First week of teaching

This past week could (unfortunately) only be described as one thing: stressful.

We arrived on Monday morning at 7:45am (lessons start at 8:15am here!) and no one was in the department. We couldn't get into the staff room to access some equipment we needed due to a dodgy lock and neither did we know if it was going to be possible to unlock the classrooms we were teaching in, as we didn't have a key and the offices where they are kept were not going to open until 9am, which left one hope, a teacher who owns a set of keys, but there was no sign of her. Thankfully she did turn up at 8:05, it was such a relief to see her! And you'll be glad to know they agreed to giving us a key afterwards.

I had to teach a number of times in a language lab with a capacity of 12 when I had up to 21 students, and what's more, it was an old-fashioned one meaning the tables were all separated off into booths with wooden and plastic dividers. That did not make communication easy. There were many other rooms on the small side too, meaning having to hunt for chairs and sharing desk space. I have sorted out the worst room situations without much fuss which is a huge blessing. Large classes are a common problem in the department at the moment as the courses here are over-subscribed, meaning some teachers have language classes which are going on 45 students! I don't know how this has arisen, it's apparently the highest number they've known, and we just all have to get on with it, knowing a bit of absence would do us a favour!

I think I'll get used to the class size, but it's a tall order to keep them all speaking English! Most of my lessons went pretty well, though some classes were more difficult than others (naturally). The most difficult thing is the mixture of levels in any given class. There are students who have lived and worked in an English-speaking country for between 3 months and 2 years, students from countries other than France who are very comfortable with English, and even a few British-born girls. Then there are also a fair number of students who have a very weak level of comprehension and spoken language and have never been to an English-speaking country (though I realise the two of these do not necessarily go hand-in-hand!).

The timetabling was all a bit disorganised too, the students have to look at a notice board, pay careful attention and write their timetable down. As my colleague Martin and I get half groups, there were a number of mix ups between our timetables and the noticeboard. For one particular lesson, I started my introduction and about 3-4 mins in, another 20 people started piling into the room saying they were here and the group I had should be elsewhere, meaning nearly the whole class changed and I had to start again!

We suffered from a real lack of knowledge and direction on a number of things last week as newbies not knowing the French system so it was a struggle. I was unwell from Tuesday onwards last week too which of course didn't help matters!

A few positives: - My Chinese housemate cooked a nice meal on Monday evening for the Moon Festival. - I had a lovely evening on Saturday with an American girl. - I am grateful for the education I received at the University of Southampton, even if it does cost a crazy amount by comparison!

Fiona x