Rosetta: Pulling Teeth

I had class this morning from 11-1 with Marylise. I had gone to bed early last night in the hopes of waking up early with lots of energy. However, as I lay in bed for two hours before giving up and turning on the light and then staying up another hour before finally falling asleep, I did not feel well rested at all. Marylise gave me the handout she expected me to teach and told me what she wanted from me, well intermingled with what she will expect from me on Friday as well as what will be needed for some future Wednesday most likely about three weeks away. She is always telling me way too much all at once about events that may or may not even happen in the future. Anyway, I managed to sort out what was on today's agenda (two one hour lessons on a text explaining the new trend in British cuisine) and she sent me off to teach about 10 students. The students were lively and excitable and generally seemed to have a good time although it was difficult to get them to understand or to listen to each other when they were speaking. The second group of 10 however was very quiet and did not seem to understand a word I said. This was very frustrating and I felt like I put in an extreme amount of effort to drag everyone through the article (which I find only vaguely interesting and in most ways unimportant). I don't believe they had a very high comprehension level and this group didn't even seem able to indicate what word or sentence they didn't understand. I talked to Marylise about it and she asked me what I thought would be a good solution. So for next time I have class with them I am going to go over the lesson plan (she's already given it to me) and I am going to pick out key points and vocab words and design my own lesson plan that I think will be more at the students' level. We will see how that goes (I have three whole weeks to do that though as I will not see these particular students for a while).

Then I had a 3 hour break in which I at lunch, chatted with my roommates, and bought some folders to keep all my papers organized (inspired by Marylise's desire to give me papers weeks in advance in random bundles).

My two hours of class with Laurent went much much better. The first hour was spent with him in class mostly just watching him do a listening activity with the students and a sound clip based on a Agatha Christie novel. It involved an old lady sitting in front of a radio when something 'eerie' happened (eerie of course being one of the first words you should teach non-native English speakers). My first thought was of course, "Ooh, Mousetrap," this being a play by Agatha Christie I staged managed a year ago which had an old lady sitting in front of a radio right before the lights go out and she gets murdered. However, it turned out to be one of her many other stories that include this scene and I was a bit disappointed. The second hour with Laurent we watched a three minute film (twice) and then he sent 7 students with me to speak about the film. Next year these students will have an exam which consists of watching a three minute film, having a two minute break to scribble notes, watching the film a second time, having 12 minutes to write a summary, and then being sent into a room alone with the examiner and having to talk about the THREE MINUTE film for 20 minutes. I have already been asked by Annie to play the role of the examiner with some of her students and it is excruciating trying to get these kids to talk for 10 minutes much less 20. Partly because they didn't understand the video, or they don't understand me, or they don't have the English to speak their thoughts, but partly because they are high schoolers and they don't have the tools it takes to watch a video and then talk about it pointing out details and making connections to their own lives. All in all, I was very happy to have the chance to help out a group of Laurent's students by explaining what would be expected of them and teaching them how to talk about such a short video for a long period of time. I made them review the details which I wrote on the board in a logical order and then I put them in groups and had them try to write a summary of what they would say for 20 minutes. After they had come to a stop I told them the secret: you can talk about almost anything as long as it is in English and semi-related to the video. The video takes place in Canada? Great! Have you ever been to Canada? Would you like to go there? The video is about cooking salmon? Okay, how do you cook salmon? Have you ever cooked it like that? Would you like to taste salmon cooked like that? The salmon was cooked outside on an open fire? Have you ever cooked outside? Have you ever burnt what you were cooking?

So I had a good time with these students and they seemed to understand the enormity of talking for 20 minutes straight as well as take my advice into consideration. I am glad I ended my day this way because I was definitely feeling deflated after my first two hours of kiddos.

*On a side-note, I was writing with a small piece of chalk and it turns out it was too small because horror of horrors, I scratched my nail slightly on the black board. This is something I have always dreaded and has always given me the hibijibis just thinking about (it does now just remember it) but when it happened in real life... It wasn't too bad. I think my imagination is worse than reality on this one. I flinched slightly and then ignored it and got on with teaching.

Rosetta: C'est La Vie.

The weather finally shifted to being cold enough to freeze the grass and damp and rainy. I've been keeping warm though, either in bed in my pajamas or outside with long johns and layers. I had a pretty good weekend. We had an impromptu fajita night here on Friday. The unfortunate part was that it was so impromptu that I had just eaten dinner when I found out about it so I only managed to eat one fajita when the time came a couple hours later. Saturday night we were invited to Florie's house to play Trivial Pursuit in French, it was very difficult. Not only did I very rarely know an answer, there were several times I didn't even understand the question. But we had a good time anyways and laughed a lot. Today, I spent of the day inside and then this evening we went to our landlady's nephew's house for dinner. He had prepare a Raclette for us. A Raclette is a type of cheese that is eaten in a very specific way. There is an apparatus the is like a little box with slots in the sides you can slide your mini-tray into and then it heats up really hot. So you put a slice of cheese on your tray, slide it into the 'oven' and let it get nice and sizzly and melted. Then you pour it over whatever you want. This evening we had steamed potatoes and smoked ham with our Raclette, it was very good. Afterwards, we had some homemade chocolate cake. We got to take home all the leftovers (as well as some chicken) because Arnaud is heading to Paris for a week. Dinner was delicious and entertaining and I love leftovers so all in all it was a very good evening. I only have three hours of school tomorrow in the afternoon as one of my usual classes has an exam but maybe I will go in early and prepare a couple of activities out of the English activity books my teacher lent me. Some of the activities actually seem pretty entertaining. More on that when I've done the activities and can tell you how they turned out.

Rosetta: Here Comes the Weekend

Okay, so I missed a class yesterday because I randomly thought it was at 5 instead of 4. So today I when I saw the teacher I went up to her and apologized for missing her class. Her response was to agree that I had missed class yesterday and then go on to explain to me for half an hour what I would be doing with her class next week. She had completely moved on. At the end of our conversation I apologized again and she then told me that it was maybe even better that I hadn't shown up because 1. she had a lot of things she had to do with her students and 2. there was a presentation by a couple of the students that was a real flop. I had wanted to see the presentation because I had helped them prepare for it a bit but apparently they didn't have good visual aids and they were not very interesting. She said she was glad I had missed it. So I am off the hook on that one. And on a related note, I will only be working 6 hours this week. I very rarely end up working my full 12 hours.

Another thing that I find a bit odd is the way Laurent has me run groups. Usually he gives me a group of about 4 to do with as I like as long as we speak English, but the last couple of times he has given me a specific agenda (talk about quantities or teach them about the elements of a print ad). This is all well and good, except that he gives me four students and he teaches the rest of the class the exact same thing. So the four that are with me the first half an hour, hear it from me and then go back to catch the tail end of Laurent teaching the same thing, and the group I have for the second half hour has already had the lesson with Laurent, and the other 12 students in the class only get the one lesson directly from Laurent. I feel like there has to be a more productive way to do this. And then today, he had to go arrange some things in the middle of his two hour class. So as usually I had 4 groups for half an hour each. But his other students had like a half hour break where they waited in the hall (because they are not allowed in the classroom by themselves). I offered to babysit the whole class while he was gone so they wouldn't have to wait in the halls but he said he preferred for me to just take the groups. So that's that. I finished my two hours of work today, apologized to Marylise for yesterday and walked home. I have one hour of class tomorrow and one hour of tutoring and then it is my weekend! I am very very happy and I mostly attribute it to the music I listen to on my walk to and from school. If I had to pick the one item that has made me the happiest while I have been in France I would say it is my iShuffle. (Of course my computer would top my list except that is doesn't necessarily make me happy, it's more that it keeps me from being sad). Oh, and the weather has been so amazing for January, that keeps my spirits up as well.

Rosetta: Improv Class? But I Haven't Showered in Days!

Today I arrived at my first class (1pm, gotta love Mondays) and Annie walked me into her classroom where she hands me a stack of papers in front of the students. I had about 30 seconds to look over the papers and ask any questions before she sent me and half her class to go work. Turns out there was a list of new phrases for them to learn, a receptionist at a hotel role play set-up, and a role play scenario with three different guest outlines. Good luck, action. I am getting pretty good at bluffing my way through her classes, however usually she at least gives me a list with instructions such as, read phrases while stressing the importance of... or review yada yada. This time however I was on my own. We read the phrases aloud. They were ridiculously specific like: children under 12 eat free if their parents are eating in the dining room, and our hotel is built on different levels but there is a lift to each floor and gently inclines ramps. I explained to them that these phrases aren't important to know word for word (I had my fingers crossed that Annie would agree with me and not decide to have some kind of test on exact memorization of these phrases) and then we went over the phrases again with the students underlining the important vocabulary words it WOULD be important to memorize. I was pretty proud of this impromptu cover of the material and we moved on to role play. I had the students work in pairs to write and then present brief check-in skits using the information provided. And then I assigned three 'guests' because we had three motive outlines such as, 'you are tired and just want to get to your room as soon as possible,' or 'you want to know if they have a children's menu and if you can get an extra bed in your room.' This lasted conveniently exactly the full hour and then I got to try it again with the other half of the class. We were going a bit too quickly the second time around so I slipped another activity in between the two role plays. I asked them what order they should do things when checking in a guest and I wrote the order on the board: say hello and ask how you can help, find out the clients name...etc.

Next I had class with Laurent. We sent me 3 students at a time and asked me to teach them about quantities (which he listed for me in my note book): many, much, a lot, lots of, few, a few, a little, little. And so I taught the 3 students how to use quantities for 25 minutes and then did the same thing again with a different group of 3. This was very difficult for me, especially explaining the difference between 'a little' and 'little.' I think I got the idea across though and I got better for the second time around.

My second hour with Laurent he gave me two very low level students and I reviewed present simple conjugation. I am, you are, he is etc. I had an hour to prepare for this as he had told me in advance and I happened to have an hour break. I used my hour to devise a little handout explaining the rules. I amused myself by setting it up with 'thou' in my table
I                  We
Thou           You
He/she        They

With the left column being singular and the right column being plural. I explained that he plurals are all conjugated the same and that the students are lucky because we have gotten rid of 'thou' and so you singular is even conjugated the same. And to be even luckier, 'I' is usually conjugated the same too. So all they had to do was memorized the conjugation for I, you, we, you, they and the conjugation for he, she, and it. I feel like we made some pretty good progress. I told Laurent about it later and he said not to tell them about 'thou' because that will confuse them. I can see how it might confuse them but I feel like my students understood. Plus, I secretly hope some of them with try to use 'thou' in every day life.

It felt fairly useful but it was not as fun as some of my other classes with Laurent's students have been. I have started playing crazy eights with the students but I have drawn a star on about half of the cards and every time a student plays a card with a star on it I make them tell a story. I also used this as a good reason to review, when, where, who, and what, as the key elements of the story they should tell. I play too and when it is my turn to tell a story I amuse myself by saying things like, "A long time ago, in a galaxy far away, a young boy saved the galaxy," and seeing if they recognize the story.

Annie keeps giving me Tuesday mornings off. This means I don't have class until 5 tomorrow evening. This is good however because the plumber is supposed to come fix our shower. It started draining really slowly about a month ago and finally got to the point where it would never drain completely so we called the plumber. Last Thursday they sent someone who opened up the back of our tub and looked around but couldn't fix it. He must have opened something else though because after that if we used the tub or even the sink in the bathroom we would get water dripping down from the ceiling in the living room which we caught in tubs so it wouldn't damage our wood flooring. They said someone would come fix it on Friday and after waiting all day on Friday and calling them several times, someone finally arrived at about 5 'til 5. He took one look and rudely announced that there was nothing he could do because 1. he was not the plumber and 2. it was 5 o'clock and he was no longer on duty. We all agreed it was pretty badly handled that instead of just telling us that the real plumber was sick and that they would send someone after the weekend, they made us wait at home all day on Friday for someone who couldn't help in the first place. So after all weekend with no shower and no use of the sink in our bathroom someone was finally able to fix the shower today. He had to put some glue on it that still has to dry and tomorrow he will come finish it up. This means I still can't shower (don't even ask me how long it has been) but at least we know we will be able to shower again tomorrow evening.

Rosetta: La Rentrée

Today was the first day back from break. I only had one hour of class this afternoon so it was a pretty smooth start. Marylise told me that I would either watch the presentation on England that I helped two students to make, or if they weren't ready, I would take a group to the library to do a small project with dictionaries. When we arrived in class the students weren't ready for their presentation so she assigned some students to come with me to the library and then proceeded to do half an hour of a worksheet with them while I stood quietly at the front of the class before sending the group off with me for the last 15 minutes of class. The worksheet we did was a letter written to a friend about a trip to Ireland. The activity was to rewrite the letter changing the slang to make the letter more formal as if it were written to an 'old uncle'. I thought it was a bit ridiculous to send the students to look in a dictionary to translate slang words like, 'hang around' 'out of this world' and 'mates'. But I was surprised, they were all there in the dictionary (except for 'fab' I had to translate that one myself). The students were very focused and worked well... for the 15 minutes we had. And that was it, the first day of class.