My first day as a teaching assistant with Speak 14

I started my teaching assistant job today at St. Jean Eudes, a private school in Vire. Before I knew what was involved I would have done this job for free. Now, not so much, but I'm still very excited about it. It's just that now I'm also terrified!

Bernadette, the English teacher who arranged my job, also arranged my transportation to Vire. I take the bus to a tiny town called Brettonville-sur-Odon (just a short ride from Caen), then I meet Claude, a math teacher, at the bus stop there. It's so nice of him to offer to do this!

We arrived at the school at around 1:00, and soon Bernadette arrived. For that afternoon I was to follow her to her classes and teach the students while she observed. Fortunately she had lesson plans that were very simple so I could just improvise with them, because I hadn't prepared a blessed thing. I almost keeled over when she told me that next week, things will be different. Next week I will be teaching three small groups of 10 with students between the ages of 12-14 BY MYSELF!!!!!!

This makes me nervous. Very nervous. Each class is only 50 minutes long, at least, and I think Bernadette will help me plan. All the same, I'm terrified!

Here's how class went today:
First class, 12-13 year olds-- They learned about Kentucky this week, and so after they introduced themselves to me, I had each of them tell me something that they had learned about Kentucky. I corrected their grammar on the board and elaborated on what they told me.

Second class, 14 year olds-- Buuuh. They weren't fun. One boy was kicked out of class for not doing his homework and refusing to participate. This class had prepared questions to ask me, which was fine, because I'm really good at talking about myself in both of the languages that I speak! When they did speak up, they were very nice and asked some good questions.

Third Class, 12-13 year olds-- I want to take them all home. They were just darling. Their job was to tell me things about their city and their school, and they did so at an extremely impressive level for students of that age learning a foreign language. I really hope that they end up being in one of my small groups next week.

I'm stressed out and exhausted, but overall, it was an amazing day. I hope the students are as well behaved next week as they were this week...