Mademoiselle C., accidental French teacher

The awkward thing about my current job as an unpaid/volunteer French teacher is that I sort of fell into it with no actual qualifications in the language. People hear that you have "a linguistics background" and a virtual automated sign pops up in front of them saying "this person can speak ALL languages". So when I went into my current school to meet the deputy head and have a little tour, it was inevitable that at some point my oh-so-interesting "linguistics background" would be mentioned. In this case, it led to "do you speak any French?" and a jumbled "well, not much, little random bits" response from me. Turns out that's enough to be trusted with teaching it to kids. 

It took a few weeks before I actually started to teach French. I was initially told I'd be taking a small group of kids from the class I was working in (Y4, so that's a group of 8 and 9 year olds) but the lesson plans were missing and nobody knew where they were. When I eventually found them stuffed in a box which in turn was stuffed underneath a display on WW2, I quickly realised two things: a) from my linguistics perspective, knowing what I do about learning languages and language attitudes, they were appalling; and b) the kids didn't know anywhere near enough French to actually use the lesson plans.

I took it upon myself to choose a topic - food and drink - and devised my own lessons. I thought back as far as I could to when I started learning French at school and used what I could remember or observe from my old French books as a starting point. We started out discussing places in France where pupils had been before and my 8 French learners began a food pyramid in their books. I only had one lesson with my group of 8 before I ended up teaching the whole class of 30. 

Now, here are a few glaring problems with teaching a language you're not particularly skilled in:

1. Pronunciation - so I'm supposed to be teaching these kids how to say all of these words and I don't really know how to pronounce them myself… fantastique.

2. Gender -  is it la cerise or le cerise? Argh!

3. Grammar -  I don't know how you would form that sentence so how am I supposed to teach it?! Verb conjugation websites are my best friend now. 

4. Random questions - this one really is the killer... "Miiiiiiiss, how do you say 'my friend likes dogs' in French?", "Miiiiiiissssssss, what's the French for 'loom bands'?", "Miiiisssssssssss, how would I say that dinosaurs are extinct?, "Miiiiiiissssssssssssss, I want to write that I also like rabbits the most but it's not in the dictionary…" I DON'T KNOW. WHY DO YOU THINK I KNOW EVERYTHING? I'M FOOLING YOU ALL.

I quickly realised that the best way to engage kids with another language is to be practical. We did a French breakfast morning where they had to order their food in French and we served croissants (avec confiture et beurre), pains au chocolat, jus d'orange, jus de pomme et chocolat chaud. They loved it, but most importantly at least some of them remembered the key phrases we used. Some of them were also introduced to the wonders of role play in a foreign language when, for presentation afternoon, two groups of kids came up with restaurant-themed mini-plays and presented them to the parents. 

This year started off fairly clumsily. I started back at school on Friday but I didn't know I'd be teaching. As it turned out, I had to improvise three lessons for three different year groups. Fabuleux. I started off with Y5, who were luckily the class I taught last year. We mainly just continued where we left off in July and I introduced them - and myself - to manger and boire in their various forms. Y6 began right from the beginning with my now infamous fruit and veg PowerPoint presentation, and Y4 did some pieces of writing using manger, boire and aimer. I've just finished planning their next lessons, which luckily for them will involve even more sentence creation. Woo! After that, I'll be bringing in my Mr Men and Little Miss books (French translations, obviously!) and we'll be attempting some very basic story writing (merci beaucoup to Mlle. Miles for help with that one!). Eventually, I'd like them to maybe create a video diary of what their school is like and what they are like to be able to send to my friend who's going to work in three French schools for a year. Or for her kids and my kids to become pen pals. Over-reaching a little? Oui, but I'm looking forward to the challenge.

Truthfully, it turns out that the best way to learn something really is to teach it. Having to teach them all of these things - and everything that involves, from marking their work to correcting their pronunciation  - means that I have to learn it for myself. These kids are looking to me as 'the one who knows everything' and part of my job is to keep them believing that. I want my little Français learners to eventually leave my lessons with memories of having fun and learning in a different way to the norm... And if that means dressing up in Breton stripes and a beret, conga-ing around the classroom to J'aime les fruits, or spending hours trying to remember verb conjugations, then so be it. As… someone… once said, "go the extra mile, it's never crowded."

So, for now, you can find me creating worksheets (seriously, the selection online is terrible), updating my classes' progress charts like a proper teacher and listening to Disney songs in French. 

Until la prochaine fois,

Mlle. C.

one last time

spotify threw this gem from the past up tonight 

flashback writing - 06.07.2012

some bits writing from my college days. i had some time to kill one afternoon and decided to write about my day like a novel. several months later i was at university and was eventually diagnosed with depression, caused by events that took place at college.

"I watch as she walks around the room, calmly at first but later with some degree of urgency.

“Ah, I must have left it in B15,” she says, “my bag, I mean.”

I hear her scoop her keys up from the desk in her office next door and she heads towards the double doors. They lead onto the main corridor of the building and the thought of walking through them always makes me feel a little bit sick. If I’m telling the truth, since certain things happened the thought of leaving this room makes me feel a bit sick."

"Although I know that everybody (except a dedicated few teachers) has already gone home and will not be waiting for me when I leave the room, I still can’t help but mentally prepare myself. I start by mapping out the quickest and least dangerous route out of the building and to where my lift home will be waiting. Down the stairs, straight out, straight past B block and then back up the main path should avoid making contact with anybody hanging around by the main gates or the entrance. This is followed by a brief rundown of who I am likely to see, if I see anybody at all. There are a few members of staff on the list, but I am lucky today as I can’t think of any students who would be hanging around after college on a Monday."

"Her folders are perched precariously on the edge of the desk, as if they are hanging around and waiting for her return. They’re furious, in my head. She always does this and they’re tired of wasting time waiting for her to retrieve the objects she scatters across every place she visits so they can finally go home."

"I smile not because of her lost bag, but because some people will spend their lives messing up and irritating people, and their inability to function will be forgiven and forgotten by those they know and love because their spark and their general enthusiasm for life will balance out their shortcomings."

"It is almost shameful that we are unable to do this ourselves, but I cannot help but feel that this would be so much different were there not an ever-expanding set of pressures in our college environment. It’s a game of give and take – you accept that you probably shouldn’t make it public knowledge that you like that song or that TV show, or that you don’t study any of the arts and instead study maths and the sciences, and you are free to live your college life as you please. If you stand in the common room fundraising for a charity or help with college events, you probably won’t be able to shake off the stereotypes allocated to you. They are clichés that date back as far as you can remember, but they certainly don’t go away."

"It would be lovely to walk into college tomorrow morning with the attitude of ‘today, I’m not going to care about anyone or anything’, but I’d be dreaming to think that I could act that persona out in each lesson and keep it up until my front door was firmly closed behind me."