Fun with French

My first NOVA class is finished and I haven't written anything about it since I started! How did that happen? Well, it's called--this isn't my only journal. I have written elsewhere. But maybe I should share a few things with you about it. I had seven wonderful students enrolled in my Introductory French course, and we covered a lot of ground together.

So much ground that I'm positive some of the things that came up as questions or during my preparations as seemingly significant to teach, I'm positive I didn't learn in my introductory French course back in 8th grade, and yet we met in that class for an hour every week day for an entire semester. What on earth did we do in all that time we had? I have to confess that I wonder that about a lot of subjects. But that is for a different conversation.

I think those things came up just because of this man named Murphy. You've probably heard of him. He has a law. That is, as I feared, students asked me questions I didn't know the answers to. It has been a few years since I was regularly conversing in French, and even more since I studied it.

Still, I think I didn't do too badly.  After all, it's not like they were asking these questions because we moved  so quickly as to bypass my abilities. No, they still had a hard enough time learning the things I was trying to teach them--things I did know. I think that's a unique problem to teaching adults. They just know enough to ask obscure questions--like the gentleman who had a litany of military-related questions. I'm not really much of a historian, let alone a military historian, and much less a French military historian. True, I probably should have brushed up a bit on the masculine/feminine case of a few words I got stumped on, but no, I'm not so sure it was all that big of a slight that I didn't know all the answers.

At least they were learning something, and I could definitely tell in this case. That's a nice thing about taking people who start with next to nothing in a subject--you know when they make progress.

And still, in spite of the embarrassing questions, I had fun--even learning answers to those questions, as well as finding things as I prepared for the classes that I didn't know. For example, I had thought that lavabo was the word for sink, of any kind. So when I was in France, I never completely understood the funny looks I got when I used the word to refer to the kitchen sink. Eventually I stopped using it and just used  "bobiné" if necessary, since I'd at least gathered as much as to know that that probably meant tap, since when they gave me tap water they said it was "du bobiné." But I learned that evier is the word for a kitchen sink. Who knew? What's the big difference, I don't know. But there you have it.

There were a few other obscure words I learned, as well as I had refreshers of lessons I learned back in the 8th grade that for whatever reason haven't come up as significant since then. Isn't language interesting?


One of the best things I learned from teaching, however, is that some students can actually be forgiving of blunders and embarrassments, and keep on smiling as you push forward. Maybe because French is such a beautiful language, it's a little easier to see le prof en rose.

Substitute Teaching

Why are Substitute like diapers? Because they catch a lot of crap from kids

But it's a lot harder to change these diapers because these kids are old enough they should know how to act by now. So with that, and the load I take on from them, I can't always change the diaper quickly enough, so I start to stink.

Okay, that wasn't terribly pleasant an opener, was it?
Well, I'll try to be more positive. I have had some good experiences subbing lately, but it is pretty tough.

A few weeks ago, while a Spanish class was Venn diagraming the differences between the US and Spain, I thought I'd draw my own Venn Diagram (They seem to be popular in this district--I've subbed for several classes who have had to make one for something or other). Mine is on the similarities and differences between my school experience between elementary and high school, and the schools where I've been subbing. The things that are somewhat in the middle but hanging over into the Con Ball side mean that those things are at some PG schools but not all.

Can you get a little bit of a sense of what difficulties I've encountered? There was no such thing as an ipod or a cell phone or a PDS when I was in school, so no teachers had to take these things away. There were toys, of course, and you can be sure teachers took them away. Why students think they "need" their phones for emergencies now when we've gotten by without them for so long is beyond me. But it's not just student silliness that causes problems, as you can see. It's the nature of the whole beast. In the first class I subbed for this school year, a class I had for three weeks, several kids consistently did not bring their books to class. So I tried getting into their brain that this class was ESOL and the most important book for them to bring to ESOL was the ESOL book. Get your other books from your locker after class. But then I heard an administrator in the hall get after a kid for getting into his locker between classes. There's no winning. I can see to a degree why they have minimal time in their lockers. But it's also a pretty tough burden on those kids to make them carry all of their books to every class.

And there's this other issue. Aside from typical disruptive students, one of the big disruptions is having several children one after the other raise their hand, or approach you without raising their hand, to ask to use the restroom. You think you're onto something good and then bop--it's only a restroom break. Maybe the children need some more diapers in these classrooms.

Substitute Teaching

I haven't written much in awhile, and I do kind of miss it. It's not that I've been too busy. It never is, of course, though I can always hope. :) But I have the past couple weeks had a job that has kept me off the computers, and I'm actually quite grateful about that. It's a little rough to be on my feet as much as I am, but I'm pretty grateful for the opportunity to be subbing again, now in the Prince George's County Public schools. I say again because I did it about 10 years ago in Alpine School District, which is the northern half of Utah Valley, Utah--from Orem to Alpine.

I have to confess I expected some differences in this area, and I've met up with a little bit of that, but there are definitely similarities. Kids are cute and have a lot of the same antics from one side of the country to the next, though it seems they start a little younger with some of the antics over here. There are students who are really bright, really eager for approval, really eager for attention, really eager for doing the right thing, and those who don't care quite as much everywhere you go.

Aside from the stresses of handling different classrooms of kids every day and spending the first half of the day trying to get everyone's name down and the second half writing those names on a a paper or the blackboard for later discipline from their teacher, it's also a little stressful not to know from day to day if I have a job, as well as to know that this is only until the end of the school year, therefore for about three more weeks. But the Lord has provided me with work as I've needed it, well, for the most part. I've had times when I could have used a little more income, but I've learned important lessons from those times as well. In any case, I'm sure things will work out.