J’ai fini!

Last week my hours at one of my schools changed, from Thursday to Tuesday. They needed help with doing oral exams for the Year 10s (Fourth years for some of you amongst my readers) and so they asked me to swap. This was convenient for me and I enjoyed a change of activity. It also gave me a glimpse into another part of being a teacher. For some of the kids the experience was very painful, because they are not used to speaking that much in English and they hadn’t even revised simple things. They had to answer questions about themselves and their family first of all, then they had to talk about a famous person in the past tense (a bibliography, they were given information to go from) and then present a famous person as their friend (again, someone who they were given information about). They had 5 minutes prep time and then came in to sit in front of two teachers. One would be speaking to the child and the other making notes and writing some marks. The rest of the marks would be decided at the end by both teachers.

It brought back memories of preparing, waiting and sitting in front of my old French teachers. It’s not really that nice an experience so I empathised with them. Unfortunately at one point I did unprofessionally burst out into laughter at what a boy said, and so did the other teacher! There were a number of pupils who mixed up ‘he’ and ‘she’ when talking about men and women which was fairly funny, but then one lad seemed to have no concept of ‘I’, ‘you’, ‘he’ or ‘she’. He came to the last section and had already said a few amusing things along the way, but for this section he was talking about a woman. He had to describe her appearance, including the clothes she was wearing and where she was born, etc. Well, I saw a dress at the bottom of the page, I was pretty certain he wasn’t going to say ‘She is wearing a dress’. Sure enough he started the sentence with ‘I…’ and carried on with ‘am wearing a dress green’!! So it was funny not only because of the actual sentence, but because I had anticipated what he was going to say! My other favourite exchange, this time a girl, was the question “What are your hobbies?” followed by the one-word response “Spider”!

Friday was my last day of teaching, at my preferred school in Pérenchies. I’ve grown a real attachment to the teachers and other staff there; they’re a really nice bunch. I gave some ‘thank you’ cards and presents to the teachers I’m closest too and I made them some cakes (welsh cakes and mars bar crispie cakes), and I got a bit of a shock, because most of them had never seen a cake made with rice crispies!! It’s funny how some things are so much part of what you assume to be common. Anyway…they loved the cakes and I received lots of nice words, verbally and in a card, and a necklace too. I even got a present from the Head teacher, which one of the English teachers said was quite an honour, because it had not happened before with previous language assistants!

A lot of the kids at both schools were sorry to see me go as well, and I them, I’ll miss them. I unexpectedly was on the verge of crying saying goodbye to one of my favourite classes! In various classes, a lot of them (mainly girls) wrote things on the board at the end of the lesson for me and it was really sweet. Even some who I didn’t think like me! There are of course some pupils who I won’t miss…!

This afternoon I’m going to say goodbye to the English teachers at the school in Armentières; they wanted to say a proper goodbye and have invited me for a drink. This, again, hasn’t happened for previous assistants, so I’m really pleased. It shows I’ve done a good job and they appreciate me for it. In turn I want to praise God that he has enabled me to do a good job at the two schools for Him.

Back soon with more news, lots going on at the moment!

Fiona x