This week I was asked by two teachers to do some classes on roleplays. Almost all my hours this week were with the secondes (14/15 year olds), who I have decided are my favourite age group. When I was in Sixth Form I always thought that if I was ever crazy enough to become a teacher, I would prefer the older classes, but the great thing about the secondes is that they're old enough to be slightly mature, but they're the youngest in the lycee so they're usually not too big for their boots yet. Seconde classes tend to be nice and chilled out because their main exams are still more than two years away, so there's less pressure to test them all of the time. Anyway, they had to do roleplays between a parent and child, pretending that the child has decided to walk across France and must convince the parent that it's a good idea. I don't know why I've never thought of doing a full lesson on roleplays before, but it was brilliant! They had the whole lesson to be creative and use me to help them in whatever way they needed, rather than me just feeling like I was lecturing them the whole time. The more advanced classes used the time to to come up with some really sophisticated conversations, and the lower levels liked having the freedom to work at their own pace. Even my Thursday afternoon class who are usually a right cheeky bunch, loved being able to be creative. I turned the tables by asking them to come up to the front of the class at the end of the lesson to present their roleplay. I never thought I'd see that group nervous, but apparently they took it really quite seriously because they went all shy when they had to perform. It really paid off to give them that freedom because it made me see that group in a completely new light, and some of the stuff they came out with really took me by surprise. It put the quiet ones on an even level with the rowdy ones who make up the vast majority of the class and have a tendency to overshadow.
I'm seeing more and more that the activities I hated at school (things like roleplays, group work and anything that involved me getting out of my chair- I was a lazy bum), are now the exact activities that I enjoy teaching the most. Plonking an long text like a newspaper article in front of a class and getting them to read and answer questions is easy, but so so dull, for me as well as them. I never would have imagined, even six months ago, that I'd ever be the type to stand up in front of a group, waving my arms about and leading speaking activities that involve movement around the classroom and encourage loudness. I will always have a part of me that is introverted and reserved, but I definitely made the right decision by becoming a language assistant because I no longer feel like it's the first thing that people notice about me or the main characteristic that pops into peoples' heads when they meet me. Alsace is like a pile of vegetables- some bits are ugly, some bits are beautiful, sometimes you feel like you've bitten off more than you can chew, but ultimately it's doing you good. Yup, I need to work on my metaphors...
Anyways, despite the back tyre of my bike getting mangled and burst by a pesky rock on my way to work on Thursday morning, I've had an awesome week. I finally got down to work on my special study (the extended essay I have to write for university while I'm abroad), and sent out some emails in the hope of finding something to do in Italy this summer. It feels good to focus working on something different, and writing emails in English and Italian has been a novelty after months of dealing with French email etiquette (even the most well-intended message can seem rude, and often I write a huge long email, only to be responded to with a two line long reply, or even just an "ok". I won't ruin this happy post with another rant against the French though, their ways are growing on me rather than getting to me, and disregarding the odd hiccup here and there, I'm sensing that I've finally started to settle. I even felt a bit sad this week when the catering college gave me my schedule right up until Easter, when I leave :( And, would you believe it, I even found myself referring to myself as "Aleese" - a true sign of integration if ever there was one! And then to top off a great week, I got an extra chicken nugget in my box from the supermarché (it's the little things), my last lesson of the week was cancelled, the head of English said that she'd noticed a big improvement in her pupils' English accent since I've been helping them, and one of my more challenging classes made me smile by first of all bursting into a rendition of Adele's Someone Like You mid-class (I let them get away with it because they sang it in perfect English) and then they told me that I speak really good French. Happy days :)
Mission: Learn French isn't feeling so much like Mission: Impossible anymore. I'm making an effort to speak at every opportunity, I've switched from reading BBC News to "Le Monde" when I'm eating my breakfast, and I got out my french grammar notebook! Didn't open it yet, but it's a start!
I hope you're having an equally fabulous week wherever in the world you are. I'll leave it there becuase the man sitting next to me in the patisserie where I am writing this has started to crack his knuckles, eewww.
Bon weekend tout le monde!
Bisous,
Alice
P.S. I'm really sorry about the lack of pictures recently. I know that a block of text like this is dull, and it's frustrating because my camera is full of photos, but I am suffering from a lack of an SD card slot and USB port in my life. Also there are just too many photos to share on here anyway so I'm thinking of starting to use Flickr. Anyone know if it's good/ easy to use?
P.P.S. The title of this post is a French idiom I stumbled across this week meaning 'too be lucky". I thought it was appropriate seeing as I've been lucky to have my favourite classes this week, and of course that extra chicken nugget... Literally translated "avoir le cul bordé de nouilles" means "to have an ass full of noodles". I like to reward anyone who makes it right to the bottom (excuse the pun) of my posts with this information :)
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