*This post is edited and revised from the original version published on November 9, 2015 on my, since abandoned, first blog Search for Sonder.
Aka: my first month in TAPIF.
So for those of you who know a little about the Teaching Assistant Program In France, you know that while having experience in the world of teaching is beneficial to your application, it is in no way a requirement. Meaning, most of the assistants they ship off to France to teach their youth have no idea what they’re doing. Which, as you can guess, is not ideal.
I’m lucky to live in a foyer (which deserves a whole post on its own) and city with a bunch of other assistants, and together we can swap lesson plans, class activities, and horror stories. For many assistants though, this is not the case. And I truly wish them all the luck in the world. Godspeed, friends.
One often hears from past assistants that everyone’s TAPIF experience is different, and I can confirm with absolute certainty that this is true. Everyone I’ve talked to has a different experience with their schools: different expectations, different relationships with their teachers, different classroom resources, different everything. As much as you try to be prepared before stepping onto your school grounds for the first time, there’s truly no way to guess just what you’re stepping into. For me, every classroom I walked into was completely different from the last and would be completely different from the next. Which, trust me, does not bode well for the nerves.
The only contact I had with my schools (of which I have two écoles élémentaires that conveniently sit right next to each other) before my first official day as an assistant consisted only of messing around with my schedule and giving me a copy riddled with rewrites (and now, after weeks of abuse, sits torn in half on my desk). No talk of what each class level needed, no talk of classroom expectations, nothing actually education based. They found out what a poor idea that was on my first day, when I walked into some classes wholly unprepared for what was expected of me.
My first class turned out to be what one might call…a disaster. I walked in, out of breath from hustling up the hill to my schools, and expected an introduction and some guidance on what the class had already learned and what they were expected to learn. Instead, I got a gesture to stand in front of the class and just…teach. For forty five minutes. With no idea of the class’ English level.
What. A. Morning. Not my best first impression, let me tell you.
Still reeling from that fiasco, my next class was like paradise. The teacher chose activities and told me what she wanted the class to learn. What a relief to actually know what I needed to do!
The rest of the day and subsequent week followed in the same manner. Every new class was a gamble between me being given all the control, me being guided by the teachers (both vaguely and strictly), and me doing what amounted to standing awkwardly in front of the class nodding along as the teacher let me do nothing. No matter how much I tried to prepare, it never felt like enough. I either had too much time with one class, prepared for the wrong materials for one class, or over-prepared when the teachers wanted me to do nothing.
Needless to say, it was a very stressful week. Unfortunately, because I have a total of 15 unique classes (16 total, but I have one class twice a week), the second week was almost as bad as the first, trying to guess what was needed for each class. I couldn’t keep track of which classes I had to be totally independent and which ones required zero preparation from me!
Luckily, after only two weeks we had our first two week paid vacation, and for a little while, I could breathe again. My first week was a trip to Venice and Milan with my new Beauvais friends and the second was catching up on sleep and preparing lesson plans. I got a notebook for keeping track of my classes, which I highly recommend. After each class I write down what we did that day and if the teacher had any requests for what to do next week. Now, I always know what to expect (or at least…most of the time). Which is why last week, my first week back after vacation, felt like a breeze.
It’s still difficult to juggle having so many classes that are on completely different levels (even if they’re meant to be in the same grade, one class will only understand half of what another can), but as time goes by I’m collecting games and worksheets I can use anytime a class is ready for them, the students and teachers are getting used to how to handle me in their classrooms, and I’m getting to know the teachers enough to actually put names to faces (massive achievement, trust me).
As an added bonus, I’m pretty much a star in both my schools. I joked with one of the teachers that if you listen, you can always find me by following the sounds of children screaming “Hello, McKenna!” whenever they see me. And I’m hot gossip on the playground, because I walked into one of my last classes of the week that first difficult week, and the students all already knew I was from California. They didn’t know where California is, but they knew for sure that I was from there, because the rumor mill in elementary school is nothing if not thorough.
But there’s never a week without drama. Whether it’s a canceled class I wasn’t told about and therefore spending extra time at school for no reason, or, most recently, a teacher deciding she doesn’t want to work with me and throwing my whole Friday into disarray.
Truly, I can’t complain, despite the massive hill I have to climb to school (both literally and figuratively) and the roller coaster ride from class to class, because I have every Monday off, a lot of children who adore me (I even had a love song sung to me in class, and one student made me a butterfly with iron-together beads), and an amazing view every time I walk to and from work.
And honestly, every week at least one class is canceled for me so I don’t even work my 12 hours a week (at least, in the classroom. Don’t underestimate time spent on lesson plans outside of the class). Just look at this upcoming week! I work Tuesday, Wednesday is Armistice, a national holiday, so there’s no school, Thursday I have my OFII appointment in Amiens so I’m missing work, and then I work Friday (and immediately leave for a weekend in Amsterdam). I work two days this week. How lucky is that?
I still have a lot of things left to figure out (CAF, OFII, and cell phones are just a few), so hopefully as those things wrap up I can write about my experiences with each and any advice I have for future TAPIFers.
Until then, happy travels!
Anything else you’d like to know about my experience as an English language assistant with TAPIF? What questions do you have?
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