Visite

Today started, as every Tuesday does, early. But an hour or so than my usual starts, as today I was going on a school trip! Now, not as stressful as might first be implied...the trip was to Lycée Allende with the troisième INTER for a day's experience at the only lycée in the area with an international section. So if they want to continue their intensive English classes, they have to go there. Luckily my throat is now almost better, so I was actually able to talk to people rather than mime. So the idea was to give them a little induction into how it would work, and what they would experience and all that jazz. I wasn't really needed there to be honest, you need one teacher per eighteen students...and there are only eight of them. However I think the other teacher saw it as a little day off as he whizzed off to the staffroom with some marking and leaving me with the class.

Not that I minded.

I get on really well with this class (as you've probably guessed from previous blips), and I am also aware that they don't particularly like this other teacher...so I was more than happy to play babysitter! And I learnt something too...never heard of Ground-Hog Day (bar the film) before today! I think the troisième were both impressed, but a little bit overawed at the scale of the lycée as compared to their school...but overall I think they enjoyed it, and hopefully it has convinced some of them that they should continue in the International Section rather than going elsewhere, to a lycée that may be closer to where they live, but may also not be the right choice for them. I hope most of them were persuaded, it would be a real shame for them to lose all the hard work they have been doing!

So, embarrassing moments of the day for me all centred on one thing...being mistaken for, not a lycéen, but one of my own fifteen year old troisièmes. Oh the shame! Now I can only press the fact that I do not in any way, shape, or form in my eyes look younger than eighteen (at a push!)...yet on three separate occasions I was mistaken. So, in order (and also coincidentally in order of an "oh dear lord" thought!):-
1. The first class teacher I went in with...being told to sit down and join in is always a strange experience, especially when you're making sure that your troisième are sitting down and joining in at the time!
2. One of the première students (age: seventeen) thought that I was a troisième pupil.
and to top it all off...
3. The headteacher of the school asked me why I thought I would go to that school, and also why I was in the International Section.


I'm going to blame it all on context.


Anyhows, absolutely lovely day out, including a rather nice free lunch and wine...where all of my troisième behaved and, more importantly, were hopefully convinced that this was where they should end up.

Even though I had been on a school trip, I still arrived back at the Collège to teach my final class of the day...my sixième INTER. I swear to you, those students that I took today are improving both in language skills, and confidence, right in front of my eyes. I took this photograph just on the way out of school...although you can see blue sky; I'm actually being pelted by hailstones at the very same time! The things you put up with sometimes for photography.

Lazy night in tonight...I say lazy; but what I really mean is preparing my lessons for the rest of the week, as tomorrow looks like it is going to be a busy day!