School!!

The school I work for has friendly teachers – my first Saturday here they invited to go canoeing with them, which was great fun!!!  The pupils at school are attentive and respectful which has been great – a lot of them have been keen to speak english in class which has been great!  Although there are still one or two classes which are very quiet. 

School starts at 8am and finishes at 6pm but, unlike NI, teachers are not required to stay if they are not teaching, although because I live so far away, I stay in school if I have classes later in the day.  Although there is a shopping centre and small town nearby which I may explore later on in the year.  My timetable still isn’t set in stone, but at the minute I have classes from 8am-9am on Monday, Tuesday and Thursday.  And then 11-12 and 5-6pm on Monday and 4-6pm on a Tuesday.

Three of these classes are English conversation, in which I can study whatever I want for the most part, as long as the pupils are speaking in English! – So if you have any ideas, feel free to pass them on!!  I’ve really enjoyed these classes although, they can be difficult since the pupils are used to speaking and listening to English spoken in a French accent and not in my NI/American one!!  One of my classes is a History/Geography class which is taught in English and so at the minute we are study Emigration and Immigration, particularly from Ireland to America round the time of the Famine! – I have been taking about 17 pupils at a time to study a song written about that time period or to look at different paintings of that era.  This has been fun, if a little overwhelming since I haven’t studied either subject for the last 8 years!! 

The other three classes are “Maths en Europe”.  So theses are classes where the pupils learn Maths in English! After I mentioned that I had just finished training to be a maths teacher in NI, the headmistress was quick to offer me the opportunity to sit in on these Maths classes… Unfortunately the teacher has been ill since I arrived and so I am taking them alone!!  For the most part, I enjoy them, since the pupils are some of the best in the school, however I do have one class of 35 pupils, which is difficult since they have never done it before!  I am also preparing one of the older classes for their baccalaureate (equivalent to A Levels) and so that is a lot of pressure!! 

In addition to these, I am taking two different English classes for the teachers who want to learn or improve their English.  These are kind of scary since they are teachers but this week they went really well. On Monday I have a group of three beginners where we studied how to ask for directions.  And on Tuesday, I have a group of about 6 who want to practise their English in a conversation context so we talked about how the education system works in NI – it ended up centring around whether uniforms were good or bad!!!

Tomorrow I have my first English club for the pupils where we will just play informal games and chat in English.  Last week no-one came, so hopefully there will be some who are interested this week!!