My favourite waste of time

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.

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Teaching advice

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.

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This explains a lot

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!

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

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!

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Pedagogical games

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

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

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Meet the parents

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.

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A few Top Tips

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...

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Allez les blancs!

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.

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Vive la résistance!

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.

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A letter from the President

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!

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Another teacher's blog

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

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Recommended guide to France

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.

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Back to school

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!

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To serve the Republic

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...

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Gotta job, gotta job, gotta job...

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.

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New EFL website - worth checking

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.

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England vs Israel

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 )

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Talking to the organ grinder

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...

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