School Will Never Be The Same Again Thanks To Corona…

Tags

Corona, Corona Virus, Covid 19, education, France, French, kids, Language, Learning, Teaching

I’m back at school now, teaching the kids – not MY kids, although they are there, I mean the kids in general. This return has been a long time coming, thanks to that ever-present virus, and to be honest with you I wasn’t sure if I’d be going back at all.

Just to recap/fill you in – I’m an assistant at my local school and I teach the kids English – quelle surprise – teaching is maybe a bit grand as it’s more of a mixture between entertaining and teaching, but I do my best and we all usually have a laugh. I take the kids on before and after their dinner hour, the bigger kids first then the the little ones. So I get load of distracted, hungry big kids and then a load of full, lethargic little kids.

It’s great.

Most of the time.

I’m up against it though in terms of popularity, as my fellow ‘animateurs’ – as we are called here – are all French and so offer a variety of exciting activities liked painting Pokemon, creating little purses, crafting cuddly donkeys and one activity that simply involves going in the ‘room of fun’. So put that up against ‘English class’ and it’s not really a surprise that I’m usually the last girl at the dance. The other animateurs have queues for their activities, me? I have to get the security ladies to make them come along.

That only applies to the bigger kids though – the little kids are more than happy to come along and find my accent fascinating. Strange how kids can change in a year from all happy, eager smiles to grumpy and ‘cool’. Too cool for English anyway.

So yes I’m back but it’s a very different landscape to the one I was forced to leave due to being furloughed following the Corona outbreak (part one?). Now all the kids are regimented, separated into classes, kept apart and generally monitored to ensure they don’t interact with other groups too much.

Like a kind of health-conscious segregation.

It’s masks on all the time for me as well, which makes it so much easier for the kids to understand me.

Not.

There also seems to be a lot less kids in general, I don’t know if they are hiding away or if some parents have simply opted, in the current ‘climate of fear’ to go the home-schooling route. I used to be that you would have to fight your way across the school playground, fighting through the crowds with all the speed of a salmon swimming upstream, dodging running kids, footballs, hats, you name it. Now you can just stroll right through them, like their fun-factor has been drained away.

Children that did not keep up with their studies during this current crisis have suffered the worst though. There was the confinement period, which was followed by a brief return to school, which was then followed by the eight week holidays. Some parents have not helped their children maintain their education levels, and never returned – albeit briefly – when they could. As a result of this some children are having to repeat the year, or have even been relegated into lower-level classes. It’s not great to see – potential like that, squandered.

Still, my kids are there too and it’s really great to be able to see them in this environment. I often arrive early and so get the privilege of being able to watch my children play with their friends, unaware that I am watching them – the office has mirrored doors and windows. I look at it as a kind of aquarium, just one for kids.

They can be my bridge for the other children too, when a concept is too difficult for me to explain, or I simply don’t know the words, bilingual kids come in very handy, especially when they are your own. Just don’t rely on them in crucial situations like at the bank or when asking directions as they have a tendency to shut down in times of real need.

So yes, I’m back, for how long I don’t know, and I’m not saying that as a reflection of my abilities, more of the ever present threat Covid 19 poses. The landscape at school has changed, but whether these measures will be sufficient? Time will tell….

Excerpts From The Front Line…

Tags

education, France, French, funny, Humor, Language, Learning, school, Teaching

 

I’ve started teaching* English in my village to a group of French retirees. The lady who usually does it is the town-planner, so she’s often called into meetings, and for this reason my services were offered – not by me, but by one of her students – so I now take on her duties once every three weeks. Tuesday night was my first time in charge, here are a few excerpts from that evening.

 

I asked the group to tell me something they had done that week that they didn’t like. Three people said the same thing:

Denis: ‘I had to make some jam, but I didn’t like it’

Michelle: ‘I made jam, but I didn’t like doing it’

Francoise: ‘I made jam, 50 pots, but I didn’t like it’

Me: ‘Do you sell this jam?’

All: ‘No’

Me: ‘If you don’t like doing it, why don’t you just stop?’

All: ‘But the fruit will go bad’

Me: ‘So give the fruit to the animals, or people’

All: *blank stares*

 

On my teaching methods

‘Can you talk slower’

‘I can’t understand you, can you talk slower’

After saying a lengthy passage of text out loud

‘Can you write that on the board?’ (I do)

‘What is that? Is that a Russian character?’ (I’ve written my ‘h’s with a sloping bridge)

‘You keep dropping your ‘t’s, pronounce your ‘t’s’

‘Has he started talking slower?’

 

On my accent

Francoise: ‘Is he American? Are you American?’

Me: ‘No I’m from Yorkshire’

Francoise (frowning, turning to her friend Martine): ‘Is he American?’

Martine: ‘No, he’s from Yorkshire’

Francoise: ‘Oh yes, like the dogs, Yorkshire Terriers’

 

Apropos of nothing

Christine: ‘We had to get a new ram. It was having too much sex with the other sheep and would have messed up the gene pool. We bought another one’

On being asked what she did with the old one

Christine: ‘We killed it and ate it. Well, not all of it, most of it is in the freezer’

 

That’s just a snippet of the many things that were said that night. I loved doing it. Hopefully they did too. Can’t wait for the next class.

 

*The term teaching is used here in its loosest possible sense

Some Humour Translates Easily…

Tags

education, France, French, fun, funny, Humour, Language, school

 

New kid in my English class today.

 

He was colouring in a work sheet with the rest of the group, when he started laughing at the title. The title was ‘Can I have a pet’.

 

I thought he was confused about what it meant, and gave him a detailed explanation as to how he would put this question to his parents in French if, for example, he wanted a cat or a dog.

 

He waited patiently for me to finish and then told me that he was laughing because he thought ‘pet’ sounded just like the word for ‘fart’ in French (which it does, especially when you add the sound-effects, like he did.)

 

I like this kid.

Doing Your Bit To Help Out With The Local School 2. The Museum Visit…

Tags

children, education, Farming, France, French, History, Humor, Humour, kids, Learning, Museums, school

 

I get asked to help the school chaperone the kids on a visit to the museum in a local town. ‘This will be a doddle’ I think ‘Just walking around with the teacher making sure we don’t lose anyone’. I am of course wrong in thinking this.

The day of the visit arrives. It is beautiful, it is sunny.

Let’s all go inside a stuffy building full of agricultural tools then. So we do.

There are another couple of parents there. ‘Oh good’ I think ‘Safety in numbers and all that’. The other parents start taking the kids off in groups. I realise that the teacher is dividing the kids up into groups of seven and eight. The implications of this are hammered home as I see eight children – my son amongst them – being herded my way.

‘Oh well’ I think ‘It won’t be that hard will it? walking round an old museum full of tools’. The teacher then starts giving out quiz sheets to myself and each child.

I look at the sheet. It is full of strange words – which is nothing new for me as all words at the moment are a bit strange (it is French after all) but these are really strange –  as well as room numbers that correspond to the confusing words.

We head off into the first room. There are tools here that I have never seen before, and whose names I do not know in English. Apparently I am supposed to search in this room for the correct implement as listed by its bizarre name on the quiz sheet, and then take one of the letters from that name, and then do this in every room till we have a full set of letters which we will then have to rearrange to form the name of something else.

‘This is going to be a long morning’ I think to myself.

Coupled with this headache-inducing quiz is the fact that children – funnily enough – do not seem all that interested in looking at 200-year-old farming tools, and so have started acting up.

Have you ever shouted at a child in a museum? How about eight children? I have. I would prefer not to have to do it again. I would have preferred to not have had to do it 36 times, but that’s agricultural museums for you – they bring out the worst in kids.

Realising that this quiz is a non-starter for me and my limited grasp of ancient-agricultural-implements-French, I corner the teacher. ‘I don’t get this’ I tell her ‘I’ve never seen these things in England, let alone France – how do you win this game?’. Evidently you win this game by cheating, because she whispers the answer in my ear.

Then she looks at the expression on my face and writes it down on a piece of paper and hands it to me.

The seven kids (one of them has been removed for constantly disrupting the group, not my son by the way, he’s still stuck to me like glue) and I continue on our way, now mysteriously being able to identify each clue in each room with alarming rapidity.

We do it so quickly that we arrive in the reception room on the ground floor of the museum, where we are met by another parent and her seven wards (‘Why did I get eight?’ I think to myself ‘Teacher mustn’t like me’ I answer myself, pondering if this is the first sign of madness). She looks at me, resignation written large on her face, and then pulls out the timetable. We have finished the quiz with plenty of time to spare. In fact looking at the timetable it appears that we have another hour to wait before we have anything else to do.

I look at the 14 kids milling around a room full of glass cases with farming books inside them, thinking this is going to be a long hour. I look at the other parent, inquiring as to how she got down here so quickly. She pulls out a piece of paper, the teacher’s scrawled answer unmistakable.  ‘Oh well’ I think to myself ‘At least I’m not the only one who isn’t au fait with ancient French agricultural tools’.

Doing Your Bit To Help Out With The Local School 1. The Cycling Safety Course

Tags

cycling, education, France, French, fun, funny, Humor, kids, Nursery, Parenting, school, stay-at-home Dad, training

 

I’m trying to integrate into my new community here in la belle France. It’s easier when you’ve got kids as you can talk to the other parents and offer your services at their school. If you don’t have kids and you do that you just seem strange.

 

And when I’m not offering my services my partner is offering my services. Which is why today I found myself escorting a group of four and five-year-olds to the local park, so they could learn about the rules of the road. Except not actually on the road, because that would be madness, no we just set up a few obstacle courses that effectively mimicked things they would need to look out for when they did eventually ‘hit the road’.

 

As an example of what these obstacle courses amounted to I will tell you about the section I was in charge of. I was in charge of the roundabout, or ‘rond point’ as it’s called over here. This meant I had to stand there and make sure they went around it the right way. Which, depending on where you hail from as you read this, may actually be the wrong way for you. It used to be for me, coming from the UK where I went round it the other way. But I’ve adapted and now only occasionally go round it the wrong way. Which is the right way for the UK but the wrong way here. What was I talking about? I’ve forgotten…oh yes, the safety course.

 

So the teachers laid down the rules to the kids before we began, and ensured they knew exactly what they had to do. It boiled down to this:

 

The teachers said: ‘Children, this will help you understand the rules of the road and be better riders. The skills you learn today will set you up for now, and also for later in your life‘.

 

That seems pretty standard and straightforward to me, as it must do to you too. However judging by what I then spent two hours (they asked me to cover two classes, what can I say? I’m stupid) watching I don’t think that’s what the kids heard because…

 

The kids said: ‘This is our chance to get even with the other kids we don’t like! Smash into everybody! Run them off the road! THIS IS NOT SAFETY TRAINING THIS IS A RACE – AND ONE WE ARE GOING TO WIN AT ALL COSTS!!!!’

 

It was like Ben-Hur crossed with Death Race 2000 with a dash of Battle Royale. I felt particularly bad for the kids whose parents had forgotten to bring a bike, and so were relegated to using the school’s tricycles instead. They were slowly squeaking round that park like Danny in ‘The Shining‘. They did not fare well against the rest, and were picked off with ease by the larger predators.

 

My daughter was a keen participant in the ‘race’, I saw her take down two other competitors that weren’t actually competing but were just trying to navigate some bollards. She then discarded her jacket, ostensibly because she was too hot, but I think it was because it made her less efficient, as after that her hit ratio went through the roof. It’s very odd to see such a mad gleam in the eye of someone who is only four-year’s old, and is wearing  a pink Disney’s Frozen safety helmet. I won’t say no next time she asks me for a second story at bedtime, I’ll be too scared to.

 

I got away relatively unscathed in my position at the roundabout. There were only four collisions, and one child who needed to have plasters and cuddles applied. I did have to move out of the way a few times though as some of the kids seemed intent on hurtling into me, as well as their ‘friends’.

 

I’m going on a museum trip next. It’s a museum full of old agricultural implements, you know: scythes and things with points.

 

I need to stop offering my services….

The Short Happy Life Of Francois The Fisherman…

Tags

education, fun, funny, Humor, Parenting, school, stay-at-home Dad, strange

 

Hello my friends, you may not have heard of me, but my name is Francois, Francois the fisherman. I am very happy today, even happier than when I caught the biggest fish of my life. OK it was made out of straw, and covered in glitter, but it still counts.

 

Why am I so happy you ask? Well because today is the day of the carnival, a celebration for me and all my life works, that takes place every year. I can’t say I recall last year’s though, but then as I am only 8 days old I wouldn’t, would I? I tried asking last year’s famous fisherman what I should do but, try as I might, I can’t find him.

 

Also when I did ask people they ran away screaming ‘Mummy, mummy it’s come to life ahhhh!!’ Except they said that in French of course. Ahem.

 

I look happy don’t I? Pity that I couldn’t have been in front of a more suitable mode of transportation for my photograph, say a boat for instance, as opposed to a 2010 Renault Kangoo. Still, I can’t complain, I’m being taken round the town followed by my wonderful fans. I’d give them a round of applause, but I’ve got no hands.

 

Or feet.

 

It really makes fishing quite a task.

 

But I digress.

 

 

 

Look at my incredible parade of followers, on this great day. I’m being taken through the village of Aubigny Sur Nere, France, and as you can see the kids have really made an effort to impress me. Here you can see they have dressed up as lobsters. I love lobsters.

 

There are also some seagulls too. I don’t know who told them to dress up as seagulls. Yes, yes they are associated with the sea, but as far as I’m concerned they are rats with wings. Rats with wings that steal your chips and take a crap on your shoulder after they’ve stolen your chips.

 

But I won’t let that put a dampener on my day, lord no.

 

 

Another great bunch of youngsters, all dolled-up up to celebrate ME! I think they are dressed as starfish…or maybe squids with stars on them? I’m not 100% on this one.

 

Notice the bell in the possible-starfish’s hand? That’s to let everyone know they are in the presence of greatness – ME! Francois the fisherman!

 

 

Here we have some more of my fans, dressed up so smartly for the occasion, with lots of different elements from the sea on display. Look at the parents however – different story there. So sombre, so dark, why anyone would think they were going to a funeral instead of a carnival, HA HA!

 

 

Notice the packed walkways? Everyone is here to see me, I feel so blessed! What a day to be me, Francois the fisherman! We seem to be heading to the park now, I wonder what other delights they have in store for me? A song from some scantily clad mermaids perhaps…

 

(actually mermaids smell ghastly, and they can’t survive on dry land for more than an hour – 61 minutes + and they explode, trust me, you do not want to clean up mermaid guts).

 

 

Ahh, a fitting end to the carnival, they have made me a throne! OK, so it’s not a very tall one, and it seems to be made of hay, but I will allow it.

 

Not sure about my new followers dress-code though, not very ‘sea-worthy’.

 

 

Now what in blue blazes is that one doing down there? Now hang on a minute…

 

 

OOOh! It’s getting a bit toasty here…anyone got any water? Ooooh it’s getting hot!!! I’ve changed my mind…I don’t want to be (HOT HOT HOT!!) king of the carnival any more…can anyone (OOOOOH HOT HOT HOT!!) hear me? Hello? HELLO????????!!!!

 

 

 

Cultural French/UK Differences: The Lollipop Man

Tags

children, cultural differences, education, France, French, fun, funny, Humor, Parenting, school, stay-at-home Dad

 

For the uninitiated a lollipop man is a man/woman who stands at the side of a Zebra crossing, ensuring that vehicles stop so the children can safely cross the road. Lollipop men/women take their name from the brightly-coloured giant lollipop-like signs they hold, this catches drivers’ attentions and they then stop (or accelerate, depending on who’s behind the wheel). In the UK they usually look exactly as the chap in the picture above, generally retired and with an affable, approachable nature.

 

They do not look like this in France.

 

The lollipop man in our old village in the UK was called Paul.

 

I think the French lollipop man is called TK100016.

 

Paul wore a hi-viz jacket and whatever clothes he had decided to put on that day.

 

French lollipop man wears standard issue uniform. Standard issue for the riot police anyway.

 

Paul would always have a friendly word to say to you, and would ask how the kids were doing.

 

The French lollipop man shouted at me today because I slightly jogged over the crossing.

 

After his shift ended Paul could often be seen walking his dog around the village.

 

As soon as his shift ends the French lollipop man plugs himself in to recharge.

 

Paul liked gifts at Christmas, and would never refuse a bottle of wine.

 

I think if I gave the French lollipop man any kind of gift he would immediately, and violently, arrest me, considering it an attempt to bribe a government official.

 

Paul had a lollipop.

 

I’m 95% sure the French lollipop man has a taser. He definitely doesn’t have a lollipop.

 

Paul let us take his picture once, for one of my son’s school projects.

 

If I attempted to take a photo of the French lollipop man he would pick me up by my throat with one hand, with his other he would take my phone off me and crush it.

 

Paul used his lollipop to stop traffic.

 

French lollipop man uses his eyes.

 

I liked Paul.

 

French lollipop man scares me.

Decoding The First Day At The New School In France…

Tags

children, education, France, French, funny, Humor, school, stay-at-home Dad

 

 

Me: ‘have you had a good day then?’

 

My Son: ‘Yes, I really enjoyed it’

 

Me: ‘Did you talk to lots of other children?’

 

My Son: ‘Yes, and I made friends with a girl from London’

 

Me: ‘Wow! So there’s another English girl there?’

 

My Son: ‘Yes she doesn’t speak much English, just ‘oui”

 

Me: ‘Errrrr…’

 

My Son: ‘And she has London on her t-shirt’

 

Me: ‘Wait…so was she from London or did she just have London on her t-shirt?’

 

My Son: (talking to me in a tone reserved for simpletons) ‘She was from London!’

 

Me: ‘Oh great, so you have an English friend then?’

 

My Son: ‘Yes, but she doesn’t talk much English’

 

I give up at this point and turn my attention to my daughter, who is happily munching an apple.

 

Me: ‘Did you have a good first day?’

 

My Daughter: ‘Yes!’

 

Me: ‘Did you talk to many people?’

 

My Daughter: (smiling) ‘I didn’t talk to anybody’

 

 

 

We found out a couple of days later that the girl in question was not actually English, she just wore a t-shirt with ‘London’ written on it. Honestly, six-year-olds, eh? The Enigma machine has nothing on them!

 

Sick Beds And Trapped Bees At The New School In France…

Tags

Bees, children, education, France, French, funny, Humor, school, teachers, Traditions, training

One of the actual classrooms we went in, this one is where you learn English – I did have to point out though that ‘Britain’ is not spelt with two ‘T’s. Whether this will have enamored me to our new host or not, only time will tell.

It’s a miserable wet Tuesday morning and my son, my daughter, myself and the (French) mother-in-law are visiting my son’s new school. We are visiting it during the school holidays and the head-teacher has very nicely agreed to open it, so that we can all have a look around and see what my curly-haired boy thinks of it.

It’s a huge building which, the headteacher informs us is ‘Very old…deux-cent’ (200 years). There are many rooms with all kinds going on in each one and, obviously, lots and lots of French writing. I find this daunting and I’m not the one that will be attending, but my son loves it.

We enter one room and the headteacher motions to my children to approach a large box on wheels that appears to be some kind of cabinet. He then, in a very magician-esque way, pulls off one of the panels on the cupboard/box/thingy to reveal BEES! Lots and lots of bees. The idea, he says, is that the kids look after the bees, the bees make honey, and the kids eat the honey.

After showing us both sides of the bee-box he then puts the cover back on, sealing the bees away. ‘What a holiday they are having!’ I say in broken French to my belle-mere ‘The kids go off on vacation to the lakes, or the south of France, and they get to spend two weeks bumping into each other in the dark in a big box’. Potential bee-right violations aside it’s another great idea that this school has – they also have some mini-allotments at the entrance to encourage the kids to start to grow their own food.

Bit too close to the entrance if you ask me – if this was England anything they grew would get plundered when they reached a ripened state.

We carry on and enter the staff room, dominated by the head-teacher’s desk in the centre of the room. He then shows us the other parts of the room (It’s very Scooby Doo – there seem to be doors that lead off into other areas all over the place) and indicates the sick bed.

Now I can’t speak for everybody but in my village back in England the school there had a very simple approach to sick children. If you cough too much – you go home. If you are sick – you go home. Look a bit pale? you go home. It was an almost knee-jerk reaction in its speed the way in which the school would get in touch with you if your child exhibited the slightest indication that they were sick.

I’m told – after telling the head-teacher that these don’t exist anymore in England – that they do this because they understand the difficulties of working life for people with children. If your child is a bit unwell, or is sick, they take them to the sick bay and monitor them for an hour or so. If they perk up then off they go back to play/learn/whatever. If not then they will contact the parent (s).

This is another great tradition that I experienced in my lifetime that has sadly disappeared from the UK – too ‘risky’ these days I suppose, in our culture of blame. So I’m pleased that it still exists over here, in our new home.

My son is pleased as punch with his new school, which eases my mind. He’d been a bit sick the previous night and we were both worried that it was due to worry about his new, somewhat ‘alien’, learning environment. This is clearly not the case though, as he happily runs from empty class to empty class, admiring the old traditions that sit alongside newer technologies – touch-sensitive whiteboards for example.

We reach the cafeteria as our tour comes to an end and, the headteacher informs us, he will be able to dine with his sister as the nursery and the school eat together. This pleases my two children no end, ‘We will have dinner together’ they happily shout.

We head off back to the mother-in-law’s for dinner, walking down the high street, which is beautiful despite the miserable weather. As we do we pass by the local florists. ‘Look daddy!’ my son says, pointing to a bunch of flowers. ‘Oh yes, they are very pretty’ I say to him. ‘No look, there’s a bee!’. He’s quite right, there is, crawling happily over the…whatever it is (I’m not a horticulturalist, OK?). ‘It’s escaped from the school’ I tell him, and he looks back at me with huge eyes. ‘Bad bee!’ he says, ‘We’ve got to get it back!’ ‘We’ll tell the headmaster next week’ I tell him ‘He’ll send out the bee-police’.

This seems to satisfy him and we head off down the high street hand-in-hand, all four of us, looking forward to the future.

Does Your Child’s Teacher Speak A Different Language To You…..?

Tags

children, education, France, funny, Humor, languages, political correctness, school, stay-at-home Dad

 

It’s 5.30pm on a wet and miserable Wednesday evening and I’m picking up my son from his after-school club. The club is a fantastic thing as it allows me to work within normal hours safe in the knowledge that he’s being well looked after and fed.

 

He loves it because he gets to play video games.

 

I ring the buzzer on the door and wait patiently for the door to be answered. And wait. And wait. In the end I have to go and bang on the window of the room that the kids play in, startling the children but gaining the teaching-assistants’ attentions.

 

This happens frequently; they say it is because their walkie-talkies are out of range of the door-buzzer; I say, they don’t like getting up and answering the door, hoping that the caretaker will do it instead (he often does).

 

So after being let in to the building by one of the teaching assistants I notice that she has a concerened look on her face. ‘Is your son’s mum in France* at the moment?’ I tell her that that is indeed the case. ‘Oh right’ she says ‘That might explain it then’. ‘Explain what?’ I ask her.

 

‘Well’ she starts ‘He was playing outside earlier on and he went in the wrong direction and made the wrong choice, his teacher asked him to make the right choice but he again went in the wrong direction’. I look at her, trying to decipher this statement.

 

‘So what did he do?’ I ask her. She looks at me like I have just been dropped on my head and repeats the same mysterious sentence.

 

Now, at the school my son goes to I have encountered this type of language before, when my son has been guilty of using ‘unkind hands’ and ‘unkind words’. That’s fairly self-explanatory, but I’m at a total loss as to what he has, or hasn’t done, on this occasion.

 

I think the rationale behind it is that teachers don’t want to outright describe the situation, they prefer to label it in a roundabout fashion. I’d personally prefer it if they just said ‘Your son misbehaved today – he was hitting Maisie over the head with a watering can so he had to go for a timeout’ – much easier to understand than the current method of cotton-wooling the facts.

 

I wait for the assistant to fetch my son and replay the conversation in my head. And I’m still none the wiser two minutes later when my son arrives.

 

The teaching assistant looks at me ‘We’ll put it down to his mum being away I think, hopefully he’ll go in the right direction tomorrow’. I nod my head in agreement at whatever it is this woman is saying to me and leave the building as quickly as possible.

 

We will be moving to France soon where the teachers most certainly will not speak the same language as me. But, in many ways, they may actually speak a language that I understand a lot more…

 

I did actually ask my son, when we got home, what he’d done. He is a typical six-year-old boy, so all I got was ‘I don’t know’. Later that evening when I Skyped my partner and relayed what had gone on she was similarly curious as to what had happened, and neither me nor my son could proffer an answer…

 

 

*We are shortly moving to France – more on that at a later date – and so she has started her new job already – one week she’s in France, one week she’s back in the UK, one week back in France, one week in the UK then we move over there permanently.