Monsieur le Prof d'Anglais

BBC fail

2009-09-08T18:13:00.001+02:00

Sometimes I really wonder whether the country the BBC reports on is the same as the one where I live. According to Aunty, we are all "gripped" by a "row" over Sarkozy's height. I can't find anything on it on Le Monde's website, and it's hardly news that he's a bit vertically challenged. If he wanted to surround himself with people who didn't make him look short, why didn't he marry Wee Jimmy Krankie?

Yet the same BBC don't appear to have picked up on the alleged bust-up between Thierry Henri and Raymond Domenech ahead of tomorrow's qualifier against Serbia. I reckon that's probably gripping a lot more French people right now.

Warning, rant ahead

2009-09-06T19:08:00.001+02:00

I've just discovered this interview on BBC World with American expat Laurel Zuckerman. As you'll see from the interview, she's made a name for herself by writing a "docufiction" which roughly recounted her experience as a student preparing the Agrégation, which is one of the exams you can sit in order to teach in the French education system. Actually, it's not really news as the French edition of the book came out in 2007, as reported in The Guardian with an extremely misleading headline, although they, at least, interviewed other people. Here's why I think BBC World have given a deeply skewed picture of the situation in France.

Patrick Cox starts by saying "If you want to become an English teacher in a French public school, you have to go to a university and take an exam." Er, yes, just like if you want to become a lawyer, doctor, architect and so on. Why should teaching be any different? But what the article fails to mention is that Laurel Zuckerman took the Agrégation, which is the elite version of the CAPES exam I took. No mention of the fact that many "Agreges" go on to do PhDs or teach in Higher Education, where a more in-depth knowledge of the subject is required. The vast majority of teachers take the CAPES, so if you want to discuss teacher training in France, you should talk about the exam most would-be teachers actually take.

I described how the written part of the CAPES works a while ago so I won't repeat myself here. Suffice it to say that an oral presentation in English accounts for one third of the marks, while another third is based on your ability to evaluate teaching materials and discuss them with a panel, and the remaining third comes from your performance in the written exams, so Zuckerman's assertion that the ability to write a dissertation in French is more important than your level of English is just not true. In fact, being a native English speaker gives you an edge in some of the tests. And if you're going to work in the French education system, isn't it reasonable to expect a good level of French, so you can talk to your colleagues, take part in meetings, write reports and so on? If Mr Cox or Ms Zuckerman took the time to talk to any actual teachers, they would have known that there is a lot more to it than just the time you spend in front of the kids.

Patrick Cox goes on to say "it's a fairly standard assumption in language teaching circles that you're better off if you're being taught by a native speaker." I don't know where he gets that from, and in any case, it's a wrong assumption. You're better off if taught by someone who knows how to teach; at lower levels, it can even be an advantage to be taught by someone who's gone through the same process, who can understand and anticipate the problems. Zuckerman claims "In France, they constructed this whole, let's say, this idea that if you're a native speaker because you've never taken the time to really take apart the language and understand what kind of obstacles a learner might encounter, you can't explain the grammar properly." She dosn't seem to consider that that might actually be a fair point. I certainly couldn't have answered a lot of my students' questions without having done some study of the English language. When I ran a language department in an FE college in England, I was snowed under with CVs from peope who thought that just because they were native speakers, I would offer them a job despite their absence of any teaching qualification. It led to a pretty full waste paper bin.

She peppers the interview with anecdotes, like an inspector who thought that the plural of duck was duck or a teacher who mispronounced the extremely frequently used word Lutheran (because native speakers never mispronounce words ever, oh no...), but there's no evidence that this kind of thing is endemic. It's certainly not the case with any French teacher of English I've ever worked with. They may make the odd slip, just like I did when I taught Spanish, but they certainly weren't above coming to me with questions when they had a doubt about something.

Yet it is true that the level of English in France remains low compared to other European countries (though not, I suspect, as abysmal as the level of your average Brit in any foreign language). The assumption is that it must all be down to bad teaching, but I wonder. Having taught in a state school myself, I see teaching materials that encourage plently of oral practice, and not just traditional grammar-translation. In fact, the biggest resistance to more communicative approaches actually came from parents, not teachers. In the meantime, I've spoken with teachers from Holland who tell me that the approach in Dutch schools is very traditional, yet the stereotype is that they speak English better than your average Brit. Maybe it has something to do with cultural attitudes; the Dutch understand that few foreigners speak their language, so speaking foreign languages is almost as important as being able to read. Also, their foreign TV programmes aren't dubbed, so they get a lot more exposure. The French, like the British, speak an international language and the sense of urgency isn't the same.

If anyone at BBC World happens to come across these lines, feel free to leave a comment. I'd welcome the opportunity to point out to their viewers that the reality is more complicated than Laurel Zuckerman suggests. And I don't have a book to plug.

Happy new year

2009-08-30T19:21:00.001+02:00

Like most teachers, my year starts in September, so technically tonight is New Year's Eve and I should be out getting plastered, but I'm far too old and sensible for that kind of organised happiness. And I certainly can't go out on school nights any more.

Anyway, in case you've been wondering where I've been, there are two main reasons for my absence over the last year. It's partly because university students just aren't as blogworthy as teenagers, but mainly because I became a dad in the spring. That's right, M. and Mme le Prof now have a proflet of their very own! This means I've spent the summer having to get up in the middle of the night, and spending much of the day keeping him quiet. If you've ever taught teenagers on an English language summer school, you'll know the feeling only this time it feels much more rewarding.

Anyway, my resolution for this year is to try and be a bit more regular in my blogging. Hope all the teachers reading this have got decent timetables without too many gaps (I'm still waiting for mine). If you're just starting your new year, have a good one, and if you've just finished a summer school then you have my sympathies.

We're (nearly) in the money

2009-04-30T10:26:00.001+02:00

Last January I saw on the government's website for teachers that I'd gone up a scale point.

Three months later, I get a letter to say I've gone up a scale point.

I'm still waiting for the money....

God bless fonctionnaires.

Long time no see

2009-04-29T18:56:00.001+02:00

Real life has kept me away for far too long. That and university students just aren't as blog worthy as adolescents. Anyway, where was I?

University teaching has finished already. The upside to this is nice, long holidays (even longer than schools) but the downside is very intense teaching terms (one reason for the silence on the blog front) and loads of exam marking.
Lots of strikes in the French university sector, but not where I work (unfortunately) in protest against Sarkozy's latest reform plan, that would give a lot more power to Vice-chancellors and punish researchers who don't publish enough by making them do more teaching. You can imagine how people like me who only teach feel about that attitude to our work, but, frankly, it only reflects what far too many researchers feel about lowly teachers.
Oh joy, a suspected case of swine flu in the Paris area. People returning from Mexico should be made to wear big sombreros and shake maracas wherever they go so the rest of us can avoid them.
Biggest reason for my absence: Mme le Prof and I have become proud parents. The Proflet, as he shall be known on this blog, is doing very well and the race is on to see if his first word will be in French or English. I've also found out just how fantastic maternity care is in this country, and will never moan about my tax bill again.

Anyway, I'm now on Twitter, so you can keep up with my bletherings here, or on the new feed in the right margin.Tweets are so much easier than blog posts, so I'll probably update it more often. Don't expect it to be all France/teaching related though.

Apologies for absence

2009-03-08T19:08:00.001+01:00

Sorry you haven't seen much of me lately. Here's the reason why:

Yup, it's good old midterm exams again!

Internet gambling

2009-02-15T17:12:00.001+01:00

I've just settled down to mark some homework essays, yet I find myself spending more time on the web than at my desk. Not out of procrastination, but because some of the writing is suspiciously good. A quick search for a phrase on Google usually confirms said suspicions.

If you are a student and happen to read these lines, heed this warning: If you are a RHINO¹ in class and you suddenly turn in an impeccable essay with perfect spelling and grammar, alarm bells will ring². And if you can find it on Google, so can I. Just because I'm over 25 doesn't mean I don't know how to use the Internet. If you're going to plagiarise, for crying out loud, do it properly. Especially if you're studying for a Masters.

1. Really Here In Name Only
2. This applies even if the essay is hand-written. How stupid do you think I am?

The heat is on

2009-02-13T21:34:00.000+01:00

The university where I work is a new one which opened in the early 90s. So from a distance it looks like a bright, modern, glass building. On closer inspection, you see that the façade is covered with netting to stop bits of it falling off and killing passers by. No, really.

Where they really excelled, however, was when the architect designed the building with lots of huge windows. Of course, he had the sense to include air conditioning to keep us cool inside. Unfortunately, they ran out of money during construction and the air conditioning never got put in. So at the first hint of sunshine, it's like teaching in a greenhouse, even in February. Did I mention that some of the rooms don't even have curtains? And on the fifth floor, you can't open the windows more than a crack in case someone falls out.

This would be fine if we taught horticultural studies or used our offices to grow tomatoes or hash plants, though judging by the long queues of students outside some people's offices, I wonder if that isn't what they're doing. In the meantime, the only way to survive it to wear lots of layers so as not to freeze on the way to work, but still be able to remove a few indoors and still look decent.

I know everyone has it in for bankers at the moment, but why do architects seem to get off scot free?

Ah, diddums!

2008-12-21T09:33:00.001+01:00

Today's Guardian has an article on poor, middle class Brits who moved to rural France when the pound was high but now have trouble making ends meet. Apparently some of the poor dears will have to move back to where they came from (Immigrants! Immigrants! Where's the lynch mob? - sorry, wrong newspaper!), as the current exchange rate makes France more expensive to the tourists they catered for, though there's no mention of the fact that when they sell up, the same exchange rate will get them far more pounds than they would have earned six months ago. Interesting, too, that nearly all the article is devoted to whining Brits, and only the last two paragraphs quote someone French.

I've very little sympathy, to be honest. These people have been pricing locals out of the housing market for years; now the party's over and maybe that's not entirely a bad thing, especially since so many of these properties were second homes and only occupied for part of the year anyway. It's the locals with nowhere else to go when their businesses suffer who I feel sorry for.

But it's an ill wind, as they say. Mme la prof and I plan to take full advantage of the 1:1 (almost, at the time of writing) exchange rate when we pop over for Christmas. I see it as us doing our bit to prop up the British economy (and no, we're not buying a run down cottage in the Scottish Highland - we want to spend out holidays somewhere warm!). Maybe the Guardian would like to interview me....

BBC gets it wrong about France

2008-12-14T21:35:00.001+01:00

It seems the BBC has now joined the tabloid competition to see who can make the most fun of the French with this smug piece about "heavy legs", which is supposed to prove that France is a nation of pill-popping hypochondriacs, as opposed to the hardy Brits who just grin and bear it. Strange, then, that whenever I sat in a GP's waiting room in the UK, I would see a big poster saying "Antibiotics don't work on colds", though just why stiff upper lip, "mustn't grumble" English types would need such information escapes me. Maybe it was in case any French people walked through the door. Ho hum.

Madame le Prof explained to me that what the French call "jambes lourdes" is, in fact, the early stages of varicose veins, which explains why some people only feel it in the summer. You'd think a BBC journalist in France would have bothered to find this stuff out before sending a report back to her editor. It's true that the French have a reputation for consuming lots of medicines, but she could at least have done a serious piece on it rather than this hatchet job.

For once there's no form at the bottom for me to "have my say" and put them straight on this one, which is ironic considering the morons who the BBC usually allow to broadcast their vile, reactionary, ill-informed and, erm, idosyncratically spelled rants to the world via HYS. At least I no longer pay a TV licence.

The Great Red Spot

2008-11-28T23:05:00.001+01:00

A couple of weeks ago, an email went around the department saying that they had just bought a stack of laser pointers that we could use. Never one to look a gift horse in the mouth, I immediately snapped one up. It's great for pointing out stuff on the board while standing by the student who you want to answer a question ("What's the tense?" while pointing out the -ing ending, for example, eliciting the response "Er, passé?").

Now I've discovered an even better use for it. Now, any student trying to surreptitiously text a mate or or do the sudoku¹ will suddenly find their phone or paper illuminated by a red spot, as if an assassin was about to shoot it out of their hands. It's amazing how quickly they put their toys away, and I don't even need to say anything.

I wish I'd had one for school last year.

¹ These free papers have a lot to answer for. Students never used to turn up with newspapers back in the days when they actually had to pay for them.

Lookalikes

2008-11-19T22:51:00.004+01:00

Today a student told me I looked like Paul Scholes.

Absolute rubbish.

I mean, I wouldn't be seen dead in a Man Utd shirt.

M. le prof

Paul Scholes

And, yes, I know I've been silent for the last 2 months. More to come, I promise....

Edit: Thanks to Mme le Prof for pointing out this page wasn't working in Internet Explorer. If you didn't see the picture of the man in red, you might want to install a decent browser like Opera or Firefox

A black and white issue

2008-09-26T18:48:00.001+02:00

The rooms I teach in are split 50:50 between blackboards and whiteboards, and I'm really not sure which I prefer. So here are some of the pros and cons, feel free to add any I haven't thought of:

Blackboards:

For:
White writing on a dark background is probably easier on the eye.
Chalks don't slowly run out; you don't end up with a bag full of chalks that work for five minutes if you store them vertically for long enough.
You can shut everyone up by dragging your nails down the board.

Against:
Dark clothes quickly lighten up (on the other hand, you can annoy goth students by making them write on the board)
Your hands get all chalky.
Chalk dust up the nose leads to dry, crusty bogies all day.

Whiteboards:

For:
Clear, contrasting colours. I always use a different colour for phonetic transcriptions, for example.
You can use the board as an OHP or PowerPoint screen and write stuff on top (though check it isn't reflecting right back into the students' eyes)
The pens get you high (can anyone recommend a brand?)

Against:
The pens slowly run out.
Some kid will always get a pen of their own and write rude words on the board.
Said kid will always use a permanent marker so you have to sand blast the board before you can use it again.

So, as you can see, it's pretty even at the moment. Interactive whiteboards are fun until the computer freezes and you have to call out the IT bod for the fifth time that week....

So, any teachers want to add any more arguments either way?

Edit: Madame le Prof has reminded me that non-techie teachers have been known to ruin an interactive whiteboard by writing on it....

Divine intervention?

2008-09-12T19:43:00.002+02:00

You may be aware that the Pope has taken up our twice-divorced President's invitation to visit the country. It was nice to see him shaking hands with the pregnant-out-of-wedlock Justice Minister and the openly gay Mayor of Paris.

Pity the big guy upstairs responded by sending floods and setting fire to the Channel Tunnel.

This is a serious test of my lack of faith.

C'est la rentrée

2008-09-09T21:08:00.001+02:00

Today I started my new job teaching Business English to first and second year university students. No classes yet, this was just meetings and telling students what to expect. I also got to see my office for the first time - I get my own room with desk, PC, filing cabinets and the previous occupant left and old portable CD player. Woo! Now all I need is a kettle and a chilled drinks cabinet.

Anyway, before you all go "you lucky b*st*rd, you're teaching motivated adults", a quick word about the French higher education system:

There are three types of institution you can go to:

1) The elite "Grands Écoles", which are very selective. You have to spend two years doing Classes Préparatoires aux Grandes Écoles before sitting a competitive exam to get in. If you pass, you get in, if not you can join the third year of a degree course.

2) The Institut universitaire de technologie or IUT. They are also selective and offer two-year professional courses. After the two years, students can do an extra year to "top up" their diploma to a degree.

3) If you can't get into either of the first two, there's always university. If you have a Bac, even if it's not in a related discipline, you can still get in; it's not selective but the drop out rate in the first year is so high that the end of year exams are effectively selection. It's very much the poor relation of HE.

Guess which one I work for....

Anyway, I can't really complain as although the students may not always be the the most bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, it's an improvement on surly teenagers and the holidays are even longer. And I shouldn't get things thrown at me.

Ready to go

2008-08-22T21:59:00.002+02:00

Following on from my vivent les vacances post about six weeks ago, I can safely report I got through steps 1-3 pretty smoothly, except for building the flatpack wardrobe. It's huge, made of MDF and weighs a ton; I'm sure MDF is made from the cores of neutron stars. Ever wondered why you never see HDF? It's because it collapses under its own weight into a singularity before they can make anything out of it.

Anyway, with the new school year just over a week away, the annual moan about the cost of sending kids to school is beginning in earnest. Even though the government does make extra money available, there's always someone who says it isn't enough, and the news always pick up on the "cost" of la rentrée as though parents needed to buy a whole new set of things every year. I hate to sound like an old fart, but in my day I had the same set of rulers, calculators and stuff for all the time I was in secondary school; I didn't need a new pencil case and schoolbag every September. They even include the cost of new clothes, which I could understand if French state schools had uniforms, but they don't (even then, when I was at school you got a blazer several sizes too big when you started secondary, it just about fitted when you were 13 or 14 and only just covered your elbows by the time you sat O-Levels) and it's hardly an extra cost, unless the kids would run around naked and barefoot if they didn't have to send them to school.

OK, I'm being a bit frivolous, and I'm sure there are plenty of families who really do need extra help. I can particularly see the sense in extra help for students in vocational colleges, as they often need to buy specialist gear even though they often come from the poorest families (as in most countries, French middle class families consider learning a trade at 16 to be for other people's children). But it's still got to be cheaper then giving up work and home schooling the little darlings.

Drama at the Tour de France

2008-07-20T13:27:00.001+02:00

In a dramatic development today at the Tour de France, nobody failed a drugs test.

A sense of entitlement

2008-07-12T17:59:00.007+02:00

I am now officially a professeur titulaire! The results of the evaluation my placement year were posted on the internet yesterday.

Not that I was that worried given the favourable inspection report and so on, but I can now say I'm qualified to teach in the French system. But since Monsieur le Professeur Néotitulaire d'Anglais is a bit of a mouthful, I'll stick to being MLP for the time being.

Apologies for the awful quality of the screenshot; click on it for the high quality version.!

Vivent les vacances

2008-07-07T10:04:00.003+02:00

Last week was the end of year staff meeting and meal, so now I'm officially on holiday until September. I keep being asked what I'm going to do for the next couple of months; the plan, in no particular order, is:

1) Get married. Yes, I'm making an honest woman of Mme le Prof, or she's making an honest man of me, I'm not sure which. Not that there was anything particularly dishonest about what we were doing before, of course. Still, it makes a good knees up and we might get a few presents out of it, which will come in handy for (2) and (3).

2) Move flats. I'm about to become a real Parisian, not just a suburbunite. Wooo!

3) Find and build furniture. The new flat is unfurnished, so I eagerly anticipate spending much of August building flatpack wardrobes. What fun.

4) Start new job. I've found a job teaching Business English to university students, which should be safer though probably less fun to blog about. We'll see in the autumn anyway.

So that's probably it from me this summer. The whole country pretty much closes down over the summer months, so I'll be back in September. In the meantime, have some classic Alice Cooper:

La bon pro-non-see-a-see-on

2008-06-28T14:44:00.003+02:00

There was an interesting article on Language Log today about phrasebook pronunciation; that is, the transcriptions that are supposed to help tourists say the phrases correctly. If you know French, try to work out what these are supposed to be:

poo-vay-voo muh deer kawN zhuh dwah deh-sawN-druh
oo ay lah stah-seeyoN duh may-troh
zher per trons-por-tay ma vwa-tewr sewr ser ba-to
pwee zha-vwar ewn a-vons der kray-dee
oo sawng lay areh der kar
kawnbyang der tahng dewr ler vwahyazh?

Now check:
Language Log » Phrasebook pronunciation, or, kawnbyang der tahng dewr ler vwahyazh

Of course, the main problem with phrasebooks is that even if you can make yourself understood, you probably won't understand the answer. I've always made a point of getting some books and tapes from the local library and learning a few phrases at least a month before going on holiday. Nobody expects tourists to be fluent but they usually appreciate some effort.

Paying to hit the pupils

2008-06-25T19:06:00.001+02:00

Back in February I blogged about a teacher who was in the news for slapping a pupil. His trial was today and he's been fined 800 euros for "aggravated violence". The maximum sentence is 75,000 euros and 5 years, so I suppose he got off fairly lightly.

The judges noted that he was an experienced teacher and the pupil wasn't a fully-grown 18 year old in a difficult area, which I suppose is a fair point. The article doesn't mention if the judges had anything to say about the father's reaction; you may remember that the kid's father was a gendarme and had the teacher arrested and held for 24 hours, which was probably a bit excessive. You'd think a policeman would understand what it's like to take abuse from members of the public who don't expect any comeback, but apparently not.

I also find myself wondering how much I'd be prepared to pay to slap some of my little darlings. 800 euros is a bit on the pricey side; two of those and you've got the price of a fortnight's holiday abroad, but would that be as satisfying?

School's out

2008-06-24T18:29:00.002+02:00

The last lessons were today. Rather than tell you about it, I'll let this rather good picture by Ronald Searle paint 1000 words. OK, so they weren't wearing uniforms and the teachers don't have canes any more, but you get the idea.

It's taken from the excellent Molesworth series from the 1950s and still available from all good bookshops!
I hope this plug will get me around copyright restrictions, but I'll take the image down on request

Sloths, lemmings and sperm

2008-06-20T16:49:00.002+02:00

Today I got a note from a parent who wanted to know why her son had such a poor grade in English this year when he'd done well in the subject before. The accurate response would have been something like:

Since your son and the girl in the row in front decided that they were destined for each other, they have become as motivated by schoolwork as a couple of sloths on valium. She has enough natural talent in the subject to see her through; unfortunately, your son does not, with the entirely predictable result that his grade has plummeted faster than a lemming strapped to an anvil. Frankly, it's a miracle that the sperm that conceived him managed to reach the egg, never mind develop into something that could be arsed to leave your womb.

Of course, the actual response was something along the lines of He has great potential and is capable of getting excellent results in the subject.

Clin d'œil, clin d'œil, coup de coude, coup de coude!

2008-06-15T10:14:00.001+02:00

The BBC seems to think the most newsworthy aspect of President Bush's visit to France is that he thinks Sarko's wife is a bit of alright. I wonder how his interpreters translated that?
"Votre femme? Est-ce qu'elle va? Vous savez ce que je veux dire? Ne dites plus!"¹

At least he got his history right, finally remembering French support for the American Revolution (which he seemed to have forgotten around springtime 2003). But the fact that he considers him "interesting" and "full of wisdom" probably says more about the US president than his French counterpart.

1. If you have no idea what I'm talking about:

RIP old friend

2008-06-09T19:22:00.001+02:00

Last weekend my watch finally gave up the ghost after 21 years. It was a birthday present when I was still doing my A-levels, so it's been with me all my adult life. I had it through university, it came with me to every country I've ever visited, it just survived being pogoed on during a Dread Zeppelin concert in Edinburgh when it was only five years old, and a former girlfriend was forever telling me to replace it - over ten years ago.

I can't think of anything else I possess that goes back that far. I have a bundle of cassettes that follow me from house to house, but I never listen to them, and all my old books and Viz annuals are still at my parents. So replacing it is a serious break from the past; it's almost like replacing a finger. I keep checking the time and seeing the wrong watch on my wrist.

If the new one lasts as long, my next watch will probably be a retirement present. But I doubt they make them like they used to.

Summertime blues

2008-06-04T21:16:00.001+02:00

With the summer holidays less than a month away, the conseils de classe season is entering full swing. For the uninitiated, a conseil de classe (literally "class council") is where all the teachers of one group of kids gets together along with the principal (or deputy), pupil and parent representatives. Each pupil is then discussed in turn, and we decide collectively who moves up to the next year and who has to repeat. For a class of 28 kids, this takes a while. And I have to do this for each class I teach.

But before the conseil, the teachers meet up for a preconseil ("pre-council", "coucil of war" or "meeting-about-the-meeting" depending on your preferred translation). And all this on top of our normal teaching load plus end of year marking as all reports need to be done in time for the conseil.

Of course, there are still classes after the conseil, but the kids are well aware that the decisions have already been taken so our ability to threaten them is severely diminished. So sense of impunity on their part collide head on with the tiredness on ours, with fun consequences for all.

But all anyone outside the profession ever notices is the long holidays. Let's see them survive the job without a long summer break.

The return of the pink bunting

2008-05-24T20:50:00.001+02:00

My town is decked out in bloody pink bunting again, like it was in February. Unfortunately it's still not being used to string up the mayor from a lamp post. It's to remind us of Mother's day, just in case we hadn't noticed the ads in the shop windows.

*sigh*

Cheese!

2008-05-24T20:17:00.001+02:00

One of the great things about living in France is the food, so when a colleague gave me two free tickets to the Salon Saveurs des Plaisirs Gourmands last week, I jumped at it. We ended up spending far too much on saucisson and, of course, cheese. Lots and lots of cheese.

One stall had years-old cheeses that Mme le Prof said looked like they'd been dug up by archaeologists in Pompeii. Still, the one we got was very nice, if a bit strong. I may miss English sausages, but I'd miss French cheese more if I ever moved back.

Another of Sarkozy's "reforms"

2008-05-16T23:21:00.001+02:00

According to this article on the Nouvel Observateur, the Education Minister would like to create an agency for replacing teachers who are absent (through illness or maternity, for example). What's worrying about this proposal is that the replacements would be students or student teachers.

I really don't know where to start. If experienced teachers find some kids hard enough to work with, what chance does a 22 year old fresh out of university have? But the worst thing is that the ministry already has 50,000 qualified supply staff on its books, but often they aren't used because the current system is so badly organised. Regular readers of this blog will remember that I spent the first couple of weeks of this academic year waiting to be placed while the kids had no English teacher for a fortnight, while one of my supply teacher colleagues found her post by ringing around the schools herself because she got tired of waiting for the academie to tell her where she'd be working.

You might have thought that the sensible option would be to try to find out why the current system isn't working and put it right. Apparently not. Much better to set up a new agency with young, inexperienced, unqualified or barely-qualified staff on its books. What I'd like to know is whether these student teachers will be pulled out of their lectures to go and teach, or whether they'll have to wait by the phone all day as current supply teachers do. Either way, no doubt they'll be a lot cheaper, which is the only reason I can think of why any sane person would seriously propose it. And in practise I doubt it'll be any quicker than the academies at finding replacements.

More teacher strikes

2008-05-15T23:12:00.001+02:00

I thought school looked a bit quiet today. According to unions 55% of teachers were on strike today against the reduction in the number of posts.

It's not like me to break a strike, but being a Brit I'm used to having a ballot beforehand so it just didn't feel right.Now I feel like a scab. I definitely should join the next one.

The curse of Monsieur le Prof d'Anglais

2008-05-04T12:30:00.001+02:00

I moved to Spain in the 1990s and Aznar got elected.
I moved to France and Sarkozy got elected.
I popped back to England for a few days and look what happened.

Can anyone recommend a nice, quiet cave somewhere?

The president is a w*nker

2008-04-25T10:27:00.001+02:00

While teachers in England strike over pay, teachers and pupils in France have been doing the same thing for several weeks now. Not over pay, but over plans to reduce the number of teaching posts by not replacing retiring staff.

Last night, Nicolas Sarkozy gave a long interview to shore up his plunging ratings and, of course, the subject came up. There's a summary in Le Monde but for those of you who can't read French, basically he says he won't back down, that quality is more important than quantity and that his reforms make it possible to reduce the number of staff, without saying how. In particular, the question of how a high school teacher is supposed to teach modern languages to a class of 35 kids wasn't even asked! It's true that staff/student ratios in France are actually quite good compared to most other European countries, but that means nothing unless you take into account the hours worked: teachers in England teach 23-25 hours per week compared to 18 or even 14 in France, which means your average teacher in England can take more groups, making smaller classes possible in schools of comparable size.

But what really annoyed me was he says at the end of Le Monde article: Enfin, interrogé sur ses propos au sujet de l'instituteur qui "ne pourra jamais remplacer" le pasteur ou le curé dans la transmission des valeurs, M. Sarkozy a précisé : "Ils ne font pas le même travail". - OK, I know we don't do the same job (because what we teach is actually true) but can we really "never be able to replace a pastor or priest for teaching values"? I always thought school was exactly the place where kids were supposed to learn the importance of civilised behaviour, respect for others, the value of work and so on. And how does he think the children of atheists are going to learn "values"? Or maybe he doesn't. Even he couldn't be that stupid, could he?

A thorough inspection

2008-04-16T16:08:00.001+02:00

As I said a couple of weeks ago, the inspector came yesterday to observe my lesson. This was really important for two reasons: firstly, I needed a good inspection to become a fully qualified teacher in France, and secondly, how well you do in inspections affects how fast you move up the salary scale. She'd chosen my toughest class during the final week of term, but about a third of them were away on a school trip that day. The she got stuck in traffic and arrived late for my lesson, and the kids, bless 'em, stood up when she came into the room!

After the class, the debriefing: this was about half an hour explaining the pay scales (it really does take half an hour to get your head around it, it's that complicated), an hour telling me stuff that I already knew from teacher training plus 15 years of teaching experience in other countries, and five minutes at the end on the actual lesson. She observed two other colleagues that day, and their debriefings were almost identical to mine.

Bottom line? "Your English accent is really good" (really?), "the kids obviously respect you" (because you were there and I'm bribing them) "it was a good lesson, you pass" (yyeeessss!!!) "and I'll raise your teaching grade so you'll go through the salary scale more quickly" (ker-ching!).

And the kids get Wallace and Gromit this Friday; that was the deal.

I saw it on a plasma screen in the local supermarket so it must be true

2008-04-14T18:39:00.001+02:00

My local branch of Monoprix has those big TV screens on the aisles to show the latest offers. Now they've found another use for them. While standing in the queue, I saw that they've taken to displaying horoscopes on the damn things too. Nothing detailed, they just rate your love, health and money on a scale of 1 to 3 stars for the week. Not next week, this week.

I don't need my local supermarket to employ someone to read the stars for me, much less tell me how I am this week. Money? It's the middle of the month, the bills have been paid and I've enough to last me a couple more weeks. Health? I've got a bit of a cold and sore throat, taking the lozenges. Love? I can look to the stars but all I have to do is look to my left as I write this to see Madame la Prof is still there, there goodness. I make that two, two and three stars respectively.

If they didn't stock my preferred brand of coconut milk I'd tell the manager where he could stick his plasma screens and take my money elsewhere.

They grow up so fast

2008-04-07T15:42:00.001+02:00

The other day I was teaching with Anglais sans frontière, a series of sketches in English on DVD which I got from a teachers' resource centre. The particular sketch involved a couple of photographers going to a TV studio to get a photo of a presenter.

One scene is set in the reception of the TV company, where this young lady works at the front desk.
For some reason, the boys in the class found her very hard to understand and needed me to repeat the scene several times. They also had to get very close to the screen as she spoke "so quietly that they couldn't hear". Strangely, most of the girls understood first time.

She reappears in later sketches as a shop assistant and tennis player. The makers of the DVD obviously think they've hit on a way of getting male adolescents interested in learning foreign languages. I wonder who they found for the Spanish version?

Betrayal of trust?

2008-04-05T16:25:00.001+02:00

The other day I was in the computer suite getting the kids to do some exercises I'd created using the excellent Hot Potatoes package. Obviously, some of the kids thought it would be much more fun to check up on their favourite websites, particularly the ones with flash games on them, when they thought I wasn't looking...

Rather than telling them to stop, I tried another tack:
Me: That's an interesting website! Can I have the address?
Kid: Why, sir?
Me: I have a niece in England who might be interested in playing some games in French. (sorry, Colin) Maybe you could recommend a few more.
(Eager kid shows me some websites and I write them down)

Later on in the staff room:
Me: Mr IT person?
IT person: Yes?
Me: Here's a list of websites you need to block so the kids can't access them in lesson times.
IT person: Great, thanks!

If the kids find out, I'll have taught them that barefaced lying and manipulation is perfectly acceptable behaviour. But they probably knew that anyway.

An Inspector Calls

2008-04-02T23:06:00.001+02:00

Real life has been keeping me away from blogging again, mainly because of the time I've spent on teacher training courses and preparing a presentation for the final assessment.

I've also just found out I'm going to be inspected on Tuesday April 15th. This is the big one - the inspector is one of the three people who decides if I get to be fully qualified, so it's got to be good. Unfortunately for me, the class she's chosen to observe has some of the most obnoxious, disruptive little buggers in the year group (13/14 year olds), and it falls in the last week of term, when the kids' sense of impunity rises as teachers' patience falls.

It's not actually the last class of term with them as that falls the following Friday. So any suggestions on what I can bribe/threaten them with for the final day to get them to behave for the inspection would be welcome. I can't offer drugs or alcohol as the good kids will grass me up to their parents, but will Wallace and Gromit be enough to tempt them?

Vote for me

2008-03-05T21:22:00.001+01:00

Local elections are this Sunday so I get my first chance to vote in a French election. I've been longing for someone from the cash-strapped National Front to try to push a leaflet into my hand so I can say "I'm not French but I can vote anyway. Na-na-na-naaaa-naa!" but haven't had any luck so far.

I did get a leaflet through the post though, and it's worth a read just because it shows how dim they are. While other candidates talk almost exclusively about local issues, the FN start by moaning about Europe. The worst thing they have to say about the current mayor is that he belongs to a pro-EU party. Apparently José Borroso will be quaking in his boots if the mayor of a reasonably well-off, middle class Paris suburb gets voted out.

So, how are they going to take on the might of Brussels if they get elected here? By, erm, planting more flowers, repairing a local lift and providing cheaper car parking for locals (even though they don't need their cars to go shopping round here, much less park them in town). They also want to redeploy the local CCTV cameras and arm the police with tasers (as soon as the traitorous sell-out-to-Europe pro-Sarkozy Government allows it), presumably in case any EU Commissioners should drop by.

Unfortunately they don't propose to hang the incumbent from the nearest lamppost with pink bunting, but then nor does anyone else.

Ban this filth

2008-03-03T18:15:00.001+01:00

Teaching unions here have just won a court case against the website note2be.com (which I'm not going to grace with a link - go google it), which allowed pupils to log on and rate their teachers. The website's founders are pleading freedom of expression, and claim teachers have a right to reply (yeah, like we've really nothing better to do than log on to their website to see who's whingeing about us giving too much homework), but the judges have ruled that free speech doesn't cover the right of adolescents to go on the Internet and "name and shame" teachers just because we didn't give them good enough marks on their last assignment or gave out a detention for chatting.

In any case, each class already has a delegate and termly meeting for them to air their grievances, so why they need a website as well is anyone's guess. I suppose it gives them the sensation of having achieved something by tapping something out on a keyboard and clicking Send. You only have to look at how adults behave on the BBC's Have Your Say website to see that it's a bad idea.

Back to the drawing board

2008-02-28T11:31:00.003+01:00

Following the President's wizard wheeze that I blogged about last time, a working group of educationalists and Shoah historians (i.e. specialists in the field who know what they're talking about) have unanimously rejected the proposal in its present form

Maybe now Sarko will stop telling us how to do our jobs and stick to what he's good at: insulting members of the public.

Another bright idea from the President...

2008-02-20T18:18:00.001+01:00

Regular readers will remember that last October, the President decided to inject a dose of emotion into history teaching by making teachers read out Guy Môquet's final letter. Now he's decided that ten year olds need to learn about the Shoah by "adopting" one of the 11,000 French jewish children deported to the concentration camps in WWII. Less than a year ago, during the election campaign, he was saying that schools needed to be freer, now he's telling history teachers how to do their job. Not only are the teachers up in arms, but historians and child psychologists too. According the the Education Minister, one in every two high school students haven't heard of the Shoah but I hardly think that this is the best solution. And this isn't the first time that he's announced an initiative before the debate. I wouldn't run a languages department like that, never mind a country.

While collaboration during the Occupation needs to be talked about, it might also be worth pointing out that 75% of France's Jews survived the war, hidden away by ordinary people at great personal risk. How about getting some of them to come into class and talk to the kids? Now that really would personalise history teaching.

An incident (follow up)

2008-02-20T16:34:00.001+01:00

I got a note the other day from the mother of the boy I gave lines to. Basically it read "My son apologises but I don't see why he should have to do lines when the girl who insulted him wasn't punished. That's not fair."

My reply: "If he had brought the incident to my attention instead of taking personal revenge, I can assure you that she would have been punished, not your son." In my book you either dish out vigilante justice or go running to the cops, not both.

Teachers have enough trouble maintaining discipline as it is without the parent backing their kids up when they misbehave.

An incident

2008-02-17T10:35:00.001+01:00

In a class of 11-12 year-olds on a Friday afternoon:

Girl: (Screams)
Me: Why did you just scream?
Girl: (Pointing to Boy #1) He just pulled my hair!
Me: Why did you pull her hair?
Boy #1: She insulted my mother!
Me: Why did you insult his mother?
Girl: (Points to Boy #2) He told me to.
Me: If he told you to jump off a cliff, would you do it?
Girl: (sobs)

Boy #1 got lines, Boy #2 got 10 minutes sat in the corner, girl had already got her hair pulled so I let her off.

Love hell

2008-02-12T18:40:00.001+01:00

My local council has put up pink bunting and set up a PA system to play love songs all day in the street, while local businesses are putting up teddies and heart shaped cushions in their shop windows. I don't want to be churlish, but:

Anybody who's ever really been in love knows that true love isn't pink, fluffy and heart shaped. If I bought Madame le Prof a teddy bear with a heart on to celebrate our love, she would, quite rightly, smother me to death with it.
Anybody on their own probably finds Feb 14th hard enough as it is without the bloody council ramming it down their throats.

Local elections are next month, and as an EU citizen I'm allowed to vote in them. My vote goes to whoever promises to tear down the pink bunting and use it to hang the current mayor from a lamp post. With a pink teddy stuffed up his arse.

I've still got it

2008-02-05T15:45:00.000+01:00

Today I saw my note administrative, which is a bit like an annual appraisal - you have a few grades and comments on your work, which you have to say whether you agree with or not. If you don't agree, you argue until you've negotiated something you do agree with, then sign it.

My comments section said something like "This young teacher from England has applied himself with enthusiasm and energy". I suppose I've been getting enthusiastic about giving out lines and have thrown kids out energetically, so I guess it's a fair reflection of my first few months in the job. And it was nice to be called a "young teacher" when I'm in my mid thirties!

Well it never did me any harm...

2008-02-01T22:02:00.000+01:00

Real life has been keeping me from blogging, including two weeks of teacher training (during which the kids has no English apart from the homework I gave them - how are they supposed to take the subject seriously when teachers aren't replaced?).

Regular readers will remember how last December I set a new personal best for exclusions, detentions and lines. Today I set a record for fastest exclusion - two minutes before the lesson had even started. But I'd rather do something like that than end up like this poor sod, who is up in court for slapping one of his pupils.

For those of you who can't read French, it seems that the 11-12 year-old pupil insulted his teacher, who snapped and slapped him across the face. Even though he owned up straight away, and recognises he went too far, he spent 24 hours in custody and is up before the judges in March because the kid's father decided to sue. The teacher also admits to "slight" drinking problems; he tested positive for alcohol when arrested, but we don't know if he had a drink before or after the incident. Most commentators agree that it was wrong to hit the pupil, but the reaction is going too far. There's also a certain amount of insinuation that the fact that the father is a policeman has led to the case being taken more seriously by the authorities.

There's been a lot of talk in the staff room, and the general feeling among my colleagues is "there but for the grace of God go I". Though we'd all like to think we'd never hit one of our charges, everyone I've heard recognises that if they might do the same if pushed far enough. I've already seen one colleague reduced to tears (in the staff room afterwards, fortunately) and the general feeling is that while we don't want to bring back the cane and send them down the mines, some kids have a feeling of impunity which is only reinforced by a culture of rights with no corresponding culture of responsibility.

It's interesting that the Education Minister, without actually siding with the teacher, has said that he doesn't want the kid to go unpunished and has pointed out that teachers are far more likely to be victims of violence than perpetrators. Not that it makes it OK for us to slap the little sods, but who knows, maybe the kid will finally learn that when you insult people, you risk getting hit. If that means he avoids getting his head kicked in when he's old enough to go to bars, some good might come of it. But if he doesn't, he'll get no sympathy from me.

Edit - the teaching union snes have set up an online petition in support of the teacher concerned.

Some good news this Christmas

2007-12-22T12:50:00.001+01:00

It doesn't seem to be the season of goodwill for the European far-right. While the far-right bloc of MEPs fell apart after insulting each other and British National Party is tearing itself apart, here in France, the National Front is facing problems of its own.

It's not just that he's on trail for saying the Nazis weren't all that bad, that's pretty standard stuff for him and only gets him even more free publicity. And he needs free publicity more than ever now, because the National Front's failure to poll more than 5% in the last parliamentary election means that they no longer qualify for state funding. This has left an 8 million euro-sized hole in their bank account which they can only plug by selling their party headquarters. HA!

So raise a glass this festive season to the further demise of the European far-right in 2008. And remember, every vote you cast helps lower the share that these people get. Not only does that show how few of us they really speak for, it can really hit them where it hurts - in the pocket.

No more Mr Nice Guy

2007-12-18T18:08:00.001+01:00

In the last couple of weeks I have thrown two kids out of my classes, given lines to 5 or 6 of them, handed out 5 detentions and phoned one parent.

And I find it strangely satisfying...

My favourite waste of time

2007-11-25T21:55:00.001+01:00

Like millions of others, I've discovered the joys of Facebook and am happily getting back in touch with old friends, exchanging adjectives and so on. But I've just joined a new group that tops the rest: Contre les cons qui restent immobiles à gauche sur l'escalator (Against the wankers who block the left hand side of the escalator).

If you've ever used the Paris metro, you'll have noticed that the convention is to stand on the right, thus allowing people in a hurry to pass you on the left. This nice, simple arrangement is routinely ignored by inconsiderate imbeciles who seem to think it their duty to slow everyone else down to their pace. They sometimes stand in pairs chatting or holding hands, which saves one of them the bother of actually having to turn round to talk to the other, blissfully unaware of the line of fellow travellers building up behind them. This blocking tactic is particularly effective at rush hour, when a sufficiently large backlog of passengers is created to ensure the left hand side stays blocked long after the selfish numpty has left.

No doubt someone will read these lines and think "typical Parisian, always in a hurry, slow down or you'll have a heart attack." My answer to that is
(a) It's my heart, not yours, so mind your own business.
(b) Forcing someone in a hurry to slow down is not going to lower their heart rate any time soon, and
(c) When I walk down a moving escalator, I don't make anyone else go at my pace, so what right do these thoughtless numbskulls have to force me to go at theirs? How undemocratic is that?

The one time in life to keep on the right is when you're on an escalator.

Teaching advice

2007-11-19T21:00:00.001+01:00

As a stagiaire en situation, I still have to attend some teacher training even though I have a PGCE. So I'm off to IUFM for the next two weeks. I don't mind as it gives me the chance to learn about the more "official" things about the French system, and I get a fortnight away from the kids. Yaay!

The downside is having to cross Paris in the middle of the transport strikes, but since that means one crowded train every half hour or so, it's not actually that different from when I lived in Lewisham and had to ride Connex into Central London every morning.

Anyway, today I had the best advice I've ever heard from a trainer in 15 years:

You're not paid to tire yourself out, you're paid to tire the kids out.

This explains a lot

2007-11-14T22:04:00.001+01:00

xkcd - A webcomic of romance sarcasm, math and language

I reckon every group of kids must have at least one who thinks like this. And my subject begins with an "A".

Bloody do-gooders!

2007-11-14T18:20:00.001+01:00

Today the kids all got a little bookmark about "the rights of the child". Here's a piece of it that I scanned.

Read it carefully. What's missing? That's right: Mes droits (my rights) is there, but there's no sign of mes devoirs (my responsibilities). I hate to sound like some Sarkoziste but honestly! (Actually, I think lefties like me should be more concerned about our responsibilities to others since we're supposed to be socialists, but that's another debate)

Now, I'm all for children's rights, and I understand that it's really intended to raise awareness of abuse issues, but this was just given out in the middle of a lesson, with no kind of discussion. I now eagerly await a dozen twelve year olds refusing to do homework or open their book because they have the "right to say NO". Or having to explain to them that the "right to play and dream" means "as opposed to being sent down a mine", and doesn't extend to the classroom.

They could have even just added "And everyone else has the same rights as me" at the bottom. That would have been a start.

Grrrrr!

Eastern promise

2007-11-13T21:09:00.001+01:00

My inspiration has been running low lately - maybe teaching elementary English to 11 year olds blunts the old creative edge. So have another teacher blog instead.

All EFL teachers, especially the poor souls in the UK working for ten quid an hour in some dodgy cowboy school off Oxford Street, have considered moving to the Gulf to make a pot of cash, but few are brave enough to take the plunge. This guy has, and here's his blog about it. So now the rest of you get to find out if it's such a good idea.

Shut the f*ck up, ladies, please!

Pedagogical games

2007-11-05T17:45:00.000+01:00

I hate to say "When I were a lad...", but when I were a lad, teachers were still allowed to chuck chalk at you if you misbehaved. Now, thanks to this game on the Les Profs website, you can relive the good old days. Have fun!

Les Profs is a French comic strip about teachers (strangely enough), and I nicked my avatar from them.

Another teacher blog, about France this time

2007-10-31T14:16:00.001+01:00

I just came across a blog, in French, which highlights the position of vacataires. For those of you not in the know, a vacataire is an hourly-paid teacher, and there are lots of these kinds of jobs available for English teachers as most university departments include a couple of hours of English on their courses. You can tell how efficient many of these departments are by the fact that job adverts often come through on email lists, a week before the course is due to start, with URGENT!! in the subject line.

It actually pays quite well compared to teaching in private companies (typically around 40 euros per hour as opposed to 15-30), but you have to be self-employed or have a full time job somewhere else. You also have to wait ages for your money; work you do in October probably won't be paid for until April the following year. It's a nice way to top up a full time income, but if it's your sole source of income you'll probably need an understanding landlord... You can also be hired and fired very easily, and never know you'll have work from one year to the next, though this consideration appeals to universities who like to be able to get rid of people without too much hassle if the student numbers drop. And you thought France was a workers' paradise where the unions ran everything.....

The blog itself is a bit hard to follow unless you're a vacataire yourself and can understand the terminology, but if you are, you might want to take a look:
Vacataire(s) en colère

Meet the parents

2007-10-25T22:56:00.003+02:00

Tuesday night was parents' evening for the 4ème year group (13-14 year olds). Teachers around the world complain that the parents we most want to talk to are the ones who don't come, and this was no exception. When you think about it, it's no surprise that the kids who do well are the ones whose parents take an interest in their education, and therefore come to the parents' evenings, so there was a lot of "Your child is fine, no problems, I wish they were all like that, NEXT!".

The main highlights of the evening were:

The parent who was a Spanish teacher - cue 30 seconds of talking about her daughter and the remaining 9 minutes 30 seconds moaning about our pupils. It's great when a parent says "I understand, I'm a teacher too!"

The father who wants me to do "more grammar", like he had at school. I replied that I was taught the same way and ended up top of the class but unable to say anything in French.

The mother who had obviously been drinking - she reeked of booze and wouldn't shut up. Makes you wonder what happens at home...

Fortunately, I only teach kids from two year-groups, so I only have to go through this one more time.

A few Top Tips

2007-10-18T14:11:00.001+02:00

The transport strikes have provided me with an impromptu day off, allowing me to finally blog about what it's like to teach in a French school.

The rule of thumb is "if it isn't recorded, it doesn't mean anything." So don't say "Stop strangling your neighbour," say "Stop strangling your neighbour or I will note down the incident." Don't give any homework that isn't graded or they won't do it. And never let them to do anything without written authorisation; I think I have a "permission to scratch nose" form somewhere in the bottom of my bag.

Lines is a very popular way of punishing kids who step out of line, and I can justify it pedagogically by making them do it in English. By the time I've finished with them they'll have no excuse for not knowing about must and must not.

Use the palm of your hand for banging on desks to get their attention. It makes more noise than using your knuckles and hurts less. If your school has blackboards, fingernails are also an option; remember, it will affect them more than you as they can hear the highest frequency sounds.

Consider investing in a Sonic Air Horn.

Oh, you thought I was going to blog about teaching English? Sorry, I'll get back to you on that when they've learned to behave...

Allez les blancs!

2007-10-16T22:41:00.001+02:00

Those of you who know me will know that rugby is not my strongest passion. Any interest I might have felt for the sport was beaten out of me on a school rugby field (not a private school I might add, but a state school that was trying to imitate Eton and failing miserably). It's hard to think of a more inappropriate sport for teenage boys who are all developing at different rates. At 14 I was still waiting for my height spurt to kick in, and in the meantime I was being knocked around the sports field by guys my age who were already pushing six foot. The headmaster at the time must have thought this kind of pointless humiliation built character, when in fact it taught me how to discreetly avoid a rugby ball without the teacher noticing.

However, over the last few weeks the Rugby World Cup has been kind of hard to avoid over here. Everyone in my karate class tonight was congratulating me on the England win, though quite what I did to make it happen, I'm not sure. And it did mean that my pupils were kind of subdued on Monday morning, which I'm always grateful for.

So I do wish the England team all the best in the final this weekend. I won't watch it myself, but it would be nice to have a team that's the best in the world at something, for a change.

Vive la résistance!

2007-10-15T21:38:00.001+02:00

One thing Sarkozy kept saying during the election campaign was that schools should be free to try out new ideas and ways of teaching. Yet, as I briefly mentioned in my last post, he also decreed that next Monday, Guy Môquet's final letter has to be read out to every pupil in a lycée (high school).

Guy Môquet was a Communist and WWII resistance fighter whom the Vichy Government handed over to a German firing squad and he was executed on 22 October 1941, aged only 17. He became a symbol for the resistance when his final letter to his family was brought to public knowledge. Sarkozy, apparently, was so moved by the letter that he decided that every French teenager should have it read to them every year on the anniversary of Môquet's execution.

This has seriously annoyed a lot of teachers, many of whom don't trust Sarkozy anyway. Anyone with more than a smattering of French will see that the letter is a private one. You may think it moving and powerful, but it doesn't really tell us anything about the war, occupation or resistance. I'm not sure what the kids are supposed to make of it, and I can't see what educational value it has. I suspect that this is more about trying to get the pupils to feel something rather than learn something. The trouble is that just because something moves the President to tears doesn't mean others are going to feel likewise.

Fortunately for the teachers who plan to boycott the reading, there won't be any sanctions for anyone who chooses not to read out the letter. So they have to read it out, but if they resist, noone's actually going to say or do anything. So teachers are free to do as Sarkozy tells them, but if they don't, that's OK too.

A letter from the President

2007-10-06T20:20:00.001+02:00

I know I've mentioned that Nicolas Sarkozy must spend a lot of time signing authorisations for teachers to go and work somewhere, but I never expected to get a letter from him! Actually, his Lettre aux Éducateurs has gone out to all teachers, and here's a copy kicking around our staff room; some wag has defaced the front already so it looks like it's been written by Nicoladolf Sarkozitler, which surely deserves 500 lines and a detention if the culprit is caught. The head hasn't yet threatened to keep all of us back until someone owns up...

In true French style, he takes around 25 pages to get to the point. The preamble is mostly general platitudes that no sane person would disagree with: Education is important, children should know right from wrong and learn tolerance and respect (including standing when a teacher enters the room), teaching is a tough job and so on. He goes on to say there's too much theory and abstraction in today's education and children should spend less time in class and more time in museums, libraries etc. The school I work at already does that kind of thing; there was even a trip to Churchill's War Rooms in London once. He does't say anything about who will be responsible if an accident happens on one of these trips, which is the main reason, in my experience, why some teachers are reluctant to organise them.

Towards the end it gets more interesting - "you will be better paid, more highly respected ... you will earn more and progress more quickly (so far, so good) if you choose to work more and make more effort (gulp!)". How that'll work in practice isn't clear, except that overtime earnings won't be taxed, but one reason I prefer teaching in France to the UK is that over here I can have a life outside work, even of that means earning less. The Education Minister has also talked of having fewer, better paid teachers, and they're already planning to not replace half of those who retire.

He also says that schools should be freer to choose how they teach. But at the same time he's decreed that Guy Môquet's final letter must be read out to all French schoolchildren, which hasn't gone down well with teachers. So I'll reserve judgement on this one until he's decided whether or not he wants to micromanage or let go.

Anyway, it was nice to get a letter from my new boss. Even if the academie can't get their act together, if the President has written to me, I must be a real fonctionnaire!

Another teacher's blog

2007-10-03T18:24:00.001+02:00

Recently, work has been interfering severely with my Internet surfing. I've got quite a few blog entries steadily brewing though, just waiting to be served hot. In the meantime, here's the blog of an ESOL lecturer in the UK. I'm going to follow it since I taught in a Further Education college in Britain before emigrating to France (joining Madame le Prof and getting my life back in one fell swoop). I understand that Her Majesty's Government has, in it's wisdom, cut back massively on funding for ESOL courses and expects the students' employers to plug the gap (dream on...), so I just hope this guy gets to keep his job.

the100thmonkey’s blog

Recommended guide to France

2007-09-22T16:57:00.001+02:00

If you're looking for a guide to France, you could do worse than read the Instructions for British Servicemen in France, 1944, which Mme le Prof bought the other day. It makes fascinating reading for two reasons: firstly, a lot of its advice would be well heeded today by anyone abroad, and secondly because of the insight it gives into how the Brits saw (or were encouraged to see) France and the French. It's certainly a far cry from hop off you Frogs or cheese eating surrender monkeys!

Here's what it says about the fall of France in 1940: A great many of us [the British] ... blamed the French. [...] The French remember an aspect of the war which we sometimes forget: the fact that Britain was not overrun in 1940 was due not only to Mr Churchill and "the few" of the RAF, it was also due to our being protected by 20 miles of sea and the Royal Navy. If the Germans could have crossed ... the Channel ... are we quite sure that Britain would not have suffered the same immediate fate as France? (page 33). On the French military: It is time for us ... to think rather less about the French collapse and rather more about subsequent resistance in France (page 31). Remember, too, the heroic French stand made at the battle of Bir Hakeim and the way the French drove the Germans out of Corsica (page 32).

Hmm, I never saw that in the Sun or the New York Post.

There's plenty of stuff here that's still valid 60 years on: Drop any ideas about French women based on stories of Montmartre and nude cabaret shows. These were always designed as a tourist attraction for foreigners (page 26). Do not grouse at the French in general if you should meet a French "bad hat". There are probably one or two "bad hats" in every British unit (page 41), but my favourite is Remember to call them "Monsieur, Madame, Mademoiselle", not just "Oy!"

There are a few useful French phrases with pronunciation (commont-allay-voo? and Ee-ah-teel kel-kern key parl ongly?), and it makes the point that French nouns are masculine or feminine, noting that English is the only language without these gender complications (page 45), which sounds suspiciously like "English is simpler and easier than French". On the whole though, the guide is highly respectful of France: they [the French] think that France is a very great country, with a great record of civilization and they have every reason to do so.

But its general message is probably best summarised on page 11: There is another kind of thoughtlessness ... commoner among British peace time visitors abroad... It consists of airing the opinion that such and such a foreign country ... is very lucky to have chaps like us passing through ... It is amazing how many people ... can imply by their whole manner that the world in general, and the place where they have just arrived in particular, hardly come up to their standards. Well, that kind of attitude, however innocently silly, will be out of place in France.

60 years on, people still need to be told this kind of thing.

Back to school

2007-09-17T18:30:00.001+02:00

Went back to the school again today, got shown where my pigeonhole was, where the photocopier is and so on. You can tell the English teachers' classrooms by the faded posters of Big Ben, Scots Guards, Beefeaters and so on. One of them avoids being too British-centred by having a picture of a Mississippi steamboat and the Twin Towers... I don't have my own classroom; I have to go to the top floor, then take a turn into a dark passage marked "Here be dragons", and the four rooms on the left are the ones I teach in. Pity, I would've liked to put some classroom language on the walls.

I observed a class today, to get some idea of what would be expected. It was actually pretty communicative (lots of monitored pairwork and so on), which surprised me as everything I've heard about the French system led me to believe it's all drilling and grammar-translation. Some of them seemed to have a level of spoken English on a par with the first year university students I used to teach! Do they forget everything at lycée (high school), I wonder? At the start of the lesson, the kids all have to line up outside the classroom, and they aren't allowed to sit down until the teacher says so. Sounds a bit disciplinarian, but it helps to make a clear break between playtime and getting down to work. Sarkozy would be pleased; in a recent open letter to teachers, he said pupils should stand up when the teacher enters the room, like they used to.

First actual teaching tomorrow. Gulp!

To serve the Republic

2007-09-15T20:08:00.001+02:00

Yesterday I finally got to visit the school and meet some of the staff. It really looks like a desirable area; no buildings over three storeys, no concrete blocks, clean streets and so on. The school itself has no graffiti and there's a wide age range of staff (too many young teachers is usually a bad sign as it means no one stays any longer than they have to).

The deputy head seemed a bit suspicious of me, but the head welcomed me with open arms and said, without irony, how glad lucky they were to now have un citoyen de Sa Gracieuse Majesté working in their school! Good thing I didn't mention how I feel about the monarchy... The English-teaching staff are very excited to have a native speaker on the team, although they speak to me in French most of the time. Most of my classes are 11-12 year old beginners so I shouldn't need to put the fear of God into them to get some work out of them since they've only been there a week longer than me.

The only cloud on the horizon is that someone from the academie rang to say there was a problem with la D.O.S. (I don't know what it stands for either -I'm still brewing a blog post about initials in this country), which means I can't be officially installé yet, which might mean a delay in getting paid. Probably means there's yet another paper in the President of the Republic's in-tray waiting for his signature. Well, I suppose he is my boss now...

Gotta job, gotta job, gotta job...

2007-09-13T22:54:00.001+02:00

So, after four days' wait (after being promised a call at the start of the week - see Talking to the Organ Grinder) and yet another phone call, I finally get told where I'm supposed to be teaching! Vivent les fonctionnaires!

It actually doesn't look half bad. Obviously I can't go into details, but it's in a very nice area, and the languages it offers include Russian, Latin and Ancient Greek. It also has a school choir and a special music section. Now I'm guessing that a school that's able to offer that probably has nice kids to teach. It's a collège, which means the kids will be 11-14. Young enough not to give too much grief, and their voices won't have broken. Squeaky kids' voices can go through your head a bit when they all talk at the same time, but you can conserve your larynx by speaking in a low tone, which cuts through all the high frequencies without the need to shout them down. (Top tip for all you TEFLers with kids' classes!)

Anyway, it looks like my main worry won't be getting stabbed while trying to teach conditionals (If you stab your teacher, he will scream; If you stabbed your teacher, he would scream; If you hadn't stabbed your teacher, he wouldn't have given you 10000 lines and a detention), but whether my clothes will be smart enough.

New EFL website - worth checking

2007-09-11T13:03:00.001+02:00

Regular contributors to Dave's ESL Cafe might have noticed how threads on his discussion forums mysteriously disappear whenever anyone says anything bad about his advertisers. Well, now he has a rival.

David's English Teaching World has lots of really useful information, plus forums that aren't censored just to keep the advertisers happy. Of course, this means that anyone with an axe to grind can log onto the forum and slag off a school just because the DOS didn't give them a day off, but the schools have just as much right to reply. Apparently Dave is riled enough that posts on his forums referring readers to David's site don't stay up long themselves! Anyway, I wish David (not Dave!) all the best with his website, and hope all you TEFLers will get over there and start posting, safe in the knowledge that you can criticise the advertisers without getting banned.

England vs Israel

2007-09-09T01:10:00.001+02:00

OK, it's not a football blog, but it's only fair to point out that today's game actually made for a more enjoyable evening than I'd been expecting when I last posted. Doesn't mean I now think Steve McLaren is a master tactician, as the Israelis tonight couldn't have defended a bird table from the local squirrels, but the England fans couldn't really have asked for more than what they got. Now let's see what happens against Russia on Wednesday...

Aaargh! It's after our nuts! Defend! Defend!
(Image from http://www.sxc.hu )

Talking to the organ grinder

2007-09-07T22:35:00.001+02:00

I got through to someone at the academie yesterday. It was the number I'd been promised was the right one, which I'd been dialing for days and when I finally got through, the person said I wasn't supposed to be doing a full time placement, but studying at the IUFM (teacher training college). When I pointed out that I had a letter from the Ministry specifically saying that I'd be doing a full time placement, she, true to form, said she wasn't the right person to handle my case, took my number and email and promised to get back to me later that day once she'd found out who the right person was.

24 hours later.... I ring, speak to the same person and get passed onto yet another person. I swear I'll know the names of everyone in that building by the time this is over. However, this new person actually seems to know what he's talking about, asks me to fax the letter over, tells me that there are no full time placements (full time = 18 teaching hours in the French system), but would I be happy with a 12 or 14 hour week? Wahey! More blogging time - you lucky readers, you! I've been told which part of the academie it's likely to be, and expect another phone call on Monday. He also took my mobile number so I can leave the house now. Oh, the joy of feeling the breeze on my face again!

Anyway, the moral of this story seems to be if at first you don't succeed, keep trying until you get to speak to someone with the authority to do something. In France that can take a while, because people are afraid to do anything without permission from their boss, who in turn won't give permission unless his or her boss says it's OK, who in turn...until you reach the President. Sarkozy probably spends most of his time signing forms for trainee teachers and other bottom feeding civil servants.

Think I'll celebrate by going out to watch England vs Israel tomorrow. That should make for an enjoyable evening...

They won't get me, I'm part of the union...

2007-09-06T22:56:00.001+02:00

Since I hadn't had any news about my job, and since no one was picking up the phone at the academie, someone suggested I give the unions a call. Now I know French trade unionists generally get a bad press and the general impression is that they call a strike any time they're asked to do any actual work, but I have to say I was impressed. Someone actually picked up the phone withing ten rings, listened to me, sounded concerned and didn't just try to pass me over to someone else. Result!

They actually rang me back the same afternoon to let me know they'd been in touch with the academie, and there were, indeed, some serious delays going on. Quite reassuring to have someone else tell me that I'd done all the right things as you expect fonctionnaires to try to make out it's all your fault because you put your signature two millimetres the wrong side of the dotted line or something (the best tactic in this kind of situation is to be stubborn enough that it becomes more work for them not to solve your problem).

What impressed me most was that I'm not actually in a union right now. I was a very active union member in my last job in England, and there was no way I could help anyone who wasn't a member, and not even then if the problem had arisen before they'd joined. It seems that over here they can help anyone. Maybe that would explain why I read somewhere than only around 10% of French workers are unionized as opposed to around 30% in the UK. Why hand your money over if they provide services like this for free?

The trouble is that most people only hear about unions in the press when there's a strike on, so they naturally think that all they do is pick fights with le patronnat. OK, every union has its headbanger loony members who joined up to smash capitalism, but the good work they do hardly ever gets mentioned. Of course, if certain people did their jobs properly, unions wouldn't need to get involved.

BTW I did actually get through to the academie myself this afternoon, but I'll tell you about that later.

Nothing succeeds like success?

2007-09-04T18:13:00.001+02:00

Today's Guardian reports that an MEP for the ~~BNP lite~~ UKIP has been jailed for benefit fraud. So far so good, but one particular phrase caught my eye: The court heard that Mote ran a successful public relations company employing 30 full-time staff until it collapsed in 1990.

A successful company that collapsed? What would an unsuccessful PR company look like?

Still no news

2007-09-03T18:53:00.001+02:00

Phoned the academie today to find out what was happening. Got to speak to a rather irate ~~jobsworth~~ administrator who wanted to know why I wasn't at my place of work and getting ready for the kids who come back tomorrow (erm, because you people haven't yet told me what my place of work is, and your academie is one of the biggest in France). She did give me a couple of direct lines to people who should be able to advise ... or at least might have been able to if they'd been in their offices to answer their phones.

In the meantime, I'll tell you about part 2 of the Capes; the oral exams.

There are 2 tests, one in English, which is about English-speaking culture, the other in French and about teaching. In the first, they give you a literary extract, a nonliterary piece of writing and a picture, and you have 5 hours to prepare a 20-minute talk (plus Q&A) on any common themes you can identify. In my case, I got an extract from Bend it Like Beckham, some equal opportunities info about educational achievement and a photo of a muslim woman wearing a Union Flag as a veil. Given all the talk about veils lately in the UK, this one was a bit of a gift, but fair's fair, I'd had to write in French about The Scarlet Letter to get this far so I figure I deserved a break.

For the second test, you get some teaching materials which you have to comment on in French. Again, five hours prep for a 20 minute presentation. It shouldn't be too hard if you've taught before, but you need to arm yourself with a few educational buzzwords. Having taught in the UK for six years, including running a department, I could talk the talk in English but in French it was a bit harder.

Anyway, these certainly have more to do with actual teaching than the written stuff; if you can't carry off a 20-minute talk in front of a jury of 3 adults, how are you ever going to cope in front of 30-40 teenagers? However, I have my own ideas of how the second test could be improved further and made more realistic:

1) Provide the candidate with a book of photocopiable activities (Hadfield's Elementary/Intermediate/Advanced Communication Games, for example), a grammar book, a pair of scissors and access to a photocopier.

2) Reverse the times - 20 minutes preparation for a 5-hour class. (OK, so few classes are 5 hours long, but 20 whole minutes of prep time? That's generous!

3) Set the photocopier to jam every five or six copies. Any self-respecting teacher should know how to unjam photocopiers.

You now have an accurate simulation of a teacher at work. Tough but fair.

MPA's Laws of Friday Evenings

2007-09-01T14:59:00.001+02:00

Still no news from the academie. I was planning to phone them on Friday but it completely slipped my mind, so I'll try on Monday morning.

The reason I forgot was it was my last day in a summer teaching job that I'd agreed to do before I'd found out my Capes result. Being the last day, there were end of course tests to mark, and the obligatory party where each group performs, then long, drawn out goodbyes. After finally extricating myself about an hour after I'd hoped, I was finally half way down the road when I remembered I'd forgotten the cake tin I'd used to carry my contribution to the party. This has led me to postulate the existence of what I call Monsieur le Prof d'Anglais' Laws of Friday Evenings:

MPA's First Law of Friday Evenings:
The probability of leaving a personal possession behind in your place of work is PROPORTIONAL TO:

1) the number of people you say goodbye to
2) the effusiveness of said goodbyes
3) how glad you are to be getting away

and is INVERSELY PROPORTIONAL TO:

1) the number of days remaining in your job
2) how glad your employer is to see you go

MPA's Second Law of Friday Evenings:
The value and importance of said personal possession is PROPORTIONAL TO the SQUARE of the distance travelled from your place of work before discovering that the object has been left behind.

Unaffected

2007-08-29T19:38:00.000+02:00

I rang the academie today to find out what was going on. I was actually quite impressed that they took less than five minutes to pick up the phone and I only got passed on once (the Ministry of Education keep you in a phone queue for an hour, then pass you around until finally you get through to someone who tells you another number, only for you to realise after hanging up that they've given you the one you originally dialled).

Anyway, they told me they still haven't placed me, and I should ring back at the end of the week, but at least they actually know who I am. In French, when they send you somewhere it's called an affectation. I've never actually wanted to be affected by an employer before.

How the French Government had me certified

2007-08-28T19:59:00.000+02:00

No news about where I'm going to work, with less than a week to go. I'll give them a call tomorrow if I find time. In the meantime, here's part one of how to pass a Capes (the Certificat d'aptitude au professorat de l'enseignement secondaire, I think).

The first stage is the written exams: one essay in English, another in French and two translations. The essay in English is OK if you've done your homework: you get an extract from one of the set books, or a document about the civilisation topic, and you have five hours to write a commentary on it in English. Survivable for native speakers who don't mind writing essays, but take a good supply of water and chocolate to keep you going.

Next there's the essay in French. This will usually be Le/La/Les [insert noun here] dans [insert set book here]. So, Le savoir dans The Scarlet Letter, Le fromage dans Coriolan or Les escargots dans Sherlock Holmes. Although the study guides tell you there's no one way to approach this question, it helps if you can do French style, three-part essays. If you can't, this is more an exercise in damage limitation - try not to say anything too stupid and leave plenty of time to check your verb endings, adjective agreements and preceding direct objects.

The translations are like the ones you did at school, but harder and usually literary but no more than 100 years old. The best preparation for these is probably to read a lot.

If that sounds hard, it's because they're trying to eliminate most of the candidates. If you look at the paper and go "Whaaat?!? Who the hell knows that?" and collapse in a sobbing heap, you're buggered. You just have to plough on and hope enough other candidates are doing at least as badly as you. And that's just the first hoop.

At this point you may be asking "What's the point? Does this have anything to do with teaching?" This is like a seal saying "What does balancing a ball on my nose have to do with getting a fish?". If you want the fish, get balancing and stop asking questions. Now, some would argue that testing ball balancing skills might actually be a fairer way of choosing teachers, on the grounds that you might actually select candidates who know how to keep the kids amused for an hour. That is, of course, an extremely narrow minded view because it ignores cross-curricular issues; if all English, French, Science and History lessons consisted of teachers balancing balls on their noses, the kids might get bored. And that would never do.

Bonjour

2007-08-26T19:04:00.000+02:00

Welcome to the blog of Monsieur le Prof d'Anglais (Henceforth to be known as MPA). A language teacher by trade, I emigrated to France a couple of years ago and taught English in universities. I could have started blogging then, but there are so many "EFL teacher finds foreign ways so amusing" blogs already that I couldn't really see the point in another.

I bit the bullet and sat the dreaded Capes test last summer, and, much to my surprise, passed first time. Since I already have a valid teaching qualification (a PGCE if you're interested), I don't need to go to teacher training college in France; I'm going to do what they call a stage en situation to become fully qualified in this country, which is basically a full time work placement in a secondary school. An excuse to blog! Yaay!

The one thing I don't want to end up doing here is moaning about France. I'm actually pretty happy here, and Madame le Prof d'Anglais (MmePA for short) isn't the only reason. There's cheese too, not to mention trains that don't cost an arm and a leg.

Anyway, I have one week to go before the start of term, and I'm still waiting to be told where I'm going to be teaching. Everyone I know tells me this is perfectly normal and not to worry. It could be anywhere in my local academie (administrative area for education purposes), which takes in everything from concrete jungles to leafy suburbs. Ho hum.

More news as it happens, and thanks for reading.