#school schenanigans

When you express distaste for this part of your school lunch and your vice principal says, “Ah, almonds are a no for you, Rachel?”

I love alliteration. I tried with the title, please give me some credit.

This week, I hosted my first visitors. Jen and her manfriend Jake came to exotic Montlucon to relax and save some money after an expensive week in Paris. We had discussed their visit and originally planned for next week. This obviously changed.

Tuesday night I feel asleep around 8:45 waiting for my computer to restart. I had fallen asleep during lunch with a friend (we were watching tv) so I had already decided I was going to bed early. I woke up around 9 and struggled to check my Facebook. Seeing their message, I tried to type coherently as possible while half asleep.

I picked them up from the train station Wednesday night and so our journey together begins. They spent Thursday morning at home while I worked and then met me for my traditional Thursday lunch with another assistant. They then wandered the city while I taught that afternoon.

My children were in for a treat Friday as Jen and Jake followed me to school. Like normal, they were looked at like zoo animals (although it probably didn't help that Jake is quite tall.) I taught class as normal allowing for a few questions at the end.

At first my students were nervous but eventually they warmed up to their guests and the questions kept flowing. Some of the highlights included: "Are you together?" "Do you have a lot of money/how can you afford this trip?" "Do you have any pets?"

The best thing came Friday afternoon with some of my CE2 children girls who thought that Jake was "intelligent and handsome" and one of the girls had a crush on him. Jen was also told she was "sexy."

I have something uncomfortable to tell you so I am going to the responsible adult thing and not tell you but vaguely allude to something weird/gross that results in me having a shitty (eloquent, I know) week and a half.

While I can no longer get deported (check out my lungs in case you don't believe it,) I find myself scheming of ways to get the f*** out of France. I am sure this feeling will pass but it is rather unfortunate timing as we near the holiday season.

I am currently struggling to find the motivation to plan lessons, show up to school and actually enjoy teaching. My students aren't making my job any easier. I have started to actually dread one of my schools. I don't see the students enough to form a relationship and some of them are dreadful.

Whine, whine, whine and not the good kind. I promise the next thing I post will be positive but right now I can't think of anything nice or coherent to say but for some reason thought you (whoever you are) would want to hear something new from me.

Over the past three weeks of work I have come to notice many differences between the French and American school systems. One of the largest differences (besides having two hours for lunch, breaks every two hours and taking two hours for lunch) is the way French children write in their notebooks.

I have already written that they are told to underline things, write in a certain color and who knows what else. What I haven't yet shared with all of you is that they write in cursive, all the time. It isn't a cursive familiar to me. Their letters have more swoops, curves and take much more effort to write.

Recently my students have decided they cannot understand when I write in script. They ask me stupid enraging annoying questions about my letters including "It that a cross (in reference to a lower case "t".)" My repsonse: "Of course it isn't a cross, don't be stupid, why would I put a cross at the beginning of a word." I am going to learn how to write like them.

I went to the local book store that sells school supplies and asked for a workbook meant for 6-7 year-olds so I could learn to write like them. So far I have practiced the letters M, N and R and they are all stupid different then the cursive I learned when I was young.

In the States primary school children write in pencil in their notebooks. They write in script. They are trusted to copy off the board correctly and understand what is written.

In France, children are told which color pen to use, what to underline (with a ruler), what to highlight and they all write in a type of cursive. This cursive is different from what I learned when I was their age and completely different from what primary school children in the States are not learning today. It is swirlier and is impossible to read.

I found just how different the writing styles are  after two different classes of children seemed confused at my lack of direction when I told them to write phrases in their notebooks. I quickly explained in French (or tried to explain) that I don't care what color pen they use or if they highlight things. For some reason this was something they could not understand. No matter how many times I told them "I don't care," they kept asking.

Not only did they keep asking, but they struggled to read what I had written on the board. "Is that an r or a v?" "What letter is that?" The questions kept coming, the most difficult to explain/answer was "Should we write like you?" Because I come from the States, I do not write in cursive on a regular basis and especially not when teaching small children, but these children are the exact opposite. Writing in script (each letter separate) is difficult and they continue to write some of their letters in the cursive style, ie n looks like m. I told them to write how they would like, whatever what easiest, in a style they could understand.

I continued to stress that "no, I really don't care if you underline that," or "I don't care if you skip a line, just copy the information off the board," but still the questions kept coming. I don't know how to further stress that I have very little invested in how they write in their notebooks than repeatedly saying "I don't care."