Dear readers,
There is no doubt that the novelty of the Period of Residence Abroad has worn off. I must admit that I've not been feeling my happiest recently but that all changed this afternoon when I had a great class with some of my 6èmes. They apparently loved the games they played with me so much (Simon says and Slap the Board on the subject of body parts) that they were extremely reluctant to leave - bless them.
Last week I had a couple of incidents in my classroom and I had to go and speak to the CPE about it today. Scary stuff. In a 5ème class, I was playing some good old Slap the Board when suddenly I hear a girl basically scream 'FINE, I'LL LEAVE, ARE YOU HAPPY NOW?' before running out the door in tears. I literally just thought 'Merde, I should have stopped this...' As it happens, she had won a round of Slap the Board and the boy had accused her of cheating (how one might cheat is beyond me) until it escalated into insults when she freaked out and ran. At the time I had no idea what had happened because I was busy with the other kids, so after sending another student after her I rounded on them all and got to the bottom of it. I sent the boy back to the teacher and for the rest of the class I had them sit in silence. The boy was subsequently given a detention.
In a 4ème class I had the kids walking around the classroom and looking at the posters that I had pinned up around the room which had ideas for their bucket lists on it. We were working on the phrase 'I want to...' so I thought 'Perfect! Bucket lists!' So whilst I was walking around and helping some of the students translate some things that weren't on the posters I see one boy take his exercise book and smack other boy with it hard over the head. I wasn't having any of that in my class room so I was basically like 'Get out of my class'. He looked at me like he was confused and didn't understand why I would send him out after hitting another student. He kicked up a bit of a fuss but the others students were all dying to be the accompagnant to take him back. I don't know what punishment he's received yet.
I was extremely worried that the teachers would think it was my fault, in fact if anything really serious happens, it's the teacher who is culpable, not me. Nevertheless the teachers were unfazed by it. I guess it's pretty common having the kids do that. I certainly do not remember students hitting each other with books during my school days. Then again, I did go to a school entirely made up of girls.
Being in rural France it's extremely easy to get stuck. I spoke to one 3ème boy yesterday and asked him where he'd like to go in the future (expecting a country name), he quite simply said 'bah... au Havre'. This is a town which is about 40mins away in a car and apparently he'd never been. I spoke to Elsa, an English teacher, about it and she said that sometimes when they take kids on trips to Rouen it's their first time and they're amazed. Again, Rouen isn't far either, and it's hardly the hustle and bustle of Paris. I asked the boy whether there was any country in the whole world he'd like to visit and he simply said 'Non'. Weird.
In an effort to get out of this rut, I've been trying to do more exercise. I've started jogging again, but only when it's nice, which isn't often here. It's very windy and cold here today so I guess I'll be doing some yoga in the spare living room this evening.
I also went with some teachers to my first opera last week which was Mozart's singspiel l'Enlèvement au Sérail by the Opéra de Rouen Haute-Normandie. It was a very small production with a cast of five fantastic singers. Thankfully there were subtitles so I wasn't too lost amongst the vibrato. Parts of the opera involved some audience participation as well which I wasn't anticipating! the best part was that the tickets were only 8€ each. We were on the second tier but I had a great view of the whole stage and it wasn't like I couldn't hear. It was amazing to see such powerful voices that needed no amplification at all. Apparently there's one next month too, possibly a Beethoven, so hopefully I'll be able to go to that too.
It's only a week and a half until the holidays now. I'll be heading back up to Green (flying this time, thankfully) but this weekend I'm going to Bayeux with some other assistants so I'll report back soon.
ttfn x
