This week in both of my schools I began to work more closely with the students. Now that I have exhausted the question/answer interview session with all the classes the teachers are now having me walk around the classroom to observe the students complete workbook exercises or lead them in reciting vocab words and critiquing their pronunciation. I'm still not supposed to be working with the students, but rather observing different methods of teaching from the back of the classroom. I'm really enjoying working with the students so far and feel I have more of a purpose working in the classroom rather than sitting in the back taking notes. On Monday and Friday at one of my schools I got to work with 2 different euro level classes. Euro level means these students opted to take 2 additional hours of a foreign language each week on top of their already assigned hours in regular english classes. During both class periods I took students into a separate room to practice speaking for about 5 minutes, and then I'd make notes about their strengths and weakness for the teacher to review over later. I think this will be a regular thing throughout the year. In another 6ieme class (in other words the youngest students in the school, 11 year olds) I got to walk around and help students complete a worksheet the teacher had assigned to practice saying what a fictitious person "likes" or "doesn't like". The class trouble maker had been sent to the back of the room within the first 3 minutes of class for disrupting the teacher while speaking and bothering the students around him. I'm finding out rather quickly that these students who talk non-stop during class are miss behaving out of spite they want the attention they may not be getting at home. Or they could just be little shits and want to create chaos. For now I will give them the benefit of the doubt. So as I walked around the class I stopped by the desk of the class trouble maker and realized he had written a sentence that was almost correct but need some work. So I sat down next to him and focused only on working with him for 5 minutes going over and over again the sentence structure he needed to use to express what someone "likes" or "doesn't like". He eventually caught on and after I had him read the correct sentence through a couple of times I told him he had done a very good job and now he can complete the rest of the worksheet based off the correct sentence he had just written. I went on to circle the class some more and stopped back by his desk to check the rest of his work. He was helping another student write the same sentence I had just been helping him with. When he noticed me he said "thank you miss for your help!". I'm finding that the french approach to education is often times different from the american approach. Not that one is wrong or right, but it's becoming more evident to me that just a little bit of time spent with the students who act out for attention or helping a student correct a sentence till they fully understand the concept helps a lot more than reprimanding and telling students they are wrong without providing a way to find the correct answer. In the US we have the "no child left behind" program. While that is not a philosophy employed in France, I think I'm going to make it a personal goal to offer every student I get to work with this opportunity. On Thursday in my "social challenged" school I was teaching a tandem lesson with the teacher over the different zodiac signs. So I would read a vocab word and the class would repeat me and then I went around the room quizzing everyone on their zodiac signs and what they mean. One girl in that class is just a little bitch. Sorry for the vulgar language, but there is no better way to describe her. She was one of two students swording fighting with scissors last week and this week she terrorized one of the smartest girls in the class. This snobby girl had already been moved to two different seats after continually bothering students. Towards the end of class she was placed at the front of the room. The girl sitting behind her is one of the students who is very knowledgable and always has the right answer, but often too shy to speak up and volunteer in class. The snobby girl started messing with this other girl's notebooks and pencil case. She ended up over turning the pencil case onto the floor and laughed about it. The teacher all the while is ignoring this situation, but I'm restraining myself from giving this snobby girl a good kick in the pants. The quiet girl stands up to collect her things and the teacher yells at her to sit down. Now, I don't know if the teacher is truly oblivious as to what has been happening or if this is the french method of punishing, but it upset the quiet girl so much she started crying, collected her things and walked out of the classroom. All the while the snobby girl is sitting there laughing. Once the bell rang the teacher called the snobby girl to her desk and pretty much just gave her a slap on the wrist and told her to be nice from now on. I'm sorry but I don't care what country or culture you live in, bullying is never tolerated nor is it dealt with like that. That was my last class of the day, so when I left the school the quiet girl was outside the school with her friend crying, but as assistants we have been advised to not step into troubled situations taking on the role of social worker but rather report an instance to the school disciplinary head. It will be interesting to see what happens this week in that class...
Monday is our training day organized by the school district. Woohoo 7 hours of lecturing!! I could have used that this time last week. I promise my next post will have pictures of the house, but for now you can enjoy these pretty pictures of Lille.
No comments:
Post a Comment