It happened! I received an email on Saturday 18 July at 12:15 am (yes, I was awake when I received it) from the person in charge of language assistants in the académie de Dijon. I was surprised to be receiving any kind of communication over the weekend, but especially so since I had resigned myself to not hearing anything from France until September. It was definitely a pleasant surprise, and I’m not complaining!

The email was fairly lengthy, with information about the region, and what the next steps would be. The best part, though? I got my school placements! I’ll be teaching in a high school (lycée), and a middle school (collège) in Dijon proper! I’m absolutely thrilled to be able to have the experience of working with both levels in secondary, but even more so to know that I’ll be in Dijon itself. There’s no guarantee for city placement when you participate in TAPIF, and even though I had requested specifically a big city, I was a little worried considering there aren’t any *big* cities in the académie de Dijon, and I had read somewhere that many assistants end up in medium sized cities. I’m truly over the moon to be somewhere that’s well connected via trains and public transport, and I would be lying if I said I haven’t already started doing research into all things Dijon and fun day trips I could potentially take. Ironically, based on some preliminary research, Dijon seems very similar to Angers, just on the other side of the country! I’m excited to see how my experience with TAPIF this time around compares to last time (pandemic notwithstanding).

In addition to my school placements, I was given contact information for my prof référent at each school. Your prof référent is a teacher at your school who is assigned to help you (the assistant) navigate the process of being an assistant, and to help you get settled into the position. I immediately (or rather, next morning), reached out to both of them, introducing myself. I’ve already heard back from one, but not the other – not surprising though, considering it was the weekend when I reached out to them.

Unfortunately, this email did not include an arrete, so I still don’t have any official paperwork for the position. I was told that due to delays (virus related and not), that I should not expect to have my arrete before the 20th of August. That means I still have at least a month before that comes through, so the waiting game is still not over. I don’t need the paperwork to apply for a visa luckily (you do if you need one, though), but I still can’t officially move to France, find housing, or open a bank account without that official piece of paper. Not that my moving is 100% happening either, but I’m trying not to focus on that.

Now that I have my schools, I can officially (oof, I’ve said that word a lot in this) start scoping out housing. It’s possible that my school will provide housing, or have resources for me, but I also want to do research on my own in case they don’t (again, there are no guarantees with this program). Usually, the recommendation is to wait until you arrive in France to start looking for housing, and to just book yourself an AirBnB for a minimum of a week while you go out and search. That’s not something I feel particularly comfortable doing this year, given that I want to quarantine myself as best as possible after I arrive in France to do my part in keeping the curve flat. Last time I participated, I had secured a room in a foyer before my flight even left American soil, so I’m looking down that route again as a possible option. The flexibility with a foyer would allow me the option to find alternate housing if I wanted once I was settled and felt safe doing so. Obviously, I’m not going to be making any decisions now regarding housing, but it’s definitely something at the front of my brain.

There’s still a lot up in the air, but I’m so pleased to have received that email over the weekend. Even though this latest update may seem benign, it means that things are certainly moving. I’m still very much having mixed thoughts about the whole thing, but I will admit that when I got the email, I was very excited and buzzing about my placement – so much so that I couldn’t go to bed for another hour! I’ll finish this post with an outline of what to do once you receive contact information for your prof référent/conseillier(e) so if you’re in this boat, you can stress less than I did when sending my introductory email:

Emailing your contact(s) in France

Once you get contact information for your prof référent/conseillier(e), you should reach out to them as soon as possible. I wrote a decent sized email, but you can write as much as you’re comfortable with in your email. I sent an identical one to each prof référent, only specifying the school where I would be teaching in the body of the email depending on who would be receiving that particular email. I wrote my email in French, but received a reply in English from one of my two contacts. If you’re teaching at the secondary level, there’s a higher likelihood English will be used in communication, but if you’re comfortable, I’d recommend writing the first email in French. Here’s what I included:

Subject: Bonjour de votre nouvelle(/nouveau) assistant(e)!

• Brief introduction of myself: name, age, where I live, whether I’d lived in France/visited Dijon before
• Asking for any information that would be relevant to my preparation for the year as an assistant (anything in particular I should bring from home for teaching?)
• Asking for recommendations for housing in the area/what previous assistants have done for housing
• Previous relevant experience if you want to add it (for me, this was my past participation in TAPIF)
• Signed off asking them to let me know if they needed any further information from me, and reiterating how excited I was to work at (insert school) in the upcoming school year!
• If you’re writing in French, be sure to sign off with “cordialement” rather than a simple “merci”

There you have it! You don’t have to write a super long email, especially since you’ll probably have more questions based on their reply (I know I did). Ask whatever is most “urgent” for you to know now (such as whether housing will be provided, or if there are any recommendations), as opposed to something you can wait to discover (which bank branch you should use, or your hours). Considering that my first contact from them was in July, there’s still a lot that they probably don’t know, and things that will develop between now and my (hopeful) departure.

Once you’ve formulated your email, click SEND and you’re good to go 🙂 Hope that was semi helpful – I know I fretted over the content for a while, but I know that they expect these kinds of questions, especially in a first email. Just be yourself (corny, I know) and send that puppy off to France (electronically, of course).

Let the planning for French adventures continue! À bientôt!