My first two weeks in a nutshell

Well what can I say the first two weeks in Saint Raphael have been fantastic. I feel right at home and it’s like I have been living here for the past two months (in a good way) and I really don’t want to leave at all.

March seems like such a long time ago, when I completed the application form and attended the London interview. From the start I knew this experience would be amazing, as I’d never had such a relaxed and enjoyable interview before, so I was totally over the moon to be accepted onto the program!

Fast forward to May and me and 14 other people are heading off to Saint Raphael, nobody really admitted it but we were all really nervous and unsure of what to expect from French schools.

On arrival in Nice we meet Gemma and Christophe two lovely people who have their own language school and helped coordinate our school placements. They also organised two trips to Nice and St Tropez. I can’t thank them enough for the help they have given us and providing us with all the information we needed to get by in St Raphael.

Lisa, Grace, Ben and I were assigned to ‘Le College Alphonse Karr’. The students are aged 11 to 16 and I was so delighted to be with them as I knew that I would have great support from them all.

Monday 7^th of May, was so nerve racking, we were meet by the Principle, the Deputy Principle and other members of the school. How lucky were we as they provided us with coffee, Capri Sun and croissants along with a presentation and tour of the school. It was slightly nerve racking speaking French with the Principle, especially when he asked us what we thought about the outcome of the French elections (Wow). Thank God Gemma was on hand to translate (note to self must improve my French speaking while here).

Lisa and I are teaching sixième (Year 7), cinquième (Year 8), quatrième (Year 9) and troisième (Year 10). I also found out that I was assigned to work with two teachers and both their teaching styles were different and they used different resources to teach. I met one of the lovely teachers Sophie Bachet. I hadn’t met the second teacher yet, but was told that she was looking forward to meeting me.

Tuesday 8^th of May was a bank holiday in France so I spent the day on the beach reading through the pupils course materials and with a chat and some brain storming ideas with Ben, Lisa, Grace and Michael, I felt a lot better and ready for Wednesday.

Wednesday 9^th May I head off to school with the rest of my group with a bundle of ideas and a lot of enthusiasm. I met the other teacher Raja Fenzer who at the time was frantically trying to teach them the 1^st and second conditional before their big test. I saw the class come alive when asked what they would do if they had a €1000, 000. I suggested that for tomorrow's lesson we should stay on the theme of spending a €1000, 000 as the pupils understood it better.

Thursday 10^h May I observed Sophie’s lessons, which was good as I got to know more students. By the afternoon my heart was in my mouth but pumped as I was teaching Raja’s class. The lesson was good as we started off by playing a warmer game called 'three seconds'.  It's a game where you pick a topic and each person has three seconds to think of a name related to the topic. The chosen topic was names of countries to start with and after a few minutes I changed the topic to celebrities. I didn’t know half of the celebrities the pupils were talking about so I got them to spell the names in English while I wrote them on the board. After which, I asked the class to imagine if one of the celebrities written on the board gave them a €1000, 000, what would they spend the money on. I separated the class onto groups of and they had to come up with at least four suggestions on how they would spend the money. It was a very interesting lesson as we had   suggestions of spending a night with Megan Fox to buying the school and destroying it because school is boring!!

Well it’s not all work and no play in St Raphael!! I have spent some quality time at the beach chilling, lucky for us it’s literally two minutes walk from the apartments; the sea is freezing but good for the old circulation.

We’ve also been on a day trip to Nice (courtesy of Gemma and Christophe). Lisa, Grace and Mark and I took a day trip to Monaco the week before the Grand prix which was so nice to see how the other half live. Today we went to the ‘Cannes film festival’, only one word to describe the day ‘amazing’. Catherine and I managed to take a picture with Mads Mikkelsen one of the stars from the film ‘Casino Royale’ and we also got a close view of Alec Baldwin.

I don't want this experience to end and hope that the next two weeks past by slowly so I can enjoy this experience even more.

Joss :o)