J'aime mes éléves!

I had my second day teaching today. The first class consisted of students who have chosen not to go to university and so they are in a different program than the rest of the high schoolers. I think high school is shorter and then they go on to learn a trade or something like that. The teacher was rather crazy and all over the place, and not very good at speaking English-- eesh! She was nice, though, and let me conduct class how I chose and kept the students behaving. Kind of. I have never been in a room with such squirrely students, and I went to public school for thirteen years. Yeah. It was that bad!

The second class was okay. All I had to do was listen to students give a presentation. Some of them did remarkably well and some didn't even try to say anything at all.

For the third class I just had a small group of five students-- the smartest of Bernadette's 4th level (13-14 year old) class. They are my darlings and if I could I would adopt each of them! Their names are Julien, Kevin, Eugenie, Melanie, and Cortney. Cortney is actually a British boy, and I envy him so very much because he moved to France when he was four and does not have an accent in either language. He tried to trick me into believing that his name is Paul because, well, Cortney is often a girl's name... We had a great class. I think Cortney was especially glad to be there because you can imagine how bored he would get in an English class when he's perfectly fluent. When the bell rang, the students said, "Aw, already?" which I take to be a very good sign. Cortney told Bernadette (his usual teacher and my boss-of-sorts) that he really liked me and my class. My heart melted into a puddle on the playground.

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...