The job

September 28, 19h13 France time

All educators and majors in education, send me your teaching advice! I went to the two schools in which I am to teach this year and found out that my “assistantship” is really going to be a “teachership.” My contact person, the pedagogical counselor for my school district, informed me along with the first school’s principal that the teachers who I am supposed to aid don’t actually know how to teach English (and possibly don’t even speak it). First the principal asked me, “What materials will the students need for your class?” I said, “Uh, materials? I don’t know.” “Notebooks?” “Yeah… I think that’s all they’ll need.” Then they said, “You can teach the class, right?” and when I confusedly agreed, they ran around asking teachers if they had method books for certain English courses. I don’t know what I’m doing.

But! This evening, Nicole asked me if I would welcome a new student to the building, one who she said was American. She said she had to go the doctor’s, and she gave me Paula’s key and asked me to take care of her. And so I waited downstairs with a book and some cookies until Paula showed up with a tell-tale giant suitcase. Turns out she’s from Scotland, and she’s going to be an assistant too. :) She said she’s an English assistant who teaches a class on her own for nine months, and that she’s nervous because she’s never taught other than privately; I told her that I had to teach whole classes anyway, so we pretty much had the same deal, only mine was shorter. She lives right next door to me, and she said she’s all about sharing ideas, so it looks like we’ll be working some of this out together! I’m so glad to have someone to talk to in English who’s in the same boat.

I talked to a couple of the other assistants today, too, and we’re going to get together tomorrow night, so I’m going to be building a network! An English-speaking network, but a network all the same. And I’m sure I’ll get to know some French people eventually. When my French gets good enough that the people here will tolerate conversation with me.