers, games are were really easy and boring for us native speakers! Not to mention, there were even mistakes in them! And a lot of the time they were written in British English, which gave the majority of the group, Americans, a harder time. In the next 4 hours after lunch we managed to make up some of our own activities and watch videos of our teachers’ classes. This was slightly more useful, why it was at the end, I don’t know. The rest of our time was spent being cold and bored, and the second night was optional so many people left. I had signed up to stay because, I thought, hey free housing and food. While true, another day without hot water sucked.
I had the whole day Sunday to kill before I could meet up with my couchsurfer that evening, so I spent it walking around Grenoble and Chambery, which was nice, but hard to do with a heavy backpack. Not to mention that I ran out of things to do quickly seeing as it was 1. A Sunday (and everything was closed) and 2. I was alone.
The couchsurfer was probably one of the first good things to happen to me since I got to France. Marion, whose English is practically better than mine, took my two huge suitcases over the weekend so I wouldn’t have to drag them to Grenoble. When I returned to Aix Sunday evening, she took me to her house where she lived with her parents and 18-year-old sister. They cooked me dinner, let me use their phone and internet, and kept their eyes open for housing options. Monday morning Marion drove me to school and even went in with me, then waited for me to fill out paperwork and drove me back. I was only planning to stay a couple of days, but ended up there for a week. The whole family made me feel truly at home, they even gave me a key so I could come and go as I pleased! And every evening at dinner they listened to my horror stories of the day, and said that they would help me sort everything out. I don’t know what I would have done without them. I probably would have left France!
The first week, it was almost like no one even expected me. I’m working at 3 schools (in 4 different classes of different levels each a week each! So 12 different classes total every week, ugh!), in 3 different parts of the city, which is a nightmare in itself. Much like Italy, France is crazy disorganized and has this, “it's not my problem” attitude, which has made it quite hard to get answers out of anyone. That or they tell me not to worry, “tout va s’arranger” (everything will work out)… yeah well not if no one does anything about it! Those first two weeks were spent trying to get the school just to make a schedule (yes, even though they should have known I was coming since June, they didn’t think to make a schedule for me!) and then trying to fight with certain schools to make my schedule a little more convenient for me. Split between three schools, with 4 hours each, all of the schools also chose to split those hours among two days. But the madness doesn’t end there. Each school has two blocks of hours on two separate days a week that they get to pull my 4 hours from. These hours are not set (except for at one school) so every week, essentially, my schedule changes and every week I see new classes/kids. Sometimes it repeats, but at most I will see the same kids once a week, and I will end up seeing some as little as once a month. If this makes any sense at all to you, you will realize that this makes it incredibly hard to 1. Make lesson plans, 2. See progress with the students/class, 3. Even remember students’ names, 4. Try and judge where a class is in their English level, keep up with what they are learning about, and finally, 5. Make a difference in their English abilities overall?!
I’ve “taught” three weeks now, and during week three I was still getting new classes and having to introduce myself like it was the first day. It probably also doesn’t help that I see differences among the same grade level English classes in different schools, I have honors classes that are better at English, and every teacher I have worked with has different things they want (not to mention I will be switching teachers here in a week or two, and that won’t be the end of it!).
Some teachers tell me I can do whatever I want, some prepare things for me to do (which makes my life so easy!), some tell me things they would like me to present, and some just expect me to show up day 1 and take the whole class by myself and already have a handout prepared! It certainly makes my life difficult, having all these different teachers that want different things.
Case in point, I made two lesson plans for last week, one about clubs in schools, and one about jobs, both at the request of different teachers. Seeing as I hardly ever see the same students, I thought these lesson plans would last me for maybe even a couple of weeks, and that I’d only need to start rotating material once I’d used in it all of my 20+ classes. But then I will get to school and a teacher will forget I’m supposed to be in their class, or I’ll get switched to another one, and then the plan is changed, and “oh and can’t you just talk about American high schools or Halloween instead??” “Well I guess, even though I was saving that for next week..” and the confusion continues.
I’m trying to make a schedule where I write down what lesson I use for every class every week so that I will know which classes haven’t had which lesson etc. Basically I’m trying to combat France’s complete lack of organization by being extremely organized.
In addition I’m trying to plan my lessons for the rest of the year, and realized that one school has failed to give me a schedule for the classes past next week. Upon emailing the English teacher I’ve been in contact with there, she says she doesn’t know the precise hours and figured someone would have put a schedule in my mailbox.. so much for my attempt at organization.
Still I will try my best to plan and make lesson plans that will carry me through the rest of the year, with enough variety so that if a teacher just all of a sudden decides they want a lesson on stereotypes, for example, I will already have something ready. That or I will have enough time to figure something out, without having to plan my regular lesson on top of these crazy French teachers’ whims.
On a more positive note, I got paid the other day! Yes it seems a little absurd given the actual amount of hours I have worked, but given the amount of WORK I have done to try and get my schedule and everything else here together (with no help from them, thank you very much), it doesn’t even seem like they are paying me enough.
to be continued..
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