#language assistant

Anecdotes de ma vie à Palma

Quand j'ai été prof (assistante de français) pendant 2 ans pour des petits espagnols dans des classes allant de la 5ème à la terminale (et j'ai aussi donné des cours particuliers)

and he stopped mid-motion and turned around „thats weirdly specific“

like, the situation can be summed up a bit in explaining that we all need to take a step back and maybe stop acting like this is life as normal? even a little bit normal? everyone is acting like. yes, obviously this isn’t normal, but we still expect complete normalcy. like????!!!!! “this is a goddamn bitch of an unsatisfactory situation”.

the parents simultaneously think we aren’t doing enough and are doing too much. doing class with their children online requires lots of participation on their part, which bothers them, but they still want their children to go to class. they want their children to have normalcy, but when we send them crafts and experiments, catered specifically to the fact that they don’t have lots of materials at home, they’re annoyed at all the extra work they have to do. they are constantly judging the teachers in the online class. they’re harassing teachers over technical difficulties and wifi stuff (very much my situation right now). and they’re angry that they have to pay normal tuition.

the heads of the school are forcing us to do online classes with three year olds, not because that’s the most beneficial solution for the three year olds, but because it’s the most tech-advanced solution for PR. because other schools are doing it. we were going to record videos with instructions, stories, songs, everything--we did that for the first week and it worked well. but they got wind of other people doing online class with three year olds, so they had us do it as well. they are milking this situation for all the good PR they can get. they are desperately trying to get good clips from classes that they can use to get parents to register their children... amidst all this. which, okay, it’s a private school, they operate like a business.

and the teachers? are working thrice as hard as we normally do, which is saying something, considering how much work we already do for and with the kids. we are working our butts off all the time to provide all these extra crafts and experiments and physical education activities and games kids can play at home with no material whatsoever. we are trying to get the kids’ attention through ipads and computers and parents who don’t know how to mute and unmute microphones and parents and grandparents having phone conversations in the same room as the child trying to learn. we are sweating through each lesson, trying to ignore the staring parents so that we can effectively focus on and educate our students. we are constantly on call for parents and the school heads. we are worried that the parents will refuse to pay, and that we will take pay cuts, or get laid off as well. we are, at every twist and turn, beholden to good PR, at the cost of anything else that might come in its way.

Me: Sure!

Me: *records in voice memos app, then spends over half an hour figuring out how to move the file to the computer and convert it into various file types in case the students use different devices to listen*

Me: *emails everything to her & explains in Spanish why I did it that way*

5-year old: ¿Eres inglesa?

Me: No, soy americana.

New Post has been published on https://is.gd/2mg0FV

VATICAN CITY | Vatican begins push-back against ex-ambassador over Davis

VATICAN CITY — The Vatican is starting to push back against Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano, author of the bombshell accusation of sex abuse cover-up against Pope Francis, with a statement Sunday from its former spokesman about a controversial 2015 meeting Vigano organized.

The Rev. Federico Lombardi and his English-language assistant, the Rev. Thomas Rosica, issued a joint statement disputing Vigano’s claims about the encounter he organized with American anti-gay marriage campaigner, Kim Davis, during Francis’ September 2015 visit to the United States.

News of the Davis audience made headlines at the time and was viewed by conservatives as a papal stamp of approval for Davis, the Kentucky clerk at the center of the U.S. gay marriage debate. The Vatican furiously sought to downplay it, with Lombardi saying the meeting by no means indicated papal support for Davis and insisting that the only private audience Francis held in Washington was with his former student: a gay man and his partner.

The Sept. 24, 2015 meeting and ensuing controversy has been cited as evidence of the frosty relations between Vigano and Francis that predated Vigano’s remarkable denunciation of how Vatican officials starting in 2000 knew of sexual misconduct allegations against ex-Cardinal Theodore McCarrick but covered them up.

Vigano, whose Aug. 26 claims that Francis knew about McCarrick starting in 2013 have thrown the papacy into turmoil, issued a second statement Aug. 30 saying Francis knew well who Davis was, and that the Vatican hierarchy approved the meeting in advance.

He said he was nevertheless summoned to Rome urgently after news of the meeting was leaked but said the pope had nothing but praise for his efforts organizing the trip when the two met Oct. 9, 2015.

In the joint statement Sunday, Rosica transcribed what he said were handwritten notes from a meeting he and Lombardi had with Vigano the following evening. In those notes, Rosica quoted Vigano as telling them that the pope had actually chastised him for “deceiving” him with the Davis encounter, and for having withheld the fact that Davis had been married four times.

In his part of the joint statement, Lombardi said Vigano initiated the Davis meeting, should have known about the furor that it would cause, and that even though Vatican officials approved of it, they were not sufficiently informed about the significance such a meeting would take on.

The meeting has taken on new relevance following Vigano’s allegations that he informed Francis of McCarrick’s misconduct on June 23, 2013, but claimed Francis rehabilitated him from sanctions he said Pope Benedict XVI had imposed on him in 2009 or 2010.

There is no evidence those sanctions were ever enforced, since McCarrick lived a very public ministry in those years, travelling around the world for the church. Vigano said Francis should resign for what he said was his complicity in the nearly two-decade long cover-up of McCarrick’s misconduct.

Francis removed McCarrick as cardinal in July after a U.S. investigation determined an allegation he groped a teen-ager in the 1970s was credible. Up until then, the only accusations known publicly against McCarrick were of misconduct with adults, an abuse of power but considered much less serious than sexually abusing a minor in the eyes of the church.

Rosica said no Holy See officials were involved in the drafting of the statement with Lombardi, but that he shared a copy of it with the Vatican secretary of state and foreign minister. The statement was issued, perhaps coincidentally, on the same day as the announcement that Lombardi would be resuming a more prominent communications role for the church by returning to work at the Jesuit journal, La Civilta Cattolica.

The magazine is edited by one of Francis’ closest advisers, the Rev. Antonio Spadaro, and serves as something of an unofficial mouthpiece for the Vatican. Its content is vetted by the Vatican secretariat of state prior to publication.