I’ve completed my first two weeks of being an English language assistant, and in no way can I say that this is an easy job. Sure, I only work 12 hours a week, but those 12 hours are contact hours, not the total amount of hours I spend in a school. I’m usually at each school from 9:30am until either 2:30pm, or 4:10pm, depending on the school (although I do start at 1:30pm on Monday, so can’t really complain about that too much). When you factor in a half hour commute each way, and having to leave in the morning an hour before I’m due at school in order to catch the bus, it can make for a very long day! Not to mention, you’re constantly speaking (or yelling), and trying to find creative ways to explain activities both with words, and without. Now, because the French education system values time off, we’re already on vacation (thank goodness because I’ve also already gotten sick): two weeks off for Toussaint. I’ll be writing all about my adventures during those two weeks in a separate post, but I thought I’d give you all some of my thoughts from my first two weeks working in France. I do apologize in advance for the length.

Initially, my schedule didn’t seem too daunting, but in practice, it’s a little bit more so. Although 30-45 minutes doesn’t sound like a lot of time to be up in front of a class, it can definitely feel like it’s lasting for an eternity (or can feel like you’ve snapped your fingers and time is up). I’m working in two schools, one in Les Ponts de Cé, and the other in Mûrs Erigne. Both are a little outside of Angers, and definitely in quieter places (they’re very pretty areas, I would recommend a quick google image search if I were you, but that’s just me). When I go out to Ponts de Cé, my stop is the last on the bus route and I’ll sometimes spend the last 10-15 minutes alone on the bus waiting for the terminus, but hey, at least I can take a quick little snooze in the mornings if need be. I alternate days at each school during the week, with Wednesday as a day off in the middle of the week. In both schools I work with students from GS (kindergarten) to CM2 (fifth grade). Obviously every grade level requires different material, but what makes some classes even more challenging is the fact that they have split classes where you’ll get CM1/CM2 together or even CE1/CE2/CM1 (2nd, 3rd, 4th) in one classroom. Most of these classrooms do English all together, which is great on one hand, but stressful on the other because there is a very large difference between vocabulary skills in CE1 and CM1.

Week one was very much figuring things out, and either doing very little in the classroom, or being left to lead an entire lesson, not knowing what on, and with nothing planned (funny how things always end up in extremes). By the end of the week I was leading activities with smaller groups of students, and I have to say that is much easier to manage than an entire classroom of students. I had to make a little presentation about myself for the kids, and then was subjugated to all the questions they could muster including whether I’d been to New York (yes), do I have a swimming pool in my backyard (no), and oddly enough, whether I had voted in the most recent election (an emphatic yes to that one). Some honorable mention questions include one child asking me if I had ever seen the Eiffel Tower (but the one in Vegas, go figure), and another asking me if we had color TV in the US.

I’ve spent a lot of time outside of the classroom looking for activities, coloring pages, and songs to use with the students to help engage them better with English, and to have lessons be more than just a session where I speak at them. Who knew there were so many songs for so many different topics? I say this in awe, but also through slightly gritted teeth because they get stuck in your head very quickly, and then you’re singing a song about how to introduce yourself for the rest of the day (someone suggested using baby shark to learn family words, and I’d love to do that, but don’t know if I could handle tens of children singing that to me all day after class ends). I will say though that it’s lovely to work with the younger students (GS/CP) because they still view learning optimistically, and love being read to in English, even if they don’t understand every word I’m saying (not that the older kids aren’t lovely to work with, though). Even with a bad day, their energy is pretty infectious, and it’s relieving to feel like I’m not doing everything wrong since they don’t seem too put out by it all.

The biggest hurdle for me has been figuring out how to teach material in English when I’m only supposed to speak English. Obviously this makes sense because of the immersion factor, but when many of the students can only say “hello, my name is…” or only have a very vague comprehension of basic words, it can be pretty complicated to find the words to say what you need to say (there’s a lot of gesticulating going on as well, which can sometimes feel like a misguided game of charades but you really want your teammate to get the answer correct). The easy way out is to slip into French to explain everything, but in my couple days of observation, this is what the teachers seem to always do and consequently, most of the English lessons are in French, which would be counterproductive to the whole reason why I’m here. When I’m only being used for pronunciation, it’s not a complicated affair but I’ve had to lead a few lessons, and sometimes all that greets me after a sentence is blank stares (which I always hope is from post-lunch fatigue, but those blank stares are sometimes accompanied by a confused facial expression as well so…).

It’s only been two weeks, but it would be a lie to say that all my classroom experiences have been great, and that I feel at ease with what I’m doing. Most of the classes are big, chatty, and can seem pretty uninterested by the prospect of learning English. Teaching is definitely a skill, and we have had very little training when it comes to how to instruct others in learning this complicated, and new language. Sometimes I have to remind myself that I learned English as a child, so of course these things come naturally, but that doesn’t mean that 27 French students will understand the concept of “tomorrow” and “yesterday” while learning the days of the week. It’s really easy to get frustrated with myself for not being good enough, or explaining things well enough, but I know that it’s a learning process not only for the kids, but also for me. It’s a steep learning curve, but in just these two weeks, I feel like I’ve gotten a little bit more sure of myself, and confident in what I’m doing (although a lot of that is “fake it ’til you make it” but we can pretend I’m actually getting better at this thing). It’s really easy to get overwhelmed with everything going on, but I’m hoping that having two weeks off will help refocus things, and allow me to get on top of all my planning. Either way, it’s only been two weeks so I don’t feel like I can hold myself up to such high standards (even though we all know I’ll still do it anyway), but hopefully it will only get better from here!