Josy's Adventures

The school year is nearly over. I’m soon going to leave my dear high school for the second (and probably last) time. I had my official inspection last month and it went very well. I also got my second Master’s degree summa cum laude, so the year is concluding on a high note, at least academically.

Professionally speaking, it’s a bit more complicatd. Last week Igot more information about my position for next year and, unfortunately, they want me to be a substitute teacher which is less than ideal considering that (1) having stable habits and routines is very reassuring to me (2) bonding with students is one of my favorite parts of the job (3) I do not drive, nor could I in the near future because I have panic attacks when behind the wheel. So this is definitely a bit stressful but I’m choosing to not freak out just yet and to believe that things are going to turn out alright in the end.

I may still be rescued from this fate, if I get funding for my PhD (which is so nearly impossible, it would basically be a miracle, but still, I applied and did my very best, so that, at least, I know I did all I could to make it work). I send my 229-page-long application yesterday, so cross your fingers, keep me in your thoughts, pray, make offerings to Satan, etc.

The last weeks of class are winding down, less and less kids are showing up, and the remaining ones are getting a bit rowdy (but alos very cute: yesterday four pupils gave me a cookbook and a very nice letter). It’s starting to feel like summer. Still, the atmosphere is a bit strange because, behind all the good cheer, on top of the bittersweet of leaving soon, something terribly tragic happened last week and, even though everything  and everyone is going on as usual, it does darken the summery mood for me.

So, a little update after last month’s near mental breakdown.

Shortly after my last post, I spent two hours crying on the phone with my advisor (which was both incredibly cathartic and absolutely terrifying because he’s known me since I was 17 and I project nothing but ‘I have it all worked out, I don’t need help’ energy, so it was a bit like ‘’Hi sir, I actually do have emotions, in fact, I have aaaall the emotions, except I keep them tightly bottled up for a special occasion such as this so I can pour it all out onto an innocent witness and overwhelm them with it’’). He was incredibly kind and he did in fact convince me to be brave and not sacrifice my entire career. So the update on that front is: the world is still ending but I’ve decided I will find a way to make it work. For a more lyrical, slightly less batshit exploration of this plotline, see the poem I wrote and recorded about it.

In other news: I finished my Master’s thesis, sent it to the three members of my jury, and my Zoom oral defense will take place on April 21st. The very next day (which happens to be my birthday), I have an oral exam for the theatre class that I have to take for my teaching degree. The professor asked us to choose any play we want, to learn by heart 10 minutes’ worth of dialogue and to perform it. So, naturally, I chose Antigone by Jean Anouilh, which is so important for me it’s nearly a personally trait. The part I selected is about integrity vs. compromise and happiness. The fact that I will have to perform it on my birthday feels so much like destiny, I may very well cry about it at some point (but hopefully, privately this time.

It might not make a lot of sense for anyone who isn’t French and somewhat knowledgeable about the world of education but I got some pretty terrible news yesterday. After your first year as a teacher, once you are ‘confirmed’, you are sent to your first ‘official’ position and therefore, you have to fill in requests for what school districts you want to be sent to. (Mind you, not ‘school district’ in the American sense, where they are quite small. In France we have ‘’académies’’ which are basically as big as regions.) 

Long story short, there’s one ‘académie’ where no one wants to go because working/living conditions are terrible, which means this ‘académie’ is perpetually short on staff and forces half of new teachers to go there (many of whom quit or have to be put on medical leave because they’ve had to uproot their entire lives and are alone in a terrible place where they can’t actually do the job they were trained for). An additional issue in my case is that they are so short on staff that they refuse to let anyone go to do a PhD in a university, even if they get a grant for it.

And as you have guessed it, I learned yesterday that I am in that unfortunate half. My chosen ‘académie’ took in 34 people, and I was the 38th (with the exact same number of points as people they took, meaning I got screwed because of really crucial factors like alphabetical order or age).

The thing is, I’m not going. Regardless of what happens, I’m not going. I will try to see what I can do with my union, but if they try to force me to go, I will quit. 

I does feel like my entire world is crashing down. I have studied for seven years, I’ve been top of my class every single semester, I ranked in the top 20 in the most selective national competitive exam for my subject, I have sacrificed countless hours and so much energy, so much anxiety and, in the end, it was all for nothing, in the end, it made no difference. I’ve been pathologically afraid to fail but even though I didn’t, I still lost in the end.

A few examples of the posters my students created during our unit on bullying at the end of September. They now hang on my classroom walls. Being a teacher is exhausting but it is also very rewarding at times.

First off, let’s start on a positive note: my first visit of the year back in October went well.

After that, things got progressively grimmer : 

- France was put back into lockdown, but this time schools are staying opened, so yours truly has to keep working and pray she does not bring the virus back home with her. 

- But then it became obvious that thousands of kids in close contact with each other wasn’t the brightest idea in terms of stopping the spread of a virus, so instead, each school was asked to create their own protocol, which sent all of us in organizational hell, having to balance both in-person teaching and virtual learning.

- In the meantime, the end of the year is drawing closer, which means that it is both the end of the school trimester (which means report cards, teacher conferences, etc) and the end of the university semester (which means more work than one human person could possibly do, even if they did not have a job on the side).

- Also I have another Master’s thesis to write (yep, my third one) and I have a PhD thesis proposal I need to work on too if I don’t want to completely ruin my future plans.

Next Friday, I have my first inspection and since it would be too easy otherwise, the class the inspector is going to come observe is my ‘worst’ class (they are nice kids for the most part, but they have the weakest level, the shortest attention span and the most ‘energy’) during what is both mine and their last hour of class on Friday afternoon (so the time when they are least focused). Oh and the inspector is a teacher of mine whom I’ve had a... difficult relationship with for the last seven years. So I guess what I’m saying is: pray for me 😂

On a happier note, next week my pupils will perform the short plays they have been working on for the last week and a half. Their plays deal with bullying and serve as the conclusion to our unit on that subject. They were free to write and perform whatever story they liked, the only instruction was that among the characters there needed to be at least a bully, a victim, and a bystander.  Obviously, bullying is an important subject for me, both because of my personal experience with it and because it’s the topic I have devoted my two Master’s theses to and which I’m planning to pursue in my future PhD

I’ve read their scripts to help them prepare and some of them are simply incredible (and may or may not have made me tear up in the privacy of my own home).

For example, a group of girls wrote a play in which the bully’s best friend realizes how harmful their behavior is, confronts their friend and helps them make amend. The play ends with the three girls addressing the audience and saying :

J- You see, everyone can change.

C- All they need is a little help.

E- and everyone can help.

A group of boys wrote a play denouncing retaliation as a response to aggression. And though they may not be able to analyse their own work in those terms, it shows how toxic masculinity encourages an escalation of violence by blaming victims for not “defending themselves”, which in turns hurts everyone instead of stopping the cycle of violence.

I haven’t had time to update you before because frankly life has become stupidly busy for me. I spend half my week working as a high school teacher and half my week still moonlighting as a college student (which is the normal process every new teacher has to go through during their first year), which means that I have to plan classes and grade papers, but also complete assignments, attend classes and training courses, and write a THIRD Master’s thesis (this time not on my subject of choice, bullying, but on didactics). The system I have developed to survive is simple : wake up at the crack of dawn, go to work (read during my commute), come back home (still reading during my comute), take a shower, eat, prepare classes/grade papers, watch 2 episodes of The Resident for emotional support, collapse into bed at no less than 10 p.m. Repeat and hope you make it to the weekend in one piece so you can catch up on all the extra work you haven’t had time to complete before.

That being said, I am tired and stressed but I also have many moments with my students that make it worthwhile. And, as I’ve explained before, I love this high school more than words can express. Being back is quite a mental and emotional trip but I wouldn’t trade it for anything. 

Last week I asked my old philosophy teacher if I could come and observe one of his classes. The official reasons was that I have to observe classes for my training (normally English classes obviously) and was curious to see how things went for other subjects. The real reason was that I adored his class and needed this little window into a different time. If you want the more emotional and detailed version of how it went, I wrote a poem about it (but fair warning, it’s long and wordy, so read at your own risks) : Philosophy 101.

In case you are curious (since I’ve been talking so much about it), here is a little peek at my dear high school through  a few pictures I took on my first day back, as well as drawings and sketches from when I was a senior, 8 years ago.

Yesterday night I went to an open air concert (with social distance and masks for everyone) by the wonderful Pomme with a friend. It was such a nice moment before the big scary plunge into this insane year where I’ll be juggling teaching, training, classes, and trying to write a proposal to get into a PhD program. Life is crazy, but sometimes it’s beautiful too.

Since I passed my exam a couple months ago, I’m going to work as an English teacher for a year, starting tomorrow. I’ll be teaching part-time and in training part-time.

Last time I was a teacher rather than a student was over three years ago, when I worked in an elementary school in Minnesota. It’s a period that I hold incredibly dear and though, of course, this experience is going to be different (since my students will be 15-16, not 10), I can’t help but be excited (as well as terrified).

What makes it all the more special is the fact that the high school I’m going to be working at is my own high school. Those who have read any number of my poems might have guessed from the amount of times I allude to my high school years how important and meaningful this place is to me. I can’t even really put into words how it feels to go back there (but be prepared to watch me write about it non-stop for the coming year 😅). Some of my old teachers are probably still working there, so bumping into them in the staff room is bound to be... interesting. But more than actual people, what I’m eager to find are the familiar corridors and the ghosts I’ve left there.

If everything goes according to plan, this should be my last year living in my hometown (before I move to start my PhD program, God willing). Call it fate or call it what you will, but that I should go back, seven years later, walk the same hallways, but assuming a different role, right before I have to leave... it feels... right. As if, unknowingly, this is what I’ve been needing, what I’ve been waiting for. I do have unfinished business with that school. So much of me is tied with it. It’s where the bullying stopped after thirteen years, where I was forced for the first time to look back at what my life had been until then, and deal with years and years of suppressed emotions, where I started coming into myself,  it’s where I fell in love, where I seriously started writing poetry... I was never popular or even well-liked and I can’t even say that things felt easy but it’s the first place where I ever felt like perhaps I belonged. I have thought about it, dreamt about it, written  about it so much that it’s become more of a mythic place than a real one for me. But it is real and I’m going to be a part of it once more.