Summer Heat Delirium: Teaching & the Great Escape (or Attempt) from MacDos.

Before I even begin this post I must apologize for once again mentioning the dreaded M word. Because of the dread W word which is still missing from my appartment.

Less than impressed because quite frankly I didn't think I'd be back so soon.

But I have now officially gone almost 2 and half months without it and I put my foot down the other day. But enough of that for now.

I suppose I should really write a blog entry about my work seeing as I have been in France for two and a half months now and I have failed to mention how my “job” is going.

So I am a teaching assistant (gotta start somewhere). Which means I am not quite a teacher but I am “aiding the teacher” in lessons.

I am teaching 12-15 year olds in a high school in this small, sleepy French town. Because it is a nice, suburban, Eco-obsessed and overpriced village, the school demographic is mostly middle-class.

It's not a private school (seriously, if this place had any spare money I'm sure I would've gotten my internet problem sorted a while ago) but it seems to be one of the nicer ones in suburban Paris. Some of the other teaching assistants have told me that their kids fight, swear and are frequently disrespectful. It hasn't been the case for me yet.

So on my first day I took a photo of the staff room.

I have spent quite a bit of time there now, drinking coffee and yawning widely, printing and photocopying, waiting in the queue for the printer and photocopier, arriving half an hour earlier to do lesson-planning (so early it is unholy, in my eyes) and of course, trying my best to use the school's terrible internet to check my emails (so slow it puts you in mind of the days of dial-up internet).

La vie quotidienne...d'un professeur.

I enjoy being a teacher. I'm not even a real one yet, but still I enjoy it. Like all other jobs, it has its moments of I want to get fired ASAP but unlike the other jobs I have done, there are so many moments where I think Hey I did that well. It's so much easier than I expected – or maybe easy is not the right word – the word should be natural. It is so much more natural than I expected, standing up in front of twenty-five kids and speaking loudly. It is so much more natural, writing on the board and explaining how grammar works. It is so much more natural following a lesson plan that doesn't have 5 different 'stages' and 'minutes' next to them.

My previous (and only) teaching experience made me so nervous about being at the front of the class speaking, writing stuff on the board and the idea of actually explaining grammar brought me out in hives.

When I did a four week training course last summer to become an English language teacher, I never thought I'd be able to get the hang of teaching a language class. I never thought I'd be able to manage lesson planning, explaining grammar and 'public speaking'. However, that was because they set ridiculously high standards and had teaching 'methods' to abide by. In most training courses, I'm sure that is the case. But teaching is supposed to be natural and lesson plans are supposed to be flexible. I never even have a lesson plan anymore – and yet this is what my board looks in conversation classes.

HORRIBLY UNORGANISED - CELTA would track me down and beat me with an Oxford Dictionary.

But I feel like going back to the CELTA classes and saying “See, you don't always need a lesson plan to deliver a useful lesson...” but maybe I actually did learn some stuff in that 4 week course last summer which has subconsciously stayed in my brain...

So teaching is for me. I am pro-teaching. And I'm definitely going to enjoy it, wherever I end up. Sometimes I worry that doing the graduate training course in teaching after final year will be unbearably CELTA-like and pedantic, but to be honest it's only a year and then after that the world of teaching is my oyster.

I guess to summarise the things I am enjoying about teaching are:

The kids like me and I like them
I enjoy doing something that has such a noticeably good outcome (kids start using words you've taught them)
No one day is the same as the last.

There's also a sense of solidarity amongst the staff. At this school at least. Especially with regards to our pigeon holes, which all bear photos of various Hollywood personas with our faces super-imposed on them. (Mine is a picture of Gaston with my face superimposed on it – Gaston from Beauty and the Beast).

I'd say the likeness between us is uncanny, isn't it?

It's really lucky that I got put in a school where the kids are well-behaved before even embarking on a career in teaching. One day my luck might run out and I'll be presented with unruly hooligans who don't give a rat's ass about languages, but until that day I will sit in blissful ignorance and enjoy the silence of twenty-five students working diligently for half an hour at their desks.

So all in all, my life as a teacher seems to be going well. Social life has been a bit calm since the two weeks ago Marlena was here, but looks to liven up the last two weeks before I leave for the Christmas holidays.

I am getting a roomate! Finally. I can safely say that I hate living alone and never want to have to do it again, so the school has approved it and I am officially co-habiting as of January.

The internet problem (can you believe it) has finally been resolved – I received my Livebox and got my phone line installed yesterday.

But. (There is always a but).

I am STILL typing this blog post from McDonalds. Yes, that's right. I jumped through every single hoop imaginable to get myself Internet in my flat – changing phone companies, installing a phone line (at great cost), waiting with bated breath as said phone-line-installer ummed and ahhhed yesterday, checking various cables dotted around the school, the corridor outside my flat and even an electrical France Telecom box on the side of the road next to the post office...before turning to me and saying “C'est bon!”.

Then I tried my hand at fitting the box together this afternoon. Wasn't too difficult (an idiot proof step-by-step) and FOR NINETY WONDERFUL SECONDS I HAD A GREEN LIGHT INDICATING WIFI RESONATING THROUGH MY APPARTMENT...

And then the light swiftly turned off, along with every other light on the modem and a message popped up on my screen saying:

“Your ADSL line has not yet been activated. Please wait up to 15 days for activation to occur.”

I swear I almost wanted to KILL someone.

But I guess I can't do anything about it, and since I have submitted the first part of my university essay (abstract) and my friend is coming this weekend, followed by my sisters the weekend after, I guess I can try and forget about the internet problem.

But what I can't believe is how unbelievably complicated and drawn out this problem has been. You'd think that someone in the technological companies of all of France had a personal VENDETTA against me. Maybe this is actually just somehow the government getting payback for all those times I “forgot to buy a ticket” on SNCF trains in Nice...

So until then...hasta la proxima amigos and amigas.

From Macdonalds with love. X

(Some pictures to cheer up with).