Learning sans syllabi

One of the greatest things about life is that it’s a great teacher; the lesson is always there if only you take the time to recognize it. The lessons don’t come in any particular order, as life does all of its own lesson planning. In the end, you simply choose to recognize the moment and learn from it, or you seal your mind off from the learning experience at hand.

Because I am no longer pursuing formal education for the first time in twenty-two years, I have been trying earnestly each day to maintain the mindset of a student, recognizing the lessons that life is throwing my way. Without professors guiding me along a particular path, as outlined in a printed syllabus, my syllabus writes itself as I choose to learn from different moments: it’s scary, exciting, and definitely a change to be learning exclusively in this way!

One of the lessons that I’ve been working on involves adaptation and confidence- my job serving as the instructor. When I applied to be a Living Language Assistant for the French Ministry of Education, I did not quite understand the nuance of a nine-month contract. With a nine-month contract I am more of a language teacher than anything else, despite the fact that I do not possess more qualifications from the other assistants. It seems astonishing that the French government would have so much faith in nine-month assistants, charging us to teach classes without any real pedagogical training beyond our five standard training sessions, journée de formation, mandatory for all assistants.

Despite my lack of confidence to teach, this is France; there will be no changing of the signed, sealed, and delivered paperwork stamped with a June 2010 end date. As a result, my experience has turned into something slightly different than I imagined, “assisting in English classes 12 hours a week.” But maintaining the student’s mindset, I’ve made an effort to recognize this moment as one to adapt, which will in turn build confidence. Once I get my materials together and plan out the lessons that we’ll be covering through the end of June, I’ll be more confident in teaching knowing that I adapted to the situation, and in the end I’ll have helped to build the English foundation of my students.

Beyond preparing for class, the little French kiddos serve as my teachers almost every class. One day they helped me to question my thoughtfulness after bringing in a bag of American candy corn to be used as markers during Halloween bingo. Without thinking twice I started to hand out it, until the teacher stopped me and asked me to list off the ingredients. Many of the students in the class were Muslim, and without having grown up in a community with a large Muslim population, this was not something that had even crossed my mind. Although none of the kids were upset, and the candy corn ultimately received the seal of approval, the students reminded me that I can make no assumptions; I don’t want to give the impression that Americans are insensitive, even if it’s just over a piece of candy corn.

Another lesson the students continually teach is not to take life too seriously. Laughter, smiles, dance, and play make life worth living, after all. When we listen to Raffi and shake our sillies out before class, the looks on their faces demonstrate the true importance of letting your hair down and having fun for the moment. Even though they are kids, being an “adult” and dancing right along with them has helped me to rouse my inner child. During training last week our pedagogical director, Madame Waren-Jean, read a story aloud about a witch and her cat, Willie; the book illustrated different colors through the premise that the witch continued to change the color of the cat’s fur to suit her own needs. By the end of the book, Anne and I were in stitches; the poor cat climbed a tree because he “was so ridiculous,” sporting a coat composed of such a large array of colors that he felt embarrassed. I tell you this caveat both because it’s funny to imagine two “adults” laughing hysterically over a picture book, and to make a point: the little French kiddos have the right idea about life. It doesn’t always have to be serious, and sometimes it’s ok to laugh out loud, really hard, even if you’re “all grown up.” There’s no point in being so serious about life that shaking your sillies out cannot paint a smile on your face.

I’ll leave you with a final, difficult lesson that I’m still working at mastering: twenty-one unruly, screaming eight-year-olds who leave you with high blood pressure and a headache. While most of my classes are either wonderful or on the tolerable side of well behaved, I do have one class, the Devil Class, that I dare say could not be any more difficult. At times I wish I could just throw in the towel and tell my supervisor that they’re utterly impossible, but in doing so I would also be throwing away the greatest opportunity of learning and change, both in behavior and English. There are twenty-one Anglicists in the class, and I have them all to myself for forty-five minutes each week while their teacher works with the Germanists in a classroom downstairs. They are in CE2, equivalent to third grade, since they still have two more years in école primaire before going to college, French middle school.

Although they are older than my littlest pupils in CE1, one grade level below, this class at École Paul Langevin is so misbehaved and apathetic that they cannot muscle through half of an exercise that the little ones finish in fifteen minutes. Instead of listening to me or sitting quietly at their desks, a third of the class torments another third of the class who then spring out of their seats, coming up to me at the front of the class as rapporteurs, tattletales, while the remaining third just sit covering their ears, complaining they are mal à la tête. Me too, I tell them, trying not to roll my eyes. At this point of the class, one of the little girls approaches me with downcast eyes, telling me to slam the yard-stick against the blackboard to get everyone to shut up; it works when their teacher does it. This totalitarian approach works for about thirty seconds, just long enough to tell them they need to have enough respect to vous me, instead of using the informal tu, and more importantly that they are passing up an opportunity to learn English from an “expert.” But holding their attention and raising my voice in both English and French proves ineffective. The scene is so out of control it’s almost comical; this class epitomizes the fact that I have no real teacher training, and I do not have the capacity to control twenty-one eight-year-olds who are more interested in getting away with breaking the rules and not having their name written on the board than actually learning anything.

At this time cannot I pinpoint exactly what I’m learning from the Devil Class, beyond recognizing that stressful, loud situations can cause you to have high blood pressure and a headache for the remainder of the day. I hope that as the year goes on, however, these kids will really come to understand they are lucky to have a native speaker in their classroom, and to be learning another language at such a young age. Throughout all of my years of French education in high school and university, I’ve only had a handful of native speakers leading my classes. I know this is the American norm, especially if you start learning in high school, but my accent still has a long way to go as a result. If you’re interested in finding out whether or not the Devil Class decides to take advantage of their learning situation and to see what else they teach me beyond patience, please stay tuned. I promise that it won’t be a lesson acquired without excitement, be it yelling, screaming, or asking the kids to copy “I will not disrespect my fellow classmates” thirty times in their cahiers, notebooks.

A final thought: Eric Carl read-alouds and Raffi sing-alongs do not constitute a bad day, nor do turkeys made out of traced hands. I’m just still getting the hang of learning on the fly, not in a classroom, and without the aid of a syllabus printed out at Boatwright Memorial Library. Here as some possible lessons I’m sensing for the future: working in a different environment, culture, city, finding a balance when teaching something so simple that it becomes complex, and realizing no set standards occur in practice; they’re base exclusively in theory. If you’re interesting how these lessons pan out, stay tuned; I’ll update you as the life havrais unveils its’ various lessons.

À la prochaine, mes amis!

A new adventure au Havre

Forty-one days ago I arrived in the City of Lights with all of the gear I suspected one might need as an English teaching assistant on a nine-month contract: two blue whale-like suitcases and a backpack, half my size, filled with The Cat in the Hat, A Charlie Brown’s Thanksgiving, and two bags of sucrose pulp, candy-corn that had been smothered beyond recognition, among other things. My “I really just want to look French s’il vous plaît” guise proved to be less than convincing: not only did my pack give it away, but I wore a look of eagerness, characteristically non-French, all over my face. I’d always dreamt of coming back to la belle France, and this time I was back for good… or at least the next nine months. The fact that I’d be leading classes of twenty something rambunctious 8-year-olds hadn’t yet sunk in. My mind, instead, wandered back and forth between a few simple questions: how rusty was my French? When would I be able to pick up a cheap bottle of Bordeaux at the local Carrefour? Was looking “à la mode” worth towing around two forty-nine pound suitcases?

Spending a few days in Paris proved to be useful in answering these questions, and reminding me exactly why I had fallen in love with France the first time around. Yes, my French was rusty, but not rusty enough to convince strangers of my American origins every time that I opened my mouth. It did not take long to find a bottle of delicious Bordeaux, and after surveying the Paris fashion scene, my only regret was not finding some space in those suitcases for my jean shorts, to accompany all of those black tights that had found their way into my suitcase. The best part about being in Paris, however, was not seeking out the answers to these questions, but realizing that dodging people along the busy streets no longer felt foreign: it felt like home.

Leaving “home” for Normandy’s great unknown heightened my anticipation for the coming year and presented me with more serious questions than those of wine, fashion, and accents. I wondered what life would be like living en provence while working for the French government, a bureaucratic monster of seemingly unfathomable paperwork? The train ride to Rouen with my friend and former abroad accomplice, Katie Pendery, provided few answers until we met her contact, Sophie, at the train station. After a brief tea chez elle, Sophie took us to Katie’s new residence, an apartment adjacent to her new place of employment, Lycée Guy Maupassant. The high school, built on a hill well out of town, overlooks Fécamp, a Norman resort known for its production of Benedictine liquor and high cliffs rising over the Alabaster Coast’s rocky beaches. Spending a few nights in Fécamp provided a small glimpse of the French life en provence; outside of Paris, people seemed really friendly, helpful, and welcoming! Although Normandy wasn’t “home,” it didn’t seem half bad.

After Katie saw me off at Fécamp’s train station, so small that it could be mistaken as a little white house, I steamed towards my new home in Le Havre, accompanied only by my enormous pack and the blue whales. Upon arrival, my contact, Janick Chéret, welcomed me to the city with a smile and a sign that read Laura MUSSER and Anne WOOTTON, the name of my to-be American colocotaire. Once Anne’s train arrived directly from Paris, the three of us turned Janick’s little Ford four-door into a jigsaw puzzle of luggage and bodies. Barely managing to squeeze into the car, Anne and I sped off to 22 rue Claude Monet where we’d be sharing an apartment for the havrais chapter of our lives.

Meeting a new roommate can be overwhelming, especially if your first face-to-face dialogue occurs while you’re sandwiched along the house wares aisle of a French grocery store… right before dinner. I’ll always be thankful that it was Anne with me in the Super U that Monday evening. After exchanging “what are we doing here?” looks, we settled on a few items and retreated to our new abode. Since our first night, we’ve cleaned out the broken clown-face lamp, a hangover of old colocataires past, lamented about the humidity level that leaves the entire apartment in a perpetual state of damp, and added some struggling basil plants, 22 rue Claude Monet has really become home. At the end of long days teaching, nothing beats turning the brass skeleton key of our apartment and opening the door unto a relaxing evening chez L. MUSSER et A. WOOTTON. As we continue to practice the French joie de vivre, we’ve come to realize that no evening is complete without an attempted culinary masterpiece, an empty bottle of red wine, crumbs of a baguette from the boulangerie just up the hill, a carton of Rondèle cheese, and variations of Imogen Heap songs on repeat.

While I always have Anne and our cozy domicile to look forward to upon arriving home, the days teaching are more tricky and tiring than I had anticipated. I did not realize the full impact of selecting a nine-month contract, noted in a small caveat on the application I completed last January. Nine-month primary school teachers, en fait, have a role more similar to English Teacher than Teaching Assistant. Because I have a nine-month contract, my responsibilities go beyond being a native English speaker in the classroom twelve hours per week: I must develop a unique sequence of units for each of my classes. Once I decide on the units, I’ll have to write lesson plans and come up with corresponding activities that will coincide with the goals set forth by the French Ministry of Education. During a meeting with Janick about the upcoming year, I discovered that I’ll be teaching English in four different schools around Le Havre: three classes at Ecole Raspail, one class at Ecole Pauline KERGOMARD, one class at Ecole Jules FERRY, and one class at Ecole Paul LANGEVIN. Between these four schools, I will work with over 120 students, twice per week in forty-five minute sessions. After observing my future classes and talking to my new colleagues, I deduced that I will be the only adult in the room for two of my six classes. Based upon the behavior of the students, I question my ability to teach these French youngsters any English at all if these schools also expect me to play The Law. On verra…

I’m still at the beginning of my teaching journey in Le Havre, especially since the vacances de Toussaint have put all school-related activities on hold since October 24… but I’m not complaining. I promise to include more stories about my time in the classroom, reconciling the manner in which the French way of life is fitting into my own, and other possibly interesting observations I’ve made in the past forty-one days. For now, I hope that I’ve simply been able to create a small mental painting for you as I set up my “new French life” in Claude Monet’s old atelier and dwelling place (hence the name of the street!).
Until next time my friends, à la prochaine mes amis.