On "Teaching"

First, I'd like to mention that looking young while working at a high school definitely has its disadvantages. Like today for example, I spent half an hour looking for the class I was supposed to be working with because they weren't where they were supposed to be then gave up and started walking back to my room, only to be stopped by a stern old man who asked me "mademoiselle, vous allez ou la?" in a rather rude fashion. And when I told him that I was the English assistant, he just said "oh" and walked away. No apology, just a haughty "oh." Rude, especially considering that it's culturally unacceptable to not say hello before asking for directions. 

But anyway, teaching! Or rather, not teaching. Before I came here, I was worried that I wouldn't have enough topics to cover, that I would be terrible at planning lessons and would run out of things to talk about in class, or that students wouldn't be interested in what I had to say. Fortunately that has not been the case. Unfortunately, it is not for reasons that you might expect. 

My official job title here is "English language assistant." From that, our orientations, and the job description provided in the application, I gathered that my responsibilities should - and would - include working with small groups of students and helping them improve their accents, getting them motivated and excited about learning a foreign language, sharing a little bit of American culture with them, and teaching them about American society. Basically, teaching them English in small groups of 4-6 while facilitating cross-cultural exchange and speaking about my own experiences in the US. What I do instead is give mock oral exams on one-on-one situations. Lots of mock oral exams. I definitely understand why the teachers ask this of me, since most of my classes are with BTS students (students who have finished high school and are doing vocational training) or with terminales (students in their last year of high school) preparing for their bac. Both groups of students have an oral exam that they need to pass before they graduate, and in theory it's a good opportunity for them to have a "practice session" with a native English speaker. The problem is that most BTS students are not at all interested in learning another language, and from what I've seen, not all that interested in formal education in general. Not all BTS students are like that and I've met quite a few who struggle but make a good effort to talk anyway, but I've also seen far too many students who don't understand the most basic phrases, like "how are you," and who spend almost the entire 15 minutes in painful silence broken only by the occasional "bah, je ne comprends rien" ("uhh, i don't understand anything"). And I'll be the first to admit that it does sometimes get frustrating to work with students who simply refuse to try. At the very least, you could tell me that you don't understand in English! Terminales are generally better, so it's usually a lot more pleasant working with them in these kinds of situations. 

But the fact remains that I'm not in France to be a mock examiner for the entire year. We were told explicitly that we should not be working regularly with students on an individual basis, and that we should be talking about cultural and societal differences between the two countries. (Ha. There is obviously a lack of communication between the rectorat and the schools.) But more importantly, I have so much unrecognized skill and potential just going to waste. I can share so much more with the students here, do activities with them that will get them genuinely interested and excited about learning a language that, quite honestly, can be extremely useful. I can do more than hand out documents or images that are selected for this task by the teacher and ask students for their opinions. I can talk about things that literally no one else at this school can. I may not be a licensed teacher, but I do have a lot of experience tutoring and working with students, and understand the challenges involved in learning a foreign language since I myself chose to study one for the past four years. I can and want to do something useful! 

Moreover, it makes so little sense for me to do this kind of work and evaluate students (people who, in most cases, I've never seen before) on their performance. I was educated in the States, which means that I don't really understand the standards and expectations for the different levels of students here. I've never taken the bac or even observed one, and have no idea what the criteria for a passing grade are. I don't know what the grades are. I don't know how much I can fairly expect from which students since I do not know them. Yes, I can give them helpful feedback on pronunciation and grammar, but since I'm not familiar with the exam, I don't know which mistakes are actually important and which you can just brush over. So I write down all the mistakes that they make (and the corrections) in my comments, but I'm concerned that this serves to discourage rather than to instruct. I'd certainly be discouraged if I thought that I had done a good job but was given a sheet detailing 20 mistakes I didn't even realize I had made. It would be so much more useful for me to talk about things that I'm interested in and knowledgeable about, no? I can talk about race and gender, class, immigration policies, the education system, healthcare, American politics, hell, pop culture or even football for all I care, so long as I feel qualified or prepared enough to do so. And I can guarantee that it would be more interesting for students than mock exams that they've clearly already done a number of times. (Ever met someone who can't understand/answer "how are you" but can describe a picture? I have, far too many times to count.)

And so I'm left feeling as though I work a lot, but accomplish little to nothing. I have little freedom in deciding what to do, and in most cases am expected to do exactly what the teacher tells me to do. I'm seldom asked for my opinion or for ideas that I have, and if I am asked to do something, it's to look for documents that can be used in the mock exams. In essence, busy work that I really have no interest in doing. I've resigned myself to it for the most part, but what I do here is not at all what I expected. My job is not yet one that I absolutely can't stand, but it's certainly not one that I enjoy either.

If there's anything I've learned this year, it's just how important job satisfaction is to me. I know that I can come off as too serious and not very optimistic at times, but in truth I'm extremely idealistic. My problem is that I have high expectations - both for myself and for others - and expect to make an impact in everything that I do. I need to feel useful, to accomplish something. If I don't, I become unhappy, and if I'm unhappy, I don't do my work well. I think that I expected to somehow "save the world" or at least improve it a little bit by teaching French adolescents English (really not sure how or why anymore), but I don't know if my being here has improved even one student's language abilities. And the possibility that I may have wasted the past four months of my life is not one that I like to think about.

I just got back from buying plane/train/bus tickets for the upcoming break - called winter break even though it goes from late Feb to early March - and am so excited! Lisbon, followed by Granada and Sevilla (I've been to both before but Andalucia is beautiful and I get to see Jeff again!), and hopefully Cadiz for Carnaval, then Marrakech. Which translates to warm weather and a lot of sunlight. Mmm can't wait!

Joyeux Noel & Frohes Neues Jahr

I had to look up the German spelling for Happy New Year, and it is totally not what I was expecting. 

Moving on.

I had to spend the holidays away from home this year - another first - but luckily I didn't have to be alone. I met up with Jeff and Megan in Paris for Christmas, where we basically ate our way around the city and watched BBC specials on Chechnya and other places. (In our defense, a lot of things were closed while we were there.) We did walk around the city quite a bit though, and managed to go to the Musee d'Orsay on our last day there. We also went to the Sacre Coeur, Laduree, and the Christmas market on the Champs Elysees, and saw many a drunk SDF shouting vulgarities on the metro. Christmas dinner was a little bit pricey but delicious - there was no turkey or ham involved, but foie gras, kir, tartiflette, profiteroles, and wine aren't a bad alternative.

After our short three day stay, we went to Germany to see friends who used to be German teaching assistants at Amherst. Jeff and I flew out first to Dusseldorf, where Helene picked us up at the airport and gave us a little tour of the city before taking us to a restaurant to eat an insane amount of food (I had a huge ham hock, mashed potatoes, and sauerkraut) and try German beers while we waited for Megan to arrive. After a not so successful attempt to go see a pink castle nearby, we picked Megan up from the airport and drove to Gottingen, a cute university town in the center of Germany. Again, we spent most of our time just hanging out and talking or watching movies, but it was easily the best week I've had since I've gotten to Europe. After the frustration I experienced in France, it was refreshing to get away for a bit and see friends in a place where things actually get done. Though I haven't spent too much time in Germany, from what I saw it is generally much cleaner, better organized, friendlier, and cheaper than France. I absolutely adore it, as our German friends heard approximately 10 times a day, and can't wait to head back there. Really, what is there not to love about a place where you can spend 20 minutes looking at all of the different Haribo candies, roads are cleared in a timely manner when it snows, and beer is 2 euros for 2 pints instead of 3 euros for half a pint?! Not to mention the guys, who are super tall and good looking, and somehow all speak English. 

New Year's Eve was a little bit more exciting than the rest of our time in Gottingen, though the ice skating and trying out newly learned German phrases on servers in restaurants were also extremely entertaining. We dressed up in typical American fashion then had raclette (potatoes, meat, veggies, and bread with a lot of melted cheese) and sparkling wine before doing the bleigiesen thing, a German NYE tradition. Bleigeisen is where you melt metal shapes - we had a heart, money bag, coin, crown, and some others - over a candle then throw it into a bowl of cold water so that it takes a new form, then interpret the shape to find out your fortune. We had dessert afterward and hung out at the house for a little bit longer before heading out and counting down to the new year outside. We set off fireworks and lit sparklers (and by that I mean other people set off fireworks as I watched and played with sparklers instead) at midnight, when I accidentally texted people with "bonne anniversaire" instead of "bonne annee," then continued to ring in the new year until around 4 am. All in all a good night, though a far cry from what I usually do at home.

Christmas in Paris

Dusseldorf and its awesome clock tower

The most kissed girl in the world, Gottingen

Amherst friends!

New Year's Eve

Bleigiesen

Setting off fireworks!

Post-countdown! Frohes Neues Jahr!

Things I bought in Germany. You'd think I live in a third world country, but things are just a lot more expensive (and jalapenos don't exist) here.

This has been a fantastic week

I've seen blues skies (and even some sun!) for 5 days in a row, I had a conversation in French with one of the students here and was able to connect with him, another student told me he didn't want to go to French class because he liked talking to me better, I made 2 of my classes sing Christmas songs and they actually enjoyed it, 4 of my 12 classes got canceled, 3 of those 4 were on Friday so I got the day off, I made crab cakes for an English dept potluck and had teachers tell me (in a very surprised tone, of course, since all we Americans eat is McDonald's) that they were really good, managed to bust my outlets again while making said crab cakes but in a truly not French fashion got them fixed 3 hours later, finally found cheap winter boots, and am now on break. What a great end to the first semester.

Outlets are fixed, the sun came out to play, and the DREAM Act passed the House.

This is much better.

Wednesday

I was going to write something positive today. Really, I was. Despite the fact that I've seen the sun maybe 3 times over the past month and that I can't communicate with my friends back home and that my job is completely unsatisfying and that it rains every single miserable day here. Okay, to be fair it doesn't rain every day. It snows sometimes too. 

But fact remains that I'm alone in a foreign country and living on a school campus run by administrators who feel it necessary to censor every damn thing online (the organizing for america website, really??). Look, I need facebook in order to stay in touch with people back home. Yes, I know that email exists. But no, people my age do not communicate using email. We're the social networking/texting generation. We send short little messages frequently to keep each other updated. We do not sit down and write nice long letters/emails to each other on a regular basis. Even our emails are short and to the point. So let me talk to my friends back home, get updates on how and what they're doing. Or if you insist on blocking my account, even though I'm not a freaking student, at least let me pay for a separate internet connection. Give me an alternative! Don't just tell me that it's too bad and that I should try texting and email. I cannot text or email people because I don't know who's actually here and don't have their numbers. And I can't text or email people back home because the mobicarte prices are ridiculous and I don't even have some of my friends' email addresses. And your crap internet connection drops every 5 minutes anyway. You are effectively isolating me from all the Americans in France and my friends back home for 7 months. And that is not okay.

That isn't what pushed me over the edge though. Not today at least. No, it was more the fact that the French like to take time off of work for absolutely no reason in the world. If all of my outlets suddenly stop working as they did earlier today, and I go to the res life office at 2:30 on a Wednesday afternoon, there should be someone there. I should not be greeted by a sign informing me that no one is in the office on Wednesdays or Fridays. It being Wednesday is not a good enough reason for you to stay home and do nothing. I can't use my computer and therefore can't prepare for my classes, I can't use my microwave or hot plates, I can't use my hairdryer, and oh yeah, everything in my fridge is going bad. If I can't do ANYTHING in my room except for take a shower and sleep, yes, I expect you to kind of do something about it. And by something, I mean something other that responding with "Oh, that's too bad. But it's Wednesday and no one's here anymore. At 3 in the afternoon." 

UGH. 

I'm far too much of a workaholic to live here. But then again, I shouldn't have to survive on bread and carry my laptop/adapter/ethernet cable/class notes/everything I might need in order to plan for my classes to another building at night in the rain in order to do my freaking job, regardless of what country or city I'm in. 

I miss the sun and my friends and family and people who actually work normal hours and do their job efficiently. I miss home.

Thanksgiving

I spent Thanksgiving away from home/family for the first time this year. It was pretty difficult being alone and in a country that doesn't celebrate the holiday, but I did (and still do) have plenty to be thankful for. 

Like the fact that I spent some time on Thanksgiving finally giving a presentation that I prepared instead of conducting more mock oral exams. (Basically almost the entirety of my existence as an English assistant here has consisted of giving these mock exams, which is a terrible idea for a number of reasons I won't go into here.) I taught some students about Thanksgiving and had them play a game afterward to see how much they had actually understood, and it went pretty well. It was easily the most gratifying hour I've spent at the lycee. After classes, I headed over to the bibliotheque americaine's Thanksgiving celebration, which can be summed up as "tea" and "not very reminiscent of Thanksgiving." Not that it wasn't nice, but it made me more homesick if anything and reminded me once more of just how far away from home I am. So I came back and made myself a makeshift Thanksgiving dinner to tide me over until the real one at Pont-a-Mousson on the following Saturday. It was so good to be with other Americans and eat and drink excessive amounts and have pumpkin pie. Mm pumpkin pie. It's strange how being in France makes me miss things that I don't even really eat when I'm in the US.

My somewhat sad makeshift Thanksgiving dinner

Pont-a-Mousson

More Pont-a-Mousson. The river is so much prettier there than it is in Nancy.

Decorations!

Hand turkey!

Appetizers

The desserts & maybe 1/3 of the drinks...

Food! :D You see here turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, mac and cheese, and green bean casserole.

Sweet potatoes, wild rice casserole, gravy

We went for a walk after dinner and learned how pretty Mont-a-Mousson is at night.

Aaaand then went back for dessert! The homemade pumpkin pie was super good.

And since everyone does it on Thanksgiving, here's an incomplete list of the things I'm thankful for:

- Family and friends. I'm sure I'd survive, but life wouldn't be quite so sweet without them.
- The basics - food, water, having a (free) roof over my head. And the not so basics - hot water, electricity, adequate heating.
- Being in good health and having insurance!
- Employment. My job hasn't been quite what I wanted or expected, but I'm still learning from it and I'm grateful for that.
- Other language assistants. Those who I feel I've been able to connect with, and those who make an effort to include me on activities knowing that I can't access facebook like most of them can.
- Internet access and skype. Skype has really been a godsend.
- Students who talk!
- Being fortunate (and wealthy) enough to live abroad twice.
- My education. IMSA and Amherst have been such an integral part of my growth, and I'm thankful to have been able to attend both. And, of course, for the generous people who made it possible for me to afford Amherst. 
- Knowing what I want to do in the future. I've met so many people here and have a lot of friends back home who have no idea what they want to do for the rest of their lives, and I feel fortunate to have something to look forward to. I don't know what it is exactly, but I feel like I'm meant to do this and I'm so excited to get started.
- Thanksgiving at Pont-a-Mousson. I'd be so much worse off without it. 
- Living (permanently) in a country that knows how to deal with snow and ice! I've slipped so many times on icy patches here that I've lost count. Icy sidewalks are a public hazard, France!! Use some salt!
- And a whole bunch of other things. Like my cameras, laptop, my external hard drive and the tons of movies I put on it, speculoos, baguettes, camembert, Love Actually, the electric piano at the lycee, good wine, movies in vo, vin chaud, trains, Christmas music, tea, and sunny days. 

And, of course, the fact that I'll be spending Christmas in Paris with Jeff, and then going to Goettingen for New Years! So excited to spend part of the holiday season with friends.