Adventures in Teaching
I taught all of my classes the alphabet yesterday. Every grade did the alphabet but it was tailored differently to each level. For example, with the older kids we used the alphabet to then play Hangman and with the little kids we only learned half the alphabet and then they colored in the letters of the alphabet. Every grade found the the alphabet song hilarious -the only thing stopping me from telling the older kids that they most certainly could not do any better than the kids on the CD was my inability to construct that sentence in French. The little kids -7 year olds, my "babies"- were more amused by one child's decision to stand up and dance to the alphabet song in some sort of Moroccan-looking belly dance complete with intricate hand/arm gestures. It was all I could do to stop myself from laughing. It might help to mention that this kid, Gerard, is my favorite kid and as much as I know it's wrong, I have a hard time telling him to behave (which I should do often as he's a bit of a problem child). My second favorite kid, Corentin, decided this dancing thing was a good source of attention and then got up and tried dancing too. I think it's worth restating at this point that I had two children (essentially) belly-dancing to the ALPHABET song and I could not laugh in front of them! Before I could have any more copycatting belly-dancers in the classroom I quickly put an end to the dancing. The babies took surprisingly well to the new information, and they also remembered what we had learned before the vacation - they can all still count to ten in English! I was so proud of them!
Not surprisingly, the babies were more cooperative than the older kids who were really testing me yesterday. I had to move a few of their seats around to get them to stop talking. At one point I declared that there would be silence in the class as they copied down the words to the song. That just made it worse and I found myself saying "shhhh" and "Silence!" every 30 seconds or so. They had pissed me off so much that I decided to give the good kids some candy canes from home and not give the candy to the bad kids. I know that this wasn't exactly the right thing to do, but I didn't care at this point. The bad kids had no shame and flat out begged for candy even after several encounters such as this one:
Kid: Laura, can I please have a candy? I didn't get one.
Laura: Do you think your behavior merits it?
Kid: (looking guilty)No, it doesn't.
It's just frustrating with this class because I know we could have a lot of fun if only they'd stop talking. Sometimes I stand there and just wait for silence and by the time one kid tells another kid to stop talking because "Laura is waiting" then the second kid responds to the first kid who then starts talking to someone else and it's just a vicious cycle. I also have a major problem child in this class who is really good when he behaves (which is never) but really bad when he doesn't (which is all the time). In the beginning of the class he started acting up and I stood next to his desk and said in a relatively nice tone "Kevin, I'm warning you now, the first time you misbehave you are going back to class, there will not be a second ......" and as I stood there repeating "second...second..." struggling to remember the word in French Kevin looked up at me and said "warning?" and I said "Yes, so you understand, no second warning, ok?" The poor kid is always in trouble, he knows the drill by now. Kind of undermines your sense of authority when the kid you are threatening has to help you to formulate the threat in his language. But in the end I suppose it worked because it was one of the few weeks when I didn't have to send Kevin out of the classroom.
In other news, all of the assistants were swapping "can you believe this happened to me at school today?" stories at dinner and amidst the tales of uncooperative teachers/administrators/students and misspelled/misused English words in official texts "thirty, fourty, fifity" this gem of a story stood out:
A teacher quoting Shakespeare to his primary school class in front of the English assistant said "To be or not to be? What is the question?" Tessa, the English assistant in question, did not have the heart to correct him.
I've had a pretty bad case of jet-lag that has been keeping me up until about 4 in the morning most nights this past week, so I was able to fall asleep at a relatively early time (1AM) last night and looked forward to sleeping in. Unfortunately around 9AM I was woken up by some work in the hallway that eventually gravitated into my room. Once the work was done I was able to sleep till 12:45PM! Then it was time to get up, have lunch and do some lesson planning. I learned the French word for mop (and quickly proceeded to forget it) as I borrowed a mop and vacuum cleaner from downstairs. I had to take a DVD that wasn't working back to the video place and things didn't go exactly as I planned:
Laura: Hello, monsieur, this DVD doesn't work.
Mean Video Store Employee(MVSE): It worked a week ago when I watched it.
Laura: Right, but I tried it last night and it doesn't work.
MVSE: What do you mean "it doesn't work?"
Laura: I mean, I hear the sound but there's no picture.
MVSE: Well, it must be a problem with your machine because I tried it last week and it works.
Laura: Well, see, I had to watch another DVD last night since this one didn't work and my machine works fine.
MVSE proceeds to put the DVD into his machine and... it works!
Laura: See, I couldn't get past the main menu. And like I said, my DVD player works. Do you have another copy?
MVSE: No and there's nothing wrong with the DVD...
Laura: The problem is that I'd like to try to watch it again at home but it's due back now and I don't want to have to pay an extra day for it since I never got to see it.
MVSE: Well, I can let you have it for one more day just this time, but not again.
Once again a complete lack of customer service in France. Why is this still surprising to me? Did I really expect that he would just be nice and accomodating? And just for the record I'd like to report that I brought the DVD back home and it STILL doesn't work. I even rented another one just to make sure it wasn't my machine. The other DVD works, the evil one that only works in the store still won't play!
So now I have 2 DVDs to watch at home and of course tonight was the night everyone felt like going out to the movies, so I went along. Fortunately, they were showing George Clooney's "Goodnight and Good luck" in VO (version orginale aka, ENGLISH!!!) and although I wasn't particulary interested in this movie back at home I couldn't pass up the opportunity to see an American movie in English for once. I actually really liked the movie too. When we walked out of the movie theater and Jenny heard French people speaking she said "ooh I forgot we were in France!"
On a completely unrelated note, the national sales (soldes) started today. It's a month-long sales period and things in the stores are as much as 50 to 70% off! I think I'm going to hit up some stores tomorrow morning before teaching the little darlings in the afternoon.
Not surprisingly, the babies were more cooperative than the older kids who were really testing me yesterday. I had to move a few of their seats around to get them to stop talking. At one point I declared that there would be silence in the class as they copied down the words to the song. That just made it worse and I found myself saying "shhhh" and "Silence!" every 30 seconds or so. They had pissed me off so much that I decided to give the good kids some candy canes from home and not give the candy to the bad kids. I know that this wasn't exactly the right thing to do, but I didn't care at this point. The bad kids had no shame and flat out begged for candy even after several encounters such as this one:
Kid: Laura, can I please have a candy? I didn't get one.
Laura: Do you think your behavior merits it?
Kid: (looking guilty)No, it doesn't.
It's just frustrating with this class because I know we could have a lot of fun if only they'd stop talking. Sometimes I stand there and just wait for silence and by the time one kid tells another kid to stop talking because "Laura is waiting" then the second kid responds to the first kid who then starts talking to someone else and it's just a vicious cycle. I also have a major problem child in this class who is really good when he behaves (which is never) but really bad when he doesn't (which is all the time). In the beginning of the class he started acting up and I stood next to his desk and said in a relatively nice tone "Kevin, I'm warning you now, the first time you misbehave you are going back to class, there will not be a second ......" and as I stood there repeating "second...second..." struggling to remember the word in French Kevin looked up at me and said "warning?" and I said "Yes, so you understand, no second warning, ok?" The poor kid is always in trouble, he knows the drill by now. Kind of undermines your sense of authority when the kid you are threatening has to help you to formulate the threat in his language. But in the end I suppose it worked because it was one of the few weeks when I didn't have to send Kevin out of the classroom.
In other news, all of the assistants were swapping "can you believe this happened to me at school today?" stories at dinner and amidst the tales of uncooperative teachers/administrators/students and misspelled/misused English words in official texts "thirty, fourty, fifity" this gem of a story stood out:
A teacher quoting Shakespeare to his primary school class in front of the English assistant said "To be or not to be? What is the question?" Tessa, the English assistant in question, did not have the heart to correct him.
I've had a pretty bad case of jet-lag that has been keeping me up until about 4 in the morning most nights this past week, so I was able to fall asleep at a relatively early time (1AM) last night and looked forward to sleeping in. Unfortunately around 9AM I was woken up by some work in the hallway that eventually gravitated into my room. Once the work was done I was able to sleep till 12:45PM! Then it was time to get up, have lunch and do some lesson planning. I learned the French word for mop (and quickly proceeded to forget it) as I borrowed a mop and vacuum cleaner from downstairs. I had to take a DVD that wasn't working back to the video place and things didn't go exactly as I planned:
Laura: Hello, monsieur, this DVD doesn't work.
Mean Video Store Employee(MVSE): It worked a week ago when I watched it.
Laura: Right, but I tried it last night and it doesn't work.
MVSE: What do you mean "it doesn't work?"
Laura: I mean, I hear the sound but there's no picture.
MVSE: Well, it must be a problem with your machine because I tried it last week and it works.
Laura: Well, see, I had to watch another DVD last night since this one didn't work and my machine works fine.
MVSE proceeds to put the DVD into his machine and... it works!
Laura: See, I couldn't get past the main menu. And like I said, my DVD player works. Do you have another copy?
MVSE: No and there's nothing wrong with the DVD...
Laura: The problem is that I'd like to try to watch it again at home but it's due back now and I don't want to have to pay an extra day for it since I never got to see it.
MVSE: Well, I can let you have it for one more day just this time, but not again.
Once again a complete lack of customer service in France. Why is this still surprising to me? Did I really expect that he would just be nice and accomodating? And just for the record I'd like to report that I brought the DVD back home and it STILL doesn't work. I even rented another one just to make sure it wasn't my machine. The other DVD works, the evil one that only works in the store still won't play!
So now I have 2 DVDs to watch at home and of course tonight was the night everyone felt like going out to the movies, so I went along. Fortunately, they were showing George Clooney's "Goodnight and Good luck" in VO (version orginale aka, ENGLISH!!!) and although I wasn't particulary interested in this movie back at home I couldn't pass up the opportunity to see an American movie in English for once. I actually really liked the movie too. When we walked out of the movie theater and Jenny heard French people speaking she said "ooh I forgot we were in France!"
On a completely unrelated note, the national sales (soldes) started today. It's a month-long sales period and things in the stores are as much as 50 to 70% off! I think I'm going to hit up some stores tomorrow morning before teaching the little darlings in the afternoon.
posted by Laura at 11:49 PM
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