stream of conciousness update!

Long time no post, that's vacation! Funny that i have more time when I'm working than on vacation to do things! But now we're back into the swing of things and I am ready to spew out an update. I don't have all that much to report about our trip to Fouras. It was nice to be at the beach in autumn and to have a change of scenery but feel like it was a distraction from sinking my teeth into things here in La Rochelle. The kids need to be with other kids at school and I am enjoying teaching and am happy to be back at work. I realize that I will probably not have many opportunities to teach part time like I am doing and that I have a lot of freedom without the burden of responsibility that come with being a full time classroom teacher so I will do my best to enjoy it while I can. I feel like I am getting the hang of being in front of the class and thinking on my feet while doing a lesson. The first few times it literally made me sweat but now I know the kids and teachers and what does and doesn't work. It's fun to think of interesting and creative ways to teach what are simple concepts to a native english speaker but always harder than I expect for the little ones to grasp.

I did lessons on the english alphabet to some very beginner classes last Thursday and Friday and brought in a song called "The Alphabet Rap". I wasn't sure if the kids would think the song was lame- (Give me an A-A, Give me a B-B, .... let's snap, let's clap, now get ready for the alphabet rap) but they started bopping in their seats to the tune and snapped along happily (some kids still can't even snap that well yet!) If I'm into it, they get into it. I also read "Chicka Chicka Boom Boom" (an alphabet book) and the kids liked to repeat the words chicka chicka boom boom. Never underestimate the power of simple things.

On Friday I teach in Miette's school where by far they do the most creative things! I get to do one session of "arts plastiques en anglais" which is my favorite time of the week. They were creating a prehistoric moquette using clay, sticks and ther natural materials collected from outside in their courtyard. I work side by side with the teacher because we're going around giving a hand where needed and answering questions. This teacher lived in the States and has by far the best english (and american accent) of any other teacher with whom I'm working so it feels comfortable to do english together. She is doing english with them in class at other times during the week with them so I don't have to worry as much about them getting specific concepts and can just enjoy doing art and expose them to a more casual natural language experience.

Miette's class is doing lots of different work using the story "The Little Red Hen" and another called "Poulet Pizza" using the same books translated from the english originals into french. Her teacher uses the texts side by side in both languages to to compare grammatical structures, expressions, and vocabulary. Now she has created a "jeux de famille", a kind of card game, with the english text from the story. I will be in the class working with small groups playing the game where they have to ask their classmates (in a group of six) in english for the cards to complete an episode of the story. All the classes at her school seem to do a lot of comparative work between languages which is fun for me too because I am also seeing it from the other side and finding new insights into french.

I do have other classes where I have the floor entirely. This is very satisfying while also more challenging. I have to do more discipline and speak more in french to explain activities, clarify directions, translate vocabulary, etc. I also have to plan these lessons from a-z. These are the classes where I am learning the most about teaching by being thrown in there and having to make it work. One of these classes has dream angel students who never have discipline issues and generally seem to love when I am there. (Last time half of the girls in the classes gifted me drawings of hearts!). Another class has 30 students, 21 of which are boys and they are really a handful. If I don't have a very firm hand and a rapid-fire pace they start to go nuts.

And Jules and Mimi finally? I am happy to say that overall, I think they are doing fantastically. I really feel like Julian has found his niche at school and has reported the past few days since we've been back from vacation that he's had a lot of fun at school. Yet when I ask "What did you do that was fun?" he says "I don't know". So it's hard to get a inside view of his day but he tells me things about his friends and just the fact that he refers to having friends makes me happy. He no longer seems totally exhausted at the end of the day and hasn't once chewed his sleeves during the past weeks. He still doen't want to go to lunch at the "cantine" but that's the least of my worries. Even when he complained about having to go last Thursday, he told me he had fun there anyway. I also feel like either school has influenced him and/or he's made a developmental leap because he's made a lot of progress in his graphic skills. He made the coolest drawing this Sunday of an airplane, helicopter, and boat. Of course, he is also quite a perfectionist and gets very mad when his drawing don't turn out how he intends and will scratch them out and thrown them down if something isn't right.

Miette is totally into marbles and plays with them at school every day thus winning them, trading them with her classsmates and adding to her collection daily. She has started mixing french words into her conversation with me at home- tonight at dinner she said "mama, after dinner can we faire the puzzle together?" I notice her playing with language all the time: rhyming, comparing, joking, talking to herself. She goes up to kids at the park or wherever we may be and asks them to play and it seems like the timidity is gone. In fact I think she is so much less reserved here now than she was when we were in Chicago.

Our australian friend Stephanie is also a saving grace and is starting to feel like an extension of the family. The kids love her and I think it has been really important to have another anglophone adult with whom they can bond. It is also great to have clicked with someone and have that security of feeling like I have someone I can really call a friend, who's also new here, with whom we can speak at ease in our native language! I read this article on culture shock that talked about the importance of finding people of the same ethnic group to socialize with to ease the sense of isolation that comes with being totally plunged into another culture and language. When people go abroad there is always this pressure to "hang with the natives" but the reality is that as human beings we need to have people with whom we can connect and irregardless of language, we connect more easily with people who are also strangers in a strange land too. Having someone to call a friend who is in a similar situation makes it easier, in fact, to reach out to others that are native! So. Funny that she's from even farther away than France but feels closer to home.

Another fun thing I started is a french-english conversation exchange with Valerie, my landlord's wife. I feel like I may have included this earlier in another post so I won't write more about that now.

I feel like the floodgates have opened and I could write for hours. I'll spare whoever's reading from that and stop myself before I lose all sense of what actually might be interesting!

Topics to come:
How much I adore, really truly love, the Ludothèque: part 2.
The wonders of free (or almost free) institutions: Why I love the Mediathèque.
La Rochelle is beautiful all the time, we are unbelievably lucky to be here.
We finally found another wonderful big playground.