As this is my second time being a language assistant, and as I’ve had the opportunity to work in both grade levels allowed through TAPIF, I thought I would write up a comparison of my experiences. Maybe you’re looking at applying for the first time and are curious what teaching at the primary versus the secondary level might look like. Or perhaps you’re renewing and wondering whether you should switch grade levels. Or you even might just want to know what the primary and secondary education system looks like in France. Whatever your reasons for perusing this post, I hope you’ll find it informative and helpful! The experiences I will be outlining are, of course, not indicative of every language assistant’s experiences, nor are they in line with what every primary/secondary school will look like in France. These are just my experiences, but hopefully they’ll be beneficial to someone!

What is the primary level? What’s the secondary level?

When you apply for TAPIF, you’ll have the opportunity to rank your preference for what level you’ll get to teach (knowing of course that you may not get your top choice). You get to choose between primary and secondary. Primary is what the US would call elementary school, meaning you’ll most likely be working with students from first to fifth grade (although sometimes you get some kindergarteners as well). Secondary encompasses what the US would call middle and high school. You might get to teach in both, or only in one. Middle school is called collège in France, while high school is lycée. The grade levels are divided a little differently in comparison with the US, though. Collège runs from sixth to ninth grade, and lycée is consequently only sophomore to senior year. If you get to work in both levels of secondary school, you’ll have a wider variety of ages/grade levels than at the primary level. One thing to note as you enter the French education system is that they do not have the same words as in the US for describing grade levels. Here’s a handy table to show you the differences:

Doing TAPIF in Primary

The first time I was a language assistant, I worked in two primary schools in Angers, in the académie of Nantes. I worked with all grade levels, including Grande Section classes (kindergarten) at both of my schools. At the primary level, it is possible you will be working with GS (or even maternelle – preschool) students, and will go up to CM2. Working as an English assistant in primary schools will give you very varied experiences as English is not mandatory in schools until 6ème. As such, any English learned before that is supplementary, and done at the school’s discretion. While in practice this is great, I found that most of my students from CP-CM2 were at roughly the same level of English, despite the fact that some of them had been having English classes for several years. In my opinion, this is because a) teachers at the primary level aren’t required to know how to teach English, and b) they know that since not all schools have an English curriculum before middle school, the students will mostly be starting over once they “graduate” anyway. The first point (a) is due to the fact that since English isn’t a mandatory subject at the primary level, teachers aren’t required to be able to teach it to become a primary school teacher. This means that English classes are relying on the teacher’s level of English (which varies), and their experience with the language. I found that was one of the less fulfilling aspects of working primary level considering I was working on fairly similar content with all of my students.

That being said, working in primary schools does afford you with being able to work with students who usually haven’t reached the age where they might start being disenchanted by school. Most of my students were always super excited to see me, and since I saw the same classes all the time, I was able to learn all their names and recognize them all easily. You can also use a lot more songs and what might be considered “childish” activities with primary aged students as I’ve found that they’re more open and less likely to be self conscious about using Baby Shark as learning material (obviously there are secondary situations where this will work too, just speaking from my observations). I really enjoyed the way I knew who all the students were and was able to really track their progress as the months passed.

Working in primary schools was a lot of songs, book reading, and vocabulary learning. I’ll admit that some weeks it did feel rather repetitive, and I very rarely had any say in what material I would be teaching, or using. It also sometimes felt like English was an afterthought in a lot of the classrooms. I had one teacher who would prep with me during the lunch hour for our class directly following lunch, and others that wouldn’t mention anything at all until I was already in the classroom. I know that teachers at the primary level are responsible for more than just English, so it wasn’t their only subject that needed prep time, but a lot of my classes would feel very much on the fly. As a side note, I only ever spoke French with my teachers at the primary level.

Another slight difference in the primary system in France vs the US is the use of split classrooms. It’s pretty common in primary schools in France to have a classroom with two, or even three, grade levels in the room. I had classrooms of CE1/CE2, CM1/CM2, and even one CE1/CE2/CM1! This is another reason why students are sometimes all at the same English level. It might also impact the way you teach English and get to work with the students, but it’s for sure a different way to structure a classroom than in the US.

Your hours at the primary level can sometimes seem more spread out and long. The classes where I assisted were always 30-45 minutes, which meant that I worked in more classrooms to attain my 12 contact hours per week. I was also at my schools for longer during the day than I was with secondary (which I’ll touch on later). Part of that was due to where I lived relative to my schools, but another part was because my lessons would be spaced out in such a way that I’d have a decent amount of down time between some classes. One of my primary schools had no school on Wednesday, while another had half days on Wednesday. The former school went until 16:30 to make up for the four day week, while the latter went until 15:30. I never worked until the end of the day, but the days were a little shorter than the days I have at the secondary level because the school day itself was shorter.

Lastly, the administrative side of working at the primary level. You will be assigned a Conseillier(e) Pedagogique, who is someone who is not a teacher, but is in charge of pedagogical implementation of schools within certain “districts.” As such, your CP (not to be confused with the grade level), is not actually in your schools, nor do they have much sway over them. They can be very valuable resources, but are not likely to know all the ins and outs of where you’ve been assigned as they oversee multiple schools, and potentially, multiple assistants. When it comes to applying for Sécu as well, the primary level handles things a little differently. You will be responsible for submitting all your paperwork to CPAM via mail, and will have to undertake most of the process yourself. Again, your CP can be a good resource for this, but you’ll be the one mailing the envelope with all the documentation.

Doing TAPIF in Secondary

Unlike with primary, which is always elementary school, being an assistant at the secondary level could see you working in a middle school (collège) or high school (lycée) or both! I’m currently an assistant in Dijon and I work in one high school and one middle school. I work with students from 6ème up to première (I used to have a class of terminales but that changed in the new year). This means I get to work with students just really starting to work on English in class all the way up to students who are wrapping up their English studies in preparation for the BAC. As with primary, I have a variety of English levels even within different classes in the same grade, so my lesson plans are all over the board. One thing I have really enjoyed about working at the secondary level is that I have more freedom with what I do with the students. For many of my classes, I work alone with a small group, and the teachers have told me to work on their conversation skills, or do any activity around a specific theme. It makes it more interesting for me to lesson plan, but it also creates more variety between my classes, and the weeks I work with the students. It’s nice to be able to have debates with students or to work on activities that force them to speak, rather than solely working on vocabulary expansion.

Additionally with secondary schools, it’s possible you’ll get to work in a school with specialized programs. Both my collège and my lycée have international sections, meaning the students in those sections do most of their classes in English, rather than just English class. My lycée also has a dual German/French program, along with a section euro (which I’ll be honest, I’m still not entirely sure what the difference is between that and the section internationale). I’ve gotten to work with these students on Gothic Literature, literary analysis of the Tempest, Free Speech, and of course, free form conversation classes, among other things. It does sometimes mean more prep work on my end (especially if I’m not super familiar with the subject), but it means I’ve gotten to work with students on a lot more broad topics than I had initially expected, especially in comparison to my experience at the primary level.

I’ll admit that I do miss the relationship I had with my students in primary because I haven’t quite replicated that this year at the secondary level. Since the students I work with vary each week (a function of working with half the class for half the time and having a hybrid model at the high school), I don’t know as many of their names as I’d like. Additionally, with the masks, it makes it very difficult to learn names because you can only associate them with 25% of a face. I don’t want to firmly make a judgement in this category though about knowing students at the secondary level, because I’ve only experienced it during a pandemic year. I’m sure it’s much easier to learn names and foster relationships when that extra added barrier doesn’t exist.

My hours are also a little more cleanly divided at the secondary level than they were at the primary level. Classes are essentially an hour, so the number of classes I work with is exactly the number of hours I’m assigned at each school. This means that, unlike in primary school, I work with a very finite number of classes. There are several teachers in the English department that I don’t work with, and several students I will never interact with beyond potentially passing them in the halls. It’s neither a good nor a bad thing, per se, but it does differentiate my experience working at the secondary level from the one I had at the primary level. Additionally, the English teachers at the secondary level are exactly that. They are only responsible for English classes so their focus is only on that subject. In terms of school hours, secondary schools do go later than primary schools. I work in the final period of both of my schools, which ends at 17:20 for the middle school, and 18:00 at the high school. I do get home later than I did working in primary, but I’m not working from the first bell to the last so I don’t find it to be too big a deal (especially considering the current health crisis – not as if I’m going anywhere after work)

At the secondary level, rather than a Conseillier(e) Pedagogique, you get a professeur referent(e). This will be a teacher who actively works in your school – if you’re assigned to more than one school, you’ll have a prof ref in each school. Both of my schools also have secretaries who I’ve been able to go to for administrative questions, such as when I had issues getting sécu to go through properly. I’ve also found that many of my teachers at the secondary level will speak English to me since they have a lot of experience with the language. I don’t mind speaking either French or English with my teachers (and sometimes we’ll switch mid conversation even), but that is something to keep in mind if you’re wanting to really improve your French while working as an assistant.

In Summary

Those are essentially the differences/similarities I noticed when working as an assistant at both the primary and the secondary level. Obviously these are just my experiences, and some of the difficulties I faced will have been things others found easy, and vice versa. No two schools are ever the same for an assistant, and even within levels, there can be massive differences. I enjoyed my time working as an assistant at both levels, and am glad I had the chance to work in both! Please let me know if I missed any big differences between teaching at the two levels!!