La vie en France

       So where to start?! I arrived in Denbigh for the second time in optimistic fashion, after a fun- filled yet informative five day training course two weeks previous. After another day’s training with the ever- enthusiastic Michael, my fellow Frenchies were ready to hit the south of France!

       After having arrived in Nice, despite being a regular visitor to this part of the world, I could not help feeling an element of shock. After initially believing that Monday was scheduled as a settling- in day, Gemma and Chris soon announced upon arrival that we would be going into school on the Monday! And alas… we could even be teaching on our first day! K

       So after a broken sleep in my bunk bed, (largely thanks to Ben for unmentioned reasons) I headed for the bus station at the late hour of 7am. Admittedly, I did not anticipate being so nervous until some of my fellow Leonardos, namely Brenda, left the bus together, leaving me alone to meet Chris at the College de l’Esterel bus stop! For a short time my nerves were reduced by the calming presence of Chris, but nevertheless ten minutes later I found myself speaking French to the school’s Principal. Presumably, he was explaining the ‘emploi du temps’ for the day, but it would be a lie to say that I understood very much.

       There were moments at this stage where I had a reality check. Thoughts such as ‘Oh mon Dieu’ and ‘What the hell am I doing here’ were most certainly at the forefront of my mind! However, hindsight is a marvellous thing, and on this occasion I can look back and take a number of positives from the first morning with regard to life experience.

      

       It was also on this day that I met my mentor, and now friend, Valerie. She’s a delightful woman, full of energy and enthusiasm about teaching English. She was also the first person in the school to have spoken to me in English outside of the classroom, so she most definitely helped to ease the headache! Sadly, as I write, it has been a week since I saw her due to a serious car crash which left her hospitalised. Hopefully, I’ll see her again before I leave, unless that will be one of my deepest regrets.

       Moving on, Thursday arrived and I was itching to get started with the teaching. I arrived to school that morning anticipating another day of observing. The observing was interesting initially, but there are only so many times you can watch teachers repeating lessons, although it was interesting to see how the same lesson can receive so many different responses from different groups of students. As so often happens in life, a shock lay ahead of me on the gorgeous Thursday morning. Valerie announced that Chris had contacted the school the previous evening and told Mssr Cassubie that I would be being observed that very day. “Merde”, I thought. Although I wanted to teach, I was not ready to be observed on my first day! After the initial frustration, I dusted myself down, and with the help of Valerie created a lesson about the school system in England. I soon found out that I would be teaching the most infamously badly behaved class in the school! Anyway, to cut a long story short, the lesson went reasonably well, and despite Valerie appearing more nervous than me, the class appeared to enjoy the lesson.

       From this moment on, I could classify myself as part of the staff of the College de l’Esterel. I was now a teacher of English. Eeeeek! It only seemed five minutes ago that I was sleeping in until at least ten every day at uni! Now I was getting up at 6am every morning to essentially throw myself to the lions! But dya know what? I loved every minute of the teaching. The whole experience can only be described as one of the best of my life. However, the month did not pass without a number of comedy moments…

       One of the most notable was when a class was misbehaving wildly, and after all of my classroom management techniques had failed, I decided to start writing names on the board. A small, innocent girl spoke when I was talking and I used her as an example to the rest of the class. However, I wrote her name on the board incorrectly, which led to laughter from the class, prompting me to shout, “JE M’EN FOUS” to the class. For those of you who don’t know French very well, this roughly translates to ‘I don’t give a ****’ in English. To say this statement quietened the room is an understatement!  There were a number of other incidents worth noting, but that can be for another time.

       There are many other things I could write on this blog, but I will post another one in the near future. However, there are a number of special mentions I would like to make for people who have helped to make this experience so memorable. Firstly, Michael. He may be a Newcastle fan, and he may have annoyed me on the last night when trying to come into my room at 1am, but he most definitely enriched the project for every single person in France. From the interview in Manchester, to the last observation, one could sense his genuine passion for teaching English, and his innovative style was contagious. I can only hope that one day I will be as respected as he clearly is in the profession! Secondly, I would like to thank Celine and Catherine for giving me the opportunity to participate on the Leonardo project. I believe that they deserve credit for allowing young, inexperienced teachers the opportunity to utilise their skills, and fight for the youth of Britain to find jobs in teaching English! UKLC is most definitely a company that I would recommend to anyone in the field of TEFL. I have worked for a number of companies in my life, but never have I felt such a team ethic!

       I would also like to thank Gemma and Chris (although I’m not sure they’ll read this) for their hard work in France! They were always there if anyone needed help, and credit to them for the way they organised the project with the schools! Finally, I would like to thank my fellow Leonardos. I did not get to know you all as well as I would have liked (mainly because I only talked about myself LOL), but certain people I will make an effort to keep in touch with!

Merci, Aurevoir

Mark x

Sun, song, school, sea, sky... savouring St. Raph!!

FIRST WEEK (6^th – 12^th May)

On returning to Howell’s School in Denbigh on 5^th May everybody received an extra day’s worth of training by UKLC to top up our already impressive 4 day training received at the beginning of April by Michael Hudson, Jacque Johnstone and Carol Borne.  Our departure on Sunday afternoon, for our flight from Manchester to Nice, was a little delicate for some nursing hangovers after another getting to know you session once more in the delightful town of Denbigh on Saturday night.

We were greeted by Gemma and Christophe of ‘Autour des Langues’, at Nice airport who travelled back with us on the bus to Saint-Raphael and showed us to our apartment block.  Once checked into our rooms we were all issued with an information pack detailing all the information about the area, our school, the ages we would be teaching, transport plus a couple of trips they were laying on during our month’s stay to Nice and St. Tropez! Nice!

I shared my apartment with Grace – a lovely lady, with a colourful personality and fantastic teacher!  Thanks Grace for putting up with me. J Hopefully the sweet eggy bread made up for it!! J

I was very impressed with the all the information I received on arrival - it seemed very organised and clearly both Gemma and Christophe had put a lot of effort into seeing that all our needs were met and more than!

I was going to be teaching kindergarten or maternelle as it’s called in France, at Stanislas Ecole Primaire (Primary School), covering Petite section (3 – 4 year olds), Moyenne section (4 – 5 year olds) and Grande section (5 – 6 year olds).  I was a little bit hesitant of teaching kindergarten especially as my choice of words when asked about teaching in primary was “I’m not sure, I can’t sing!!”

All the maternelle teachers were lovely, kind and very helpful towards me and despite the language barrier they were trying in their best broken English and I was trying in sometimes my even worse broken French to converse.  Needless to say my French improved dramatically during my four weeks at the school! The good hospitality aside, I couldn’t help but feel a little bit disappointed after spending my first day with kindergarten, they were so very young, and I found that being in maternelle wasn’t quite my idea of ‘teaching’.  I felt like I was being more of a babysitter than a teacher of English.

However, at the end of the first week Michael observed my first day teaching which ended up turning into more of a demonstration!  This was very beneficial and extremely useful to me as it gave me a better understanding of teaching kindergarten.  I hadn’t quite grasped how much repetition was required for very young learners and how quick and necessary it is to change the activity in order to keep them engaged.   Though it may seem boring to sing the ‘Hello’ song every day and count from 1 to 3 using about 10 different activities, it most certainly isn’t boring for the children.

On our first Saturday in the South of France Gemma and Chris had arranged a trip to Nice.  Everybody went off to see and do their own thing.  A few of us found a beautiful and inexpensive real French restaurant in a back alley of the old town, where we all enjoyed some rather scrumptious French cuisine! After a wander around, Katherine, Sally and I decided to go for a walk to the park at the top of the hill which offered awesome views over the city of Nice.

SECOND WEEK (13^th – 19^th May)

I yo-yoed through my second week with my new found knowledge of ‘repetition’ and through trial and error tried various different activities to keep to the same topic, reinforcing repetition.  I also tried to establish some form of routine.  The variety of activities showed that it worked for some age groups and not for others.

I was advised during my training in North Wales, that a child’s concentration is their age plus 2 minutes however, I was lucky if it was 2 minutes at all!  I worked out from observing the children that some activities may work one day and not another depending on their mood and energy levels which fluctuated from day to day! 

I learnt that although there is only one year’s age difference between each class there is actually a much greater difference in regards to their behaviour.  This meant that some of the activities I could do with my Petite section (who were a bit calmer), such as ‘run to ……….’ was not a very safe activity for the Moyenne section (who were a lot more energetic!).

Routine is also important for very young learners; hence I always started with the same song/topic.  For example with my Petite section we always sang the ‘Hello, What’s your name?’ song at the beginning of every lesson, which I initiated through the same arm gestures every time to lead into it. This way the children knew what was coming.

In addition classroom management was a big challenge, especially as during Michael’s observation in the first week I had two very naughty and disruptive children.  I thought back to some advice that was provided by one of the trainers, Jacque Johnstone, during the training in Howell’s and decided I had to instil some discipline, especially having observed the main kindergarten teachers who were very strict with the children.

I had to put something in place so the children wouldn’t think that it was acceptable to misbehave when I was teaching.  So I introduced ‘the naughty chair’ (labelled with a sad face L) and through gestures and body language imitated that if they were good (thumbs up) I was happy and if they were bad (thumbs down) they would sit in the naughty chair! It worked! J

During this second week I asked lots of the other’s in the Leonardo group what they were doing with their age groups and for any ideas.  I believe everybody was happy to share and help if they could which I am judging from a few of us sat in reception at quarter to midnight singing ‘Wind the Bobbin up’ with actions! (This one’s thanks to Lisa!)

Also thanks to Richard Gunion (UKLC) and Hywel Care (Leonardo Spanish group) for providing some helpful suggestions during this week.

On the Friday of the second week, I had an extremely good day with all three sections of maternelle.  I think it was because I had found and selected all the activities that engaged them previously and to which they had responded well to.  Having said this I also had a massive spurt of energy this day, which also made a huge difference!

NB: Energy is necessary in high doses to deal with kindergarten no matter what the size of the group!

The whole group went out during the second week also to celebrate the birthdays of both Mary and Ben to a restaurant called Mogador opposite St. Raphael port.  It was a beautiful evening and an entertainer walked around the restaurant playing some Latino music for the customers.  However, I think he got a much bigger audience than he expected after a few of us got carried away with the mood and got up to dance in the street!

On the Saturday of the second week Grace, Katherine, Lisa, Jocelyn and I went to Cannes (yes the film festival was also on at the same time!) and walked along the beach and had a good old nose at the fabulous boats parked in the port.  What a different world!  Katherine and Grace spotted a couple of actors though I can say that if I hadn’t of been in their company I probably would have walked blindly through Cannes!  It was very interesting to see the goings on:  so many people – so much attention – a lot of decoration – famous people isn’t an area of overwhelming interest to me – but I do love the boats!! J

THIRD WEEK (20^th – 26^th May)

Following on from the first week, where I learnt about repetition being crucial to kindergarten in order to absorb this new language, I did also learn, during the third week, that there is such a thing as too much repetition (!!) and a change of topic was required.  I wasn’t aware of this until the Friday of my third week, which I would say was my best day so far!!! And I do think that it was purely down to changing the topic for all three of my maternelle classes, as the children were receiving new information and vocabulary.  If only I’d realised before!

When I first started with the kindergarten, it didn’t feel like I was teaching but just being used as an entertainer, which is quite an exhausting activity when you are teaching a group of 3 year olds for 15 – 20 minutes and then changing and repeating the same for the next group for 15 – 20 minutes and so on and so on.  Especially as a one of the main characteristics I found of being a successful teacher of English to very young learners is a lively and energetic personality – you have to show them that it is fun!

However at the end of the third week, and through a ‘felicitations’ from the Petite section teacher, I realised I was actually successfully teaching them English! The children were adorable and I think that they had got used to me plus I had reached success in disciplining them through the ‘naughty chair’. 

Whilst teaching kindergarten I also found that I couldn’t actually plan, more that I needed a list containing enough activities to ensure that I was equipped the very moment they lost interest, which was very quickly.  It was quite challenging to keep the children’s attention and to keep them focused.

The Saturday of the third week brought our second organised trip by Gemma and Chris to St. Tropez.  I had imagined it to be artificial in many respects, but I couldn’t have been so wrong.  St.  Tropez was sublime, a very beautiful town and again an extremely relaxed atmosphere.  I meandered around the huge market in the centre of St. Tropez before catching up with some others and taking a walk up to the citadel that had gorgeous views out to sea.  We did however on craving a refreshing drink, relax in a shaded bar in the centre of St. Tropez and becoming lost in the little paradise that it is completely forgot where we were and recoiled at the sight of the ‘l‘addition’ when presented to us! Needless to say I thoroughly enjoyed my 10 euro bottle of corona!

FOURTH WEEK (27^th May – 2^nd June)

When I found out that I was going to be teaching kindergarten I did feel a little bit suspicious, coming from Wales (is that the reason I was placed into kindergarten?), as I’ve never had to sing so much in my life!

The final week, but for a third week in four, it’s a three day week, as all primary schools are closed on Wednesdays anyway and there are three bank holidays in May!! The French certainly know how to relax and enjoy themselves. They make the most out of their bank holidays and even find an excuse to take an extra ‘bridge’ day if they can!

For the fourth week, I carried on being as energetic as I could for the kids, although I could feel the early mornings taking its toll. Revising the topics learnt in the previous weeks and introducing new topics to keep them all engaged, plus testing out other activities I’d found, not always with success!

Katherine and I during the first week had asked Gemma and Christophe if it was possible for them to provide/obtain extra classes for us to teach. For me it was a case of teaching an age group other than kindergarten where I could try out some of the training I’d received in North Wales. Gemma and Chris had been successful in advertising free English lessons for children so I taught my first class on the Wednesday morning of the third week and the second class on the Wednesday of the fourth week, at ‘Autour des Langues’. I am extremely grateful to Gemma and Chris for organising this opportunity especially at such short notice. Although it was only for two lessons I gained from them greatly and was extremely pleased when my second lesson went so well!

Saturday was departure day and we caught the bus to Nice airport. It was so sad to leave St. Raphael - the adventure was over. I honestly didn’t want to leave. It’s a beautiful place and flying back into Manchester airport approaching thick grey cloud, catching the first train towards the Welsh border and a second train through the valleys of Wales which stopped at every possible stop invented in the entire Welsh country (!) just prolonged the agonising realisation that for 2012 the Frenchies Leonardo project was over.

AND SO…

Reflecting back on this opportunity to teach has made me feel very grateful.  It has opened my eyes to teaching kindergarten, which would have been a true shock had I not had this experience, plus it provided me with the opportunity to live in the South of France, which was amazing.  I’d like to thank UKLC for obtaining the funding for this fantastic project as well as the invaluable training they provided and also to Gemma and Christophe for making it possible to happen in the South of France.

I find myself very lucky to have been chosen for a placement on the Leonardo project.  Not only for seeing the South of France, which is far more beautiful and tranquil than I ever imagined but also the opportunity to make good friends, whose brains I’d be happy to pick should the need ever occur in my TEFL career.  There were some lovely and amazing people on this project who truly are great teachers and it would have been great to have observed them also - but you can’t have it all!  I know some people may be reading this thinking ‘Oh Jo’ (Lucy!) But it’s true!! J

I will miss all the singing!  I’ve never sung so much in my life! We’d walk along the road and sing together, whether it was songs that we’d sing with the children such as the invented ones, e.g. by Katherine to the Hokey Cokey tune: “Du du du du du du du ... Whoow Grandma! Whoow Grandpa! Whoow Grandma! ...” or just any random song that happened to pop into our heads: “Bring me sunshine on a cloudy day, bring me moonlight…” (That one’s for you Grace!)

It was an outstanding experience: everyone interacting with each other, talking, laughing, joking, singing kindergarten songs in reception at 11:30pm!  Brain picking and sharing each other’s experiences at different schools on both the good and the bad days!!  Having certain people like Lucy and Ellie entertain you on the bus journey into school (sitting up the back of the bus – like the cool kids!) haha! Not to mention the return journey from school, with the likes of Katherine providing unknown entertainment with her faux pas of ‘parler le main’ in the classroom!

I thoroughly enjoyed sharing this experience (the ups and the downs!) with everybody who went to Saint-Raphael on the Leonardo project.  There were some very supportive people, energetic people and people keen to think of and share their ideas!!

I will miss everybody on the project! Some beautiful people and lots of fantastic teachers whom I am sure are as grateful as me for such a fortunate experience! I loved every minute of it - even the bad bits! – it just makes you a better teacher/person! J

Bonne Chance to everyone for the future and ‘enchante!’ xx