Dragon

I told you this dragon thing is everywhere! Quick photograph after a long day of work, my evening I did absolutely nothing in particular...bar do everything that had not been done because I have been too busy (I know, la pauvre!).

My day started with me at my most grouchy, and the normal sixième at their most hyper. Not a perfect start to any day, but I think we did alright in the end...even if I had to "lose my temper" and shout at two of the boys. They must think I'm quite a calm person the majority of the time, but the funny thing is I do notice when low-level bad behaviour is happening, I just sometimes don't feel my vocabulary is up to dealing with it! But this time it most definitely was. As the teacher and I had split the class, you'd think we would probably split the ones who needed more help/were more challenging...but I ended up with the three worse boys in the class and the poor dyslexic one! Conspiracy?

Luckily the rest of my day went pretty well after the initial oh-dear-lord-is-it-going-to-be-one-of-those-days days. I spent my normal hour in with the histoire-geo class of the troisième INTER, and they were of course lovely as ever; and then I moved on to my own class which was the other half of the cinquième INTER. I pretty much did the same lesson as the week before, but with a few changes. It was a lot more interesting with this half of the class, as we were working on English and American accents but with a half-American student (with an accent!) in the class! What was really interesting to see was what had Frenchified (living in France), what had Englishified (being in an English International Section) and what had stayed the same about their accent.

Bit of a panicked lunchtime, having to sort out a lesson plan for the next lesson (my own fault obviously, I was emailed about it late the night before so it should definitely have been done!). Although a variation on a theme, it still took about twenty minutes of work to get together what I needed. So, with the troisième EURO we did a second trial, this time the trial of 'The Landlady'. Although it did work rather well, with a lot more of the quieter students speaking up, I still felt like the subject matter could have been a bit more succinct. Oh well, you live and learn. I was asked to stay for the second hour of the class as well, and being English and having no other excuse not to (see yesterday) I did. I've now worked three hours over my contracted ones, and I doubt that I will be being paid anything extra for it (sorry, slight rant!)...

Anyhows, back to my day. The final class of the day was my lovely sixième INTER, and we're watching 'The Golden Compass'. Although having the literature student's mind of the films are never the same as the book (I was actually really disappointed by the film when I first watched it, as I loved the books so much), the film is actually really good in terms of talking points and vocabulary...so not all bad! This particular class is so lovely, they came to me asking if they could catch up the hour they missed when it was snowing...but I managed to hold firm and say I would think about it (I won't), and ask if I can add it into my timetable (I can't). I know, still skirting around the issue...but at least I didn't just say yes!

So, yeah, my day. Mainly lessons, lessons, lessons...but in other news I think my French has done another little leap of understanding which is nice; I think I can hold a conversation just that little bit better now...