At 11am I met up with my liaison for the schools where I will be teaching (not to be confused with the advisor from the CIEP (Centre international d'etudes pedagogiques)). The liaison is responsible for the langues vivantes (modern languages) program at a number of schools in the city. The advisor is in charge of the logistics for the assistants (making sure we have places to stay, helping us figure out how to get around the city, etc). All of this is to say that this morning I got to find out more about my schedule and the kids I will be teaching from the woman who knows these things:
#1: No class on Wednesdays or Friday afternoons. Wednesdays because in France younger kids don't go to school on Wednesdays, and Friday afternoons because my liaison wanted me to have the option to take an earlier train if I was going somewhere for the weekend (very considerate).
#2 : Definitely will be teaching kids ages 6-10 years old, in two different schools. I'll be helping in 7 different classrooms, each two times per week, and two other classrooms each once per week. Each class lasts for 45 minutes.
#3 : I will never be the only teacher in the room. But I may be the only teacher in the room who knows any English, and therefore, I'll be responsible for most of the teaching. YIKES! I was very much excited about the "assistant" part, but being the primary teacher intimidates me quite a bit. Luckily the first two weeks are solely observation, and hopefully between that and leaning heavily on my education-major friends, I'll be ready to go once called upon for active duty.
The liaison is also going to take me to the schools on Thursday to show me around and introduce me to the director of each school and the teachers, so I know where to go on my first day (this coming Monday).
After that meeting I hiked up to the gare to catch my train to Liesle (pronounced, wait for it, "Lee-el," trust me, of all of the pronunciations I attempted, none of them was that). A quick 20 minutes later I descended from the train and met Susan, who was waiting with her Cairn terrier Sparky. We walked down to her house, only a few minutes from the train stop. It's a beautiful home -- exactly what I would picture if someone told me they lived in French countryside. She, her husband and I ate lunch on their back patio (surrounded by tressles covered in grape vines). First we started with homemade apple juice (more on that later) and pistachios and then dined on a quintessentially French meal: a salad of fresh greens, potatoes, pieces of chicken, lardons (they sound funny, but they're sort of cross between ham and bacon), tomatoes and cucumber, plus homemade bread and three kinds of cheese. For dessert Susan made an apple and raspberry tarte. Yum!! It was all delicious. Susan and Emmanuel met while they were both at UPenn -- he's French and they moved here after living in Algeria for two years where he was teaching as part of what was then required military service.
Now he works as a consultant for the development of national parks (turning them into visitor-friendly spaces while respecting the environment) and she is a counselor at a private middle school. The original plan was to go for a walk in the forest very near their house -- one of the largest complete forests in France. But Emmanuel had to scout out a site in Mouthe in order to turn in a proposal in less than 48 hours, and he invited us to join him. So we all piled in the car (Sparky included) and drove about an hour to this national park. The map below gives you an idea of how close we were to the border (Mouthe is circled at the bottom left, the part labeled CH = Switzerland):
Even if we had just driven there and driven back, it would have been worth it for the view. But fortunately, we were able to get out and hike around. Emmanuel took pictures of the three buildings on the site (hopefully he'll be able to turn one into a nature center). The landscape was very hilly and exceptionally green. There were lots of coniferous trees, with some deciduous ones sprinkled in too. The elevation was nearly 4,000 ft, so this area gets lots of snow in the winter. For now, there were cows grazing and the tinkle of their bells sounded like wind chimes. Susan told me that the different tones come from differently-sized bells, and the cows are assigned the bells based on the relative rank in the herd (the top dog gets the lowest-toned bell). There were also some horses in a pasture connected to one of the barns: three mares and their foals -- it looked like they were all born this past spring. It was cute how exactly the babies matched their mothers' coloring. We hiked in a big loop for about an hour, then drove back. It was really neat to see so much of the countryside -- the leaves haven't started to change yet, but the autumn sunlight cast a magnificent golden hue over everything.
So, I mentioned homemade apple juice earlier. Apparently every year the Coudels have an day-long apple festival which involves picking bushels of apples from a nearby orchard and using a masher/press/pasteurizer to make over 500 bottles of apple juice and apple cider. This family event has come to include friends too, and they invited me to come to this year's incarnation, which is taking place on Saturday. It's going to be great! And I promise to take my camera this time.
I hope you all are doing well! Tomorrow's plan is to make a quick trip to Carrefour (the French equivalent of Wal-mart, but don't tell them I said that) and then off to explore the citadel and some museums with other assistants.
A demain! (Until tomorrow!)
No comments:
Post a Comment