Tag Archives: Phew!

I’m now sitting at my teaching desk. I just finished going through the topics I will teach tomorrow and before that, I had a one-hour meeting about Learning Support. I sometimes feel like teachers could also do with Teaching Support at times!
However, today’s been quite a good day. Spent my first lesson teaching the Present and Past Conditional tenses to my advanced group (12 year old students) and the Passé Composé to an intermediate group who were sent to my class because their French teacher has the flu.
Then I taught my little ones (11 years old) how to write about the town they live in and what they would like to have to improve the place. We also talked about their favourite place and after hearing about different places such as Hong-Kong, Florida, a shopping mall in Belgium etc. one of them smiled and at me and asnwered “my house!”.
Next, I spent 20 minutes (which was exactly the time I should have had for my morning break) talking to a 17 year old student about what topic he could choose for his Extended Essay (a 4,000 word essay he has to write next year on an issue related to French-speaking culture or language). He wants to do something related to animal cruelty, so we talked about geese force-feeding, bullfights in the south of France, and other such “lovely” things…
After that, I got my 16-17 year old students working in pairs on questions related to the book we just started studying : “Monsieur Ibrahim et les Fleurs du Coran” by Eric-Emmanuel Schmitt. Some of them struggled a little bit on some more philosophical questions but we’ll see next week what will come out of all this!
Then I supervised my form class studying in silence, which allowed me to read my e-mails, reply to them, do some admin paper work and mark a few tests.
Lunchtime : finally 1 hour of “break” spent eating and chatting with other colleagues on the success of “The Artist” film, French politics, food and… students! Why can’t teachers talk about other things but work?
Then back to class, with my older students (17-18 year old students), we read a text on immigrants, and started discussing racism, integration, national identity and religions. I thought it was quite interesting to hear their points of view.
My afternoon 15-minute break was spent talking with one of my tutees, about how he needs to get more involved in his learning French because he is falling behind the others and I would like him to react. I really hope this little conversation will make a difference. He did seem motivated when he left my room but we’ll see how it goes in the next few days!
Finally, my last lesson of the day came. I talked to my 13-14 year old student (advanced group) about their IGCSE speaking exam. I took them outside of my room to go and see where the exam room is and where they would have to prepare their role-plays. They all seemed quite excited. We got back to my room and started working on Conditional. I asked them plenty of questions like “what would you do if your best friend came in her pyjamas to school?” or “What would you do if you found a €500 banknote on the floor? ” and we got some very funny answers.
I got them to write a couple of questions and answers like these in their exercise books and finally the bell went. End of the teaching day.
After the Leaning Support meeting and the quick preparation for tomorrow, I’m now getting ready to go home, feed my 2 year old daughter, bathe her and get her to sleep. Then I’ll eat my dinner and start working on the assembly I’m supposed to lead on Friday. The topic will be : “Challenging racism”. What better place to talk about racism than in an International School?