Soirée

This is my school, bathed in sunlight! I realised that I haven't actually posted a picture of the collège yet, and this seemed the perfect time. It really is quite a beautiful building, and doesn't look too much like a school, I was surprised the first time I saw it! The school itself is much better equipped than I was led to believe, in our talks at university we were pretty much warned that if we had a blackboard we'd be lucky! My school not only has whiteboards, but a projector in most of the rooms as well...shows you really can't make a sweeping statement.

So my Fridays are pretty short, my main two days of school are Monday and Tuesday...so I'm almost at leisure for the rest of the week! My first lesson was my normal session with the student from quatrième EURO...and to try and help her understanding and keep her interested I decided that the best thing to do was to give her some song lyrics with some words missing and told her to fill in the blanks. The song I decided was Pack Up by Eliza Doolittle. It actually went rather well to be honest...you really do feel proud when you can see your student making progress. My responsable told me that she spoke her first full sentence in English without prompting in her last lesson! I'm glad I can help, even in a little way.

My final lesson was with the quatrième EURO, and I ended up staying for two hours rather than one...nothing like keeping myself busy! The teacher was really tired, and told the students so...and you could really a difference in their behaviour. There was a lot more talking and a lot more speaking in French rather than in English. It is true, teaching is like a stage...if you let your mask slip the students really do see it. I've found myself that I've created a persona for teaching that is not necessarily my own character. Bit too in-depth, apologies. So I was taking groups of five out of the class to make them debate, and some were brilliant, some were like getting blood out of a stone!

The evening was spent in Ouistreham, a little seaside town about half an hour away from Caen, and the home of one of the teachers at the collège. He also happens to teach at the same lycée as Claire, Becky and Laura so off we all went to his soirée, not really knowing what to expect! And it was an absolutely lovely night, as he is only a few years older than us and he had invited some of his own French friends from university, as well as another young teacher from the lycée. As Romain is French, he had specially picked the wine for the evening in an attempt to teach us English some good French wines...and boy they were good, but I still wouldn't know a cheap one from an expensive one. He also got quite upset when Laura and I started drinking our red wine from champagne glasses and insisted we changed them...hilarious! The mix of people worked perfectly (five French, three English, one German), and there was a lovely split of French to English, enough to think that I was improving my French at the same time as having an evening in! Didn't get back until the early hours of the morning, getting a lift from the lovely young teacher from the lycée...was so nice of him to offer to take us all home, otherwise a taxi would have been at least forty euros, if not more. Perfect end to a lovely night.