I have two days of 'teaching' under my belt...well if you can call introductions, answering questions etc as teaching! In general it was quite an adventure. The classes I have are either first year high school students ('seconde') or in the final year of school ('terminale'). One beginner teacher left me alone with his classes and I had to talk about myself for an hour! I tried to get the students to talk as much as possible but they were very timid. They think that they can't speak English well but they've already had about four years. They are much better at it than they think. If I pressured them to answer a question, they always got it right! Of course there were random mistakes but the meaning was evident. So, I think it will take a few weeks for all of the students to be comfortable with 'the American assistant', to adjust to my American accent (all of the teachers have British accents), and for me to get used to speaking very slowly. At the end of day one, I was EXHAUSTED even though I was only there for 4 hours. Today, Friday, is my longest day of the week with 4 classes (about 5 hours). I am not quite so tired today as I was yesterday, so I guess it is just a process of getting used to teaching.
I also have a group call 'BTS' which I have no idea what it stands for. These students come to the high school for some sort of classes but they actually are already graduated and have passed their final exam. So, some of the students in the class are actually OLDER than me. It's somewhat weird for me to be teaching people and making them listen to me when I am the youngster. Somewhat intimidating.
Also, on Monday I took a placement test for the Tuesday/Thursday night French classes that I signed up to take. There were about 300 students there from all over the world! Unfortunately a group of Spanish guys sat behind me during the test and shared answers the entire time. Made it hard to concentrate...I'm just hoping they are not in my level! I got an email yesterday saying that I'm in level 6, but they don't specify if that is the group for beginners or advanced students so hopefully I'll find out about that soon.
Well, that's all for now, just wanted to send you a quick update about my first official week at school!
YOu Go Girl. Oh, the joys of lesson plans and dealing with those teenagers! I'm jealous, Ha. Hopefully in a few weeks they will enjoy you so much that they will want to hang around and speak English as much as possible. I think you should make some rice krispie treats with them :-)
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