The family came to visit for Easter vacation, which was fantastic. Photos complete with captions are available on my picture site.
http://picasaweb.google.com/koehn.kathryn/
Work -
Work has been better than ever. I am taking my job much more seriously than in the past, and actually sticking it to several of the teachers by actually assigning and correcting homework. I have decided there is a fatal flaw in the education of English to the French, which is that the English teachers (the majority of whom do not actually speak English themselves) focus on vocabulary, but not grammar. The kids can say individual words but not actually formulate a simple sentence or question. The vast majority do not know that "is" and "are" are actually the same verb.
We recently gave the most advanced level of students (CM2) the national evaluations. I found that the only classes in which the children had a remote chance of passing were those in which the teacher actually spoke English. This is what spurred my desire to actually fix this problem. Amazingly enough, my kids still like me after I went from nothing but games and singing to actually having to write.
Don't get me wrong, I haven't forgotten about games completely! Here is a puzzle I created in order to teach the vocabulary of the body, using everybody's favorite lazy bum, Homer Simpson.
Home Sweet Crap -All of my roommates had shorter contracts than me, so they are all done working. Scott and Kat moved out (Kat found a job in BLD, so she is still around, thank you Jeebus!), and Julia is leaving sometime this week as well. This leaves me all by my lonesome in a 6-floor dormitory. There are high school students here during the week, but all they do is make irritating sounds. On the weekends, I will be completely alone. They also don't turn on the outside lights on the weekends...fun.
Oh, and the fire alarm rings a lot. It is ringing at this very moment and I have gotten so used to it that I no longer leave the building. This place is like living in a skinner box without the reward system.
The Social Life -
My dear sweet Burgey (Katherine) came to France before Easter vacation, so I went to Paris to hang out with her for a day. That was fantastic!
Manda came to visit right before the family did, and with her credit card I rented a car for us and we drove to Germany for the day. Sadly, my faithful little Canon Powershot died on this trip, forcing me to get a new one and be completely broke for a month. I survived, and I have a new camera!
I am still hanging out with the normal French crew, but I have made many other friends in recent weeks. I spend time with Sylvie, who happens to be the mother of one of my favorite and brightest (and incredibly polite) students, Jules. Sylvie and her friends and I get along great and we have tea every once and awhile (they all have kids so they are all busy busy busy). Sylvie has put me on her insurance and lends me her car when she doesn't need it. (And I love driving manual transmission!). I have also made friends with the son of Coco (a friend of Sylvie), and his friends, but they are only here on weekends as they are away at school. It has only been getting better living here, amazingly enough. I would have thought I would be home sick by now, but as the date to leave gets closer and closer, I find more and more reasons to stay.Bureaucratic Mess -
Kat and I have applied for this program a second time. Apparently the French Ministry of Education has eliminated the longer contract (the one I have now), so if I come back again next year, it will be only for 7 months.
There is a lot up in the air at the moment as to what I will do this summer. It hasn't been stressing me out, strangely enough. I am debating between many choices at the moment, but most of it will be determined by my re-acceptance to this program or not. I will find out about that in May, and then I will know what to do.
That is pretty much it - I hope you enjoyed my post! It may be awhile until there is another!
No comments:
Post a Comment