Realization
So I just realized that despite the fact that I've been in France for 57 days this is only my 17th post. Sorry 'bout that. I guess it's mostly just that I've only been posting when something really noteworthy comes along, and since I work three days a week, and have been avoiding traveling until I get my 12-25-year-old-travel-reduction-card not a whole lot happens when I'm not working. But I'll try to get better! Granted, I only really want to put noteworthy things in here, otherwise it'll just turn into a Twitter-feed. And I'm no Twit. (I mean no offense to those persons reading this who use Twitter. I just don't see how people have time to give a blow-by-blow of their days, plus read the feeds of their 25 favorite friends and celebrities and live life. It just seems mildly excessive to me.)
Right. Not much new, I've been doing really random things in classes, from teaching the alphabet in English (which I randomly have a hard time remembering because the first pronunciation that pops into my head is French) which is then used for spelling to US geography/flag/history. Spelling got really interesting really quickly, because I was at the school in the "immigration district," so the class was made up of 3 kids from France followed by kids from Senegal, Turkey, Tunisia and other countries. So instead of working with kids who are trying to spell a last name like "Thibault," I'm trying to help them spell "N'Dwango" or something like it. Then again, there was the one kid who's last name was "Ba," so he had it easy. Then, in the class where I was working on US flag and history stuff, the teacher was trying to get the students to guess why there were 13 stripes and 50 stars. He gave them a brief (3 minute) explanation including that there were 13 colonies that declared independence from the United Kingdom (or maybe it was just England then?), and that there are currently 50 states, and then they tried to figure out why the flag is the way it is. They figured it out pretty quickly, but the interesting thing was that the teacher thought there were 51 states, and that there were more colonies than 13 in America when it rebelled, and the war was primarily between the colonies for and and the colonies against independence. So I explained that there were only those 13 colonies, and the war was between the colonists for and the colonists against (+ the British soldiers). I left out the explanation that the vote had to be unanimous, and was with 12 for, 0 against and 1 abstention (because despite the fact that New York can spend over $1 billion to buy a World Series, it didn't vote for independence). And honestly I can't blame the teacher for not knowing those parts of American history. There's a lot about French history that I don't know well enough, so I know I'd be in the same boat when it'd come to that aspect of teaching French. But during that class I did find out that the French use the same naming conventions and the indigenous peoples were either "Indians" or "American Indians."
Big 3:
Best: I was talking with one of the teacher's after class and we were discussing socio-economic differences and similarities between France and the USA, and I've followed everything he's said when he suddenly says, "I'm probably talking way too fast, aren't I?" At which point I realized how quickly he was talking, and how much my level of comprehension has actually increased. Now I just have to learn slang, so I can keep up with people who talk about, you know, normal things.
Worst: Nothing really. Couldn't sleep the night before last... so I got maybe 3-4 hours of sleep before I had to get up and get ready. But I ran on that little sleep for much longer than one night during college. Wow it's nice when that's the worst thing that's happened to me.
Funniest: Apparently I'm now an authority figure. I was watching the kids playing soccer on recess (by the way, an average French 9 year-old is better than most American 14 year-olds that I've seen. It's mildly terrifying. I now want to see a Brazilian 6 year-old, since he'd probably already have been playing for 4 years and be better than almost everyone I've ever seen) when one of the kids comes running up to me, and explains in a whiny-just-finished-crying voice that "that kid kicked me! That one in the black jacket! with the blue tennis shoes!" I looked around and there were actual teachers he could've gone to, but for some reason he decided to come to me. I sent him to the real teachers, since I figure I have no actual authority, and my brief questioning revealed he got kicked while playing soccer, so I figured it could've been an accident, and it'd be easier for the teachers to figure out.
Right. Not much new, I've been doing really random things in classes, from teaching the alphabet in English (which I randomly have a hard time remembering because the first pronunciation that pops into my head is French) which is then used for spelling to US geography/flag/history. Spelling got really interesting really quickly, because I was at the school in the "immigration district," so the class was made up of 3 kids from France followed by kids from Senegal, Turkey, Tunisia and other countries. So instead of working with kids who are trying to spell a last name like "Thibault," I'm trying to help them spell "N'Dwango" or something like it. Then again, there was the one kid who's last name was "Ba," so he had it easy. Then, in the class where I was working on US flag and history stuff, the teacher was trying to get the students to guess why there were 13 stripes and 50 stars. He gave them a brief (3 minute) explanation including that there were 13 colonies that declared independence from the United Kingdom (or maybe it was just England then?), and that there are currently 50 states, and then they tried to figure out why the flag is the way it is. They figured it out pretty quickly, but the interesting thing was that the teacher thought there were 51 states, and that there were more colonies than 13 in America when it rebelled, and the war was primarily between the colonies for and and the colonies against independence. So I explained that there were only those 13 colonies, and the war was between the colonists for and the colonists against (+ the British soldiers). I left out the explanation that the vote had to be unanimous, and was with 12 for, 0 against and 1 abstention (because despite the fact that New York can spend over $1 billion to buy a World Series, it didn't vote for independence). And honestly I can't blame the teacher for not knowing those parts of American history. There's a lot about French history that I don't know well enough, so I know I'd be in the same boat when it'd come to that aspect of teaching French. But during that class I did find out that the French use the same naming conventions and the indigenous peoples were either "Indians" or "American Indians."
Big 3:
Best: I was talking with one of the teacher's after class and we were discussing socio-economic differences and similarities between France and the USA, and I've followed everything he's said when he suddenly says, "I'm probably talking way too fast, aren't I?" At which point I realized how quickly he was talking, and how much my level of comprehension has actually increased. Now I just have to learn slang, so I can keep up with people who talk about, you know, normal things.
Worst: Nothing really. Couldn't sleep the night before last... so I got maybe 3-4 hours of sleep before I had to get up and get ready. But I ran on that little sleep for much longer than one night during college. Wow it's nice when that's the worst thing that's happened to me.
Funniest: Apparently I'm now an authority figure. I was watching the kids playing soccer on recess (by the way, an average French 9 year-old is better than most American 14 year-olds that I've seen. It's mildly terrifying. I now want to see a Brazilian 6 year-old, since he'd probably already have been playing for 4 years and be better than almost everyone I've ever seen) when one of the kids comes running up to me, and explains in a whiny-just-finished-crying voice that "that kid kicked me! That one in the black jacket! with the blue tennis shoes!" I looked around and there were actual teachers he could've gone to, but for some reason he decided to come to me. I sent him to the real teachers, since I figure I have no actual authority, and my brief questioning revealed he got kicked while playing soccer, so I figured it could've been an accident, and it'd be easier for the teachers to figure out.