Friday 1/27: “Just Keep Teaching…Just Keep Teaching…”

I’m feeling a little bit better, but still really stuffed up. Urgle. However, I had a great class with the 10 year olds. We talked about animals and then sang Old MacDonald…but this class was really enthusiastic about dancing and we all got up and did the do-si-do! I really wish I could have a video of them all…it was hilarious!

After a break, I had class with the difficult group. I had them do a worksheet on “a” vs. “an” and then we sang and danced to “YMCA!” That went fairly well, except that for a brief time they were getting kind-of out of hand and were standing on chairs/completely ignoring me. I yelled at them, made them all sit down, and then we re-sang the song while looking at the lyrics. It’s amazing how even when we’re doing something fun, they have to be difficult! But it was pretty funny to be walking across the playground later and hear “YYYY MMMMMM CCCC AAAAA!!” being sung extremely loudly by many students.

In my afternoon classes we kept working on the days of the week and I read “Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What do you see?” to the smaller class in the library. With the other class of 7 yr olds, I also played the song “B-I-N-G-O” and explained it to them. We’ll start learning it on Tuesday next week, but I wanted them to at least hear it before then. I think it’ll help with remembering how to pronounce the letters “I” and “G”…they have a lot of trouble not pronouncing them like “E” and “J.”

After classes I hung out with Margot until she had to leave for tennis and then I rested in my room. I wasn’t feeling that well, but I decided to go to folk dance because I didn’t go last week. I didn’t go up on stilts, but I did all the floor dances. I’m starting to talk a bit more with the people there, which is nice. One of the ladies is our post woman and she said to me “You get a lot of letters and packages!” I said, “I know! I love my family and friends—they’re so great!” :)

Luckily folk dance didn’t go late tonight, so I came home and made myself some past around 10pm… I was starving!!

Tomorrow I have to get up early to take the train to Spain!

Thursday 1/26: “Je ne veux pas travailler”

I was able to sleep in this morning and, after a nice, hot shower, I felt a bit better. I took my time having breakfast and getting ready, then headed over to school. Pablo and I spent the five minutes before class discussing the fact that there are songs in pretty much every language called “I don’t want to work” …for example, the Pink Martini song, “Je ne veux pas travailler.” Apparently Pablo knows one in Spanish and one in Portuguese as well… In any case, we both sat there not wanting to get up and head to the classroom, but finally the clock hit 10:45am and we had to move. But, when we knocked on the classroom door, no one answered. It was locked! We eventually deduced that the CE2 classes were on a field trip and no one had bothered to tell us! Well, great. It was fine for me because I just went home and rested, but Pablo lives about 15 mins away by bike, so there was no point in him going back home because he had a class at 1pm at the middle school. He was a bit peeved because he could have slept in. :(

By the time I was walking back home, I wasn’t feeling so wonderful, so I returned to bed and read for a while until I fell asleep. When I woke up (to go teach at the other school), I was feeling icky again. If I moved to quickly, I felt kinda woozy and my head was all stuffed up again. Catherine suggested that I take the Volvo, so I drove to the other school.

My first class is supposed to start at 1:30pm (although they don’t ever get into the classroom before 1:35pm), but today I waited until 1:48pm before the kids showed up. Apparently they were having some sort of assembly that no one told me about. So, that class went by really fast because we only had 20 minutes of class time! Overall it was pretty successful though, because I found the book “Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?” in the cupboard (while I was waiting around for my class to arrive) and I read that to them. After I read it once, we went through and translated each page. I had planned some other things to do, but we didn’t have time.

The second class arrived and I had those who had already finished their pen pal letters (about 3/4 of the kids) copy down a short list of useful questions from the board and then color. I went around helping the remaining students finish up their letters… and (miraculously) we managed to get them all done in time! And although the other students were far from silent, they didn’t get in any fights, so that was an improvement!

On the way home, I stopped at the grocery store to buy some big envelopes to send the pen pal letters. Once home (after I’d eaten some cereal for lunch… my stomach hasn’t been feeling so great either), I packaged up the letters and then went to the post office to mail them. So glad to be done with that! …Except that I’m about to start it at the school near me and, unlike the class of 14 at the other school that just finished their letters, there will be 60 kids writing letters! eep!

After tea with Margot, I read and rested in my bed. My stomach is all queasy now, which is rather unpleasant. I managed to haul myself up around 7:30pm so I could go down and make the salad for dinner. Catherine arrived soon afterwards and she made the omelet. Margot and I watched Dr. Quinn…who finally had her baby—out in the woods (of course). Ah, quel drame!

This weekend I’m going to Spain with Alison (leaving Sat morning and returning Sun afternoon), but I wish that I didn’t feel so crummy. I want to go have an adventure, but mostly I just feel like staying in bed. Phooey.

I got a letter from Aunt Ellen today! That definitely cheered me up!!! :D

Wednesday 1/25: Y.M.C.A. and Housework

Finally, a beautiful, sunny day! And warm! It’s amazing how much that helps! I’m still sick, but getting some good sleep and doing some cleaning and laundry made me feel a bit better. I realize how much I prefer doing housework to teaching… I feel like I’m good at it and I am efficient and I enjoy it. So, today felt pretty productive.

I also spent a lot of time working on lesson plans. Catherine was talking about how she uses the song “YMCA” to get her students (adults) to remember how to say the letter “Y.” Since my students have a problem remembering it as well, I thought… why not teach them the song?! So, I worked today on finding some good songs to make another CD for my classes. I ended up with a bunch of good tunes (for varying levels) such as: We Are Family, B-I-N-G-O, Hello Goodbye (the Beatles), and I’m A Little Teapot!

This evening I hung out a bit with Margot (we had a good time dancing to YMCA) and headed up to bed early.

Tuesday 1/24: School Lunch and Long Talks

For some reason I couldn’t sleep last night…I think I might have been feverish? So it was lucky that I didn’t have an early class today. I headed over to teach at 10:45am and the class was really talkative, which is just tiring. We talked about feelings today (with the 8 yr olds) and learned “How are you?” “I’m ____.” It’s funny because they are so used to saying “How OLD are you?” that they often mistakenly say that instead! I had made them a feelings wordsearch, so they spent the last 15 minutes of class doing that, which was a good break for me.

Two of the teachers who normally eat lunch from the cafeteria were leaving for lunch today, so they invited Pablo and I to have their lunch. So, I ate “school lunch” for the first time. Hmm. Well, it’s definitely healthier than in the US, but it wasn’t very good. The entrée was a bizarre bean/egg/mayo salad that I only just tasted, then the main course was balls of meat and a squash puree that was way too salty, and then there was bread (not amazing) and cheese, and a choice of either an apple or clementine. I only ate a little puree and then had bread, cheese, and two apples. Oh well, at least not all the food went to waste!

After lunch I taught the little kids in the library and that went well! We briefly reviewed the colors and then started learning the days of the week. I had printed out the names of the days of the week and I had 7 students each take one and go to the front of the class. Then the remaining students had to put the days in the correct order. They have the most difficulty with Tuesday and Thursday because they can’t really see a difference…perhaps because in French, “th” is pronounced like “t” so they seem to be basically the same word!

From there I went up to the class of 10 year olds, where we reviewed the animals and sang “Old MacDonald Had A Farm.” I didn’t try the dance this time, though, because there’s not enough room in their classroom. :p

I had a little break (during which I went home and lied in bed for 30 minutes) then I taught the other class of 7 year olds. We worked on the days of the week as well and then they had time to start a color-by-letter. I had to go around correcting those that thought “R” (red) was for some reason…the color green. Most of them got it right, though!

When I came home, I had tea with Margot and *finally got to skype with Maria (I’ve been wondering what was going on with her because I hadn’t heard from her since last Thursday night…and normally she’s online every day. Apparently she ran out of internet and hadn’t been able to get more) before I had to leave for my conversation class.

We had a good time speaking in English and discussing the differences between American schools, British schools, and French schools. They asked a bunch of questions and some I could answer, others I couldn’t…like, who pays for the schools? The city? The county? The state? And who pays the teachers? In France the town pays for the elementary school, the county pays for the middle school, and the region pays for the high school (I think)… It seems a bit confusing.

After dinner tonight, Margot, Catherine, and I watched the TV show about a foster family. It plays every Tuesday night, so I watch it with them. I’ve been watching a lot less TV lately because I just come upstairs after dinner and either hang out a little bit with Margot, or read/lesson plan/go on my computer in my room. It’s been nice, though, because lately we haven’t been watching the news during dinner, which I LOVE!! Hopefully this’ll last! I much prefer talking about whatever subject just happens to come up!

After the TV program tonight, Margot headed to bed and Catherine and I started chatting. We had a really good talk about several different subjects and when we happened to glance at the time, it was 2:15am! Holy cow! I had no idea it was that late!! Neither of us thought it was even past midnight. But, it was great to have a long talk and luckily we both can sleep in tomorrow morning!

Monday 1/23: Teaching = Acting

Still sick.

My first class of the day was in Margot’s class and we were reviewing animals. Since I forgot to make flashcards for all the animals, I ended up drawing some on the board…yeah, some were better than others. The dolphin was particularly bizarre looking, although I do sheep fairly well (they kinda look like clouds)… It was a pretty hilarious class because I taught them “Old MacDonald Had A Farm” and after singing it through a few times (they really get the E-I-E-I-O part), I made them all get up and try doing a do-si-do like “real American country dancing.” It was hysterical watching them try to figure it out!! And, of course, that was the moment that the teacher walked back into the room… she cracked up.

Luckily I had a break next, so I headed home and crawled back into bed. Sometimes when I’m teaching, it feels like I’m acting. I feel sick and grumpy and tired, but I pretend that I’m a cheery, interesting teacher and then act it out…but as soon as the class is over, I want to go back to bed.

After lunch, I biked over to the other school and had a halfway decent class with the little kids. We kept working on colors and they’re finally remembering them. They still get red and white mixed up (the words sound fairly similar to them), but overall they’re getting it. In the older kids class, we tried to finish the pen pal letters. Fail. Well, some kids managed to finish, but others…not so much. It’s amazing how it has a lot less to do with knowing English and a lot more to do with actually trying to work. With some of the students, if I’m not standing next to them, they’re talking and goofing off with whoever’s sitting near them. It’s exhausting because I explain something to one of them, then move on to the next kid, and the first kid just starts goofing off and hasn’t done anything when I check in on him later. Grr! And, to top it all, there’s a boy in the class who doesn’t seem to get along with most of the other boys and despite me trying to seat him as far away from most of the boys as possible (without making it obvious), things go wrong. The other boys provoke him and he clearly has a temper issue…so, today there were glue sticks and pens thrown across the room at each other and pushing/shoving… I would have sent them out of the room, but we were trying to send out the letters and I just wanted them to get done! In the end we didn’t finish all the letters, but most of the class is done. It was exhausting.

I biked home and went directly to teach the really difficult class. We worked on school supply vocabulary and the difference between “a” and “an.” I’m not sure if they really got it. But, we’ll work more on it next class.

After school I had tea with Margot and then went upstairs to rest until dinnertime. I just want to be well again, darn it!!

Sunday 1/22: More Resting.

Today was pretty much a repeat of yesterday…resting all day in bed. It was sunny for a while during the afternoon, so I opened my windows wide and napped in the fresh air and sunlight.

I managed to plan my classes for tomorrow, so that’s good. And I am feeling a bit better…hopefully I’ll be even better tomorrow!!

That’s about it for today…

Saturday 1/21: Another Sick Day.

I spent a lot of time in bed today. Meaning: I spent all day in bed. I got up in the morning to eat some breakfast, I got up in the afternoon to make some tea, I got up in the evening to eat some dinner…and other than going pee a million times because of all the water I was drinking, I basically laid in bed.

It’s so frustrating being sick again! I have no energy and my whole body just feels weak and exhausted.

At least I got a lovely letter from Jessie and some really awesome drawings from her, Claire, and Eva!! Definitely brightened my day! (And Margot loved the piranha drawing Jessie drew for her…)