First (Real) Week of School

10.11.10 – Monday – I taught my first class! It was 5eme, and only about 35 of the kids showed up (normally there will be between 55-70), but I think it went pretty well. I had fun, at least. My main worry is that I didn’t scare them enough. It’s tough to establish discipline if you’re not strict at first, so I’m hoping that my teacher glare instilled some sort of fear into their little hearts.


10.12.10 – Tuesday – no classes today, and am thus really, really bored. Need to find something big to do with Tuesdays… sitting around and eating rice all day is probably not healthy in the long run.

10.13.10 – Wednesday – Taught the first class for each of my two 6emes. I’m their first English class ever, and since I try to teach mostly in English, it was a lot like talking to a brick wall. Their French isn’t that good either – I’m pretty sure I speak more than they do, which is terrifying – so getting my point across was rough. Miming is our only common language… luckily, I’ve been practicing my conversational Charades.

10.14.10 – Thursday – Last class for the week was 5eme, and I started doing a review to figure out what they’ve retained from last year… it’s not much. I asked them for the date, and no one knew any of the days of the week except for Wednesday… which they uniformly pronounced “Whed-ness-day.” Great.
We also did greetings (good morning, good afternoon, etc.), the alphabet (+ the meaning of “to spell”), and finally Hangman. I actually didn’t slack off on planning that last bit – Hangman requires you to say letters, and remembering the difference between E/I, G/J, and S/X is proving to be difficult for that class. Anyway, so I’m using the next couple of classes to review and assess, and then I’ll start teaching new stuff. Mini-list of most entertaining names in my classes: Gaston (who sits right next to Sebastian), Parfait, and Sunday.


10.15.10 – No school for me again today… and surprise! Just learned that we don’t have school at all next week. Some idiot planned an all-region teaching conference for the third week of school. I will go to a day-long meeting on “how to give a test” every single day rather than actually doing my job. Sigh.