La vie dure d'une assistante aux écoles primaires

I've gotten requests for more & shorter (fine!!) posts, and I also realize now that I've written absolutely nothing about my actual work, so here goes.

This past week was my first 'normal' week of work, as my schedule was only finalized the week before Toussaints. As it stands, I work for 3 hours on Mondays and Thursdays at a tiny school called Condren, and for 6 hours on Tuesdays at a larger school called Blériot. I was set up in Condren first, so I feel a bit more familiar with the school. It's a 3 room school house, with only 3 full time teachers: la Directrice, Lucille, who works primarily with Cycle 3, who are the older kids; Aurélie, who works with CP, CM1 & CM2, who are between 7-9, and Hélène, who works with Maternelle. Maternelle is the equivalent of pre-school, but French children start as early as 2! So she has kids between 2-6 in her class. Both Mondays and Thursdays I start with an hour of English, on Mondays with Hélène, who works with CE1 and CE2, (ages 7-8) and and on Thursdays with Lucille, who works with Cycle 3, who are a bit more advanced (ages 9-11). This past Monday Hélène worked on colors in her English class. It was the first day back from break so I didn't contribute much, but next Monday I'm going to work with the kids on the song 'Colors of the Rainbow' (shout out to Norah Deming, who taught me that song!) Thursday Lucille was reviewing the parts of the body with Cycle 3, and I played a short game of 'Simon Says' with them, and also worked through Shel Silverstein's poem 'The Acrobats':

Next Thursday I'll be leading the class in the song 'Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes' and playing some more 'Simon Says'. When I'm not doing English at Condren, I help Hélène with Maternelle, or do the equivalent of a P.E. class with Lucille. The kids in Maternelle are too little to learn English, but Hélène has me do little things with them anyway just for fun; my first day we tried to sing 'If You're Happy and You Know It' together, and this past week I did a very short finger puppet show in English. During P.E. with Lucille on Thursday, the kids had a race, and on the way back into the school yard, Lucille had me explain what to do before you cross the street in English ("look to the left... look to the right... is there a car? Yes? What color is it?")

This past Tuesday was my first real day at Blériot. Blériot is a bit bigger than Condren, with 7 full time teachers, including the Directrice, Madame Blondi (who is, in fact, blonde,) as well as visiting English and German teachers. Tuesday mornings I'll be with Maternelle- at Blériot la Maternelle is divided into two classes; les petits (ages 2-3) et les grands (4-6). I'll spend half of the morning with les petits, and half with les grands. This past Tuesday I spent my time with les petits helping some little ones practice using scissors, and with les grands I sang 'The Itsy Bitsy Spider'. In the afternoon I'll help out in two English classes; last Tuesday's classes were dedicated to learning the months of the year and discussing Halloween.

As you can see, I have an extremely stressful job and I need every one of the remaining 26 hours of the work week for diligent preparation and rest. Believe it or not, I've found time to play basketball two times per week, and this past week started tutoring two girls from the Czech Republic in French! One of the girls, Lucie, plays on the basketball team as well; her husband is a professional volleyball player who moved to Saint Quentin to play volleyball a couple months ago. Lucie came to join him a month ago, and speaks no French and very limited English. She has a friend named Bara who is in the same position; her boyfriend plays on the Saint Quentin basketball team, and she moved here with him. I'll be tutoring them in French for 2 hours/week each- this week we had our first tutoring sessions, and they went quite well. Lucie and I worked on conjugating verbs in the present tense, and Bara and I worked on the future tense and introduced ourselves. Lucie and Bara are both very sweet, and I'm looking forward to getting to know them better and hopefully helping them with French!

That's all for now, bonne dimanche à tous! I'm taking my camera to school with me next week, so pictures of school/cute French children/basketball to follow.