srah blah blah

First day of school (4.10.02)

What a linguistic mess. I am absolutely forbidden to speak French in class, which is not easy when you go to class directly from the teacher's lounge, where you've been talking to the teachers in French during the recrée and the rest of the morning. My brain hurts.

I "observed" four classes today. I thought that "observing" would mean that I would "observe" classes and not be involved. Silly girl. In most of the classes, we spent a big chunk of time with me standing in front of the class and answering and asking questions.

Terminale Sciènces Médico-Sociales (TSMS): The class was very heavily female, very seventeen, and was more interested in carrying on private conversations in French than in learning about the new American assistante. So we only did the Q&A for the first ten minutes, and then they went back to their regularly scheduled studies on immigration to the US.

Seconde Sciènces Médico-Sociales (2SMS): The class was very heavily female, but was full of students in their first year of high school, who were still interested and full of questions - not old and jaded like the TSMSs. I liked them and found that with one class under my belt, I wasn't as nervous, so I could slow down my talking to make sure everyone understood. They begged me to tell them that American boys were better-looking than French ones, as they'd obviously given up on the boys at home and were looking for something better. One student asked me how I felt about September 11th, which led to me blabbering a long, complicated answer that I'm sure no one understood.

Terminale Hôtelerie (THOT): Véronique had scared me a bit, by telling me that her next class was one girl and twenty seventeen year old boys. Heh heh. She said I could run away if I wanted to, but I enjoyed it. They were a bit more excited to see the assistante than the TSMSs. When they were whispering amongst themselves at the beginning, the teacher said "She has a boyfriend", which made me giggle. They were funny and entertaining and told me about their favorite hangouts in Vichy and want to teach me to cook and want me to teach them how to bake cookies. I think that at that age, boys are more pleasant than girls. High school girls have a tendancy to be hypocritical and catty, and boys have a franchise that I appreciate.

Terminale Professionnel Commerce (TPC): Rather than introducing myself to the class, I sat in on the presentation of their year-long project: the planning of an English Day at the school, including advertising, inviting local stores to sell English products, the creation of an English menu in the school cafeteria, etc. I apologized for being American.

srah - Saturday, 5 October 2002 - 12:40 PM
Tags: assistantship

Trackback Pings

TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.srah.net/mt421/mt-pings.cgi/1402