We are on the edge of the second part of this big adventure.
If the actual moving of our material things and ourselves - the realizing and
accepting that we have left behind our friends, our comfort zones and cozy
places- was Part I, then we are ready for Part II- meeting new people, starting
new routines and trying to understand new systems.
Having a baby has certainly been a great boost to our
popularity. Everyone loves a new baby. People in the neighborhood stop to
congratulate us and wish her well. A woman down the road even stopped to offer
me a ride home one day. Nothing increases a sense of belonging so much as
seeing people from your neighborhood outside
your neighborhood and being recognized. So now I know Ingrid, whose little boy
was born in America, New York to be precise, and whose grin grew so wide and so
bright when I suggested he was my little brother that you might have thought I
was offering him a position as part of the royal family. There is the guy on
the corner who sells phone minutes, soda and eggs (an interesting combination
to be sure) who greets me every morning with a “bonne journee” and welcomes me
home every evening with a “bonne arrivee.” And the woman at the little super
marché who waves and calls out a cheery “Good morning” in her Ivorian accent.
We’re beginning to find a fit in the neighborhood. Now for the school.
School in French. I finally managed to land a real job with
a real contract in a real school, even if it feels like another world. Although
I haven’t begun teaching yet, I am sure that the French system is vastly
different than the American system I have been teaching in for the last 12
years. I’m just not sure what different
means.
Nabih and I will be in the primary school in a bilingual
class. I teach the English portion of the day and my co teacher will lead
lessons in the afternoon in French. We’ll both be teaching our native language
and math. In addition, I’ll teach science and technology in English and he’ll
teach geography in French. Apparently we also plan PE, art and music (though
the coordinator of the bilingual program has been recruited for singing, since
she has some talent in this area.) When we are not teaching, we’ll each work
with small groups of students who need extra language instruction.
It sounds as though I will be spending most of my day in
English, though the manner and method of teaching is still unknown to me. I am
working to get Nabih in this class and, if it works out, he is sure to be
marked for help in French. A nice way for him to ease into the program.
Mohamed, however, already at the lycee (secondary school) will be completely
immersed in French, as well as trying to learn Spanish (we opted out of the
choice to take Latin, 3 languages at once seemed like one language too many.)
It’s not just the teaching methodology that is sure to be
different; the teachers themselves will probably mystify me for a bit. The
French culture is one I haven’t spent a lot of time around, despite my years in
Francophone Africa.
What I’ve seen so far, after just hours in the classroom, is
that I want more. I want more books and
more space. I want more planning time, more teaching material, more information
about how the day is run. Because the French system is an officially regulated system (meaning there is one-and only one- curriculum that every French school
is mandated to follow) the teachers seem to have a lot less planning. My co
teacher has been doing this for 26 years so that, coupled with the fact that he
has a text for everything, means he is feeling pretty laid back about the
beginning of the school year. He has all
his favorite teaching materials and has spent virtually no time in the
classroom preparing. It seems to be the
norm as very few teachers have been around the few times I’ve visited the
school. In this week before opening, the classrooms are quiet and dark; the
doors are locked. Most of the walls
remain bare.
I wrote up a list of questions that I had about getting
through the first week. We spent 3 hours going over philosophy and routines-
enough time to give me a pretty good idea of what I’ve gotten into. Luckily we
both have similar ideas about how to guide children through their learning.
Making sure they understand why they are learning something and what the actual
objective of the lesson is are common points we share. What I didn’t hear was
any thoughts on differentiating, aside from allowing students to work at their
own pace and recognizing quality over quantity. The way he accomplishes this is
to have the students come to his desk every time they finish a problem. This
also serves as a way to integrate some movement into the day. It sounds like a
lot of lines and wasted time. And the thought of sitting at a desk is
completely and utterly foreign to me. I’m not sure I can do that.
Talk of assessment was equally dismal sounding. Most of the
assessments are included in the text, though he mentioned creating a few of his
own- multiple choice. I realized that my
expectations for student learning are probably slightly different than his- and
than what the students are used to. It would be completely unfair of me to
bring that into the testing or the evaluating. I am going to have to remember
this.
It would be much easier, of course, if the lessons in
English were as readily available as the ones in French. He opened the supply
cabinet to show me how he’d organized it- one side for each of us, his row of
shelves stocked with teaching guides and reference material, my side empty.
Since this is the first year of CM1 (the American equivalent of grade 4) as a
bilingual class, the math book will need to be translated. Luckily only the
sections I will be teaching. The science
and technology are already in English, apparently some CD thing we will view on
the SmartBoard. I am not expecting any
experiments but hope to be happily surprised. It’s the kind of thing that I
wonder if it will be frowned upon if I bring it in. I don’t want to be that teacher that comes in and insists
on doing everything different, but there are some things I may not be able to
change, don’t want to change in fact. Learning by doing. Learning by seeing and
trying. Learning by experimenting and drawing conclusions.
One of the biggest adjustments I may have to make is in the
study of language. The guideline I was given breaks it down into 5 categories-
grammar, conjugation, spelling, vocabulary and the last box a double title,
reading/writing. In one box? This box
only contains the titles of one story- in some of the periods only a genre is
given. A period is about 2 months. When I inquired about a reading log or some
other tracking system so students can see how much they read and what genres
they are reading, it was translated as reading
rally, as in a race to see who reads the most. Not exactly what I was
thinking. I was trying to figure out how to create a culture of reading in a
classroom devoid of books. There is nothing in the boxes that refers to types
of writing or extended writing of any sort. As a lover of literature and a
writer myself, this is going to be a huge change for me. I might be able to go
ahead with a reading program that is slightly modified from the one I am used
to, but writing?
When I asked about homework, I was told technically it is
not allowed. No homework until they get
to college (middle school) when they get piles of it, without ever having had
the experience of it before. I was told that realistically, homework is given
out but very minimal. Reading, maybe a few exercises from a text or “learning a
lesson” (further inquiry required to understand this means being able to recite
back a rule of some sort- I understood it similar to spelling rules I grew up
with as a child. “I before E except after
C or when sounded as A as in neighbor and weigh.” ) Students are given a
week to memorize it and share it in class. No writing. Writing is strictly
forbidden as homework. Hmmmm.
In the end, I am left feeling as though I have been
downsized (not necessarily a negative thing. It means adjusting, that’s all.)
Other things I’ll need to get used to:
- Less technology- While we have a SmartBoard in our room, there is only one desktop computer available with the program for running it. Anything I’d like to create will need to be completed on this computer. There is no Wi-Fi, no teacher laptops and no school email. How am I going to create a class of bloggers, wiki users and Google searchers? There is a lab where I can take students- 12 computers for our class of 23. Lab partners will work out fine, but I am left to wonder where the acquisition of technology skills falls on the priority level.
- A shorter workday- School runs from 7:30-1:00. No lunch is served as the campus lacks the facilities for this. Once a week there are meetings for the bilingual class teachers and every other week a full faculty meeting. Otherwise, many teachers go home at 1:00 most days of the week. I’ll probably stay a bit longer out of habit, and also because my program is new and will likely need more preparation and creation of materials. But I have a theater idea in my mind and might consider offering that as an after school activity. I’m not sure if it’s the local contract or the French pay scale, but either way picking up a few extra francs during a fun after school activity is probably a necessity in my future.
- No sticky notes- what??!! Students are required to buy all of the materials they will need- and even some us teachers will need (like reams of copy paper.) The school provides very little (I am tempted to say nothing, but there is a small paper and supply room that the Cycle 3 teachers share.) There is no requesting office supply material- buy and bring your own. So long, sticky notes. You probably won’t make my budget.
- Fewer emergency drills- In Kinshasa, we had drills for everything. Fire, intruder on campus, emergency information to be distributed, the ‘safe room.’ These drills were coded with colors, red, orange, blue, yellow, and each required retreating to a different space depending upon the nature of the emergency. Here, one drill, one meeting space. Keeping it simple.
In light of the recent addition to our family, keeping it
simple is hugely important. After my months of restlessness and cabin fever, I
am suddenly quite content to sit and stare at our little cutie. If that
happened to pay well, I would never have ventured out into the world of work
and structure.
I’m sure as this experimental year goes on, I will have
plenty of opportunities to re-examine my current philosophy and methodology of
teaching. I may find some opportunities for growth and adoption of new ideas as
well as a confirmation to hold firm to current convictions. In between all
those ideas, I’ll be busy staring at the baby- who is bound to be doing some
growing of her own.
