Family is everything ....

This weekend has been a rapid learning curve for me. It was my birthday...one of those big ones and I was informed, the day before, that we were going for a trip to the coast. The day dawned. bright & sunny and we set off on a scenic route to the Brittany coast. Meal & a walk to the beach and , just as I was thinking what a pleasant surprise,  I was informed that we had to pack up as we had something to collect Indeed couriered in by special delivery for my birthday.

So there we were at Dinard Airport awaiting a Ryanair flight, with me very nervous as to what this 'large parcel with my name on it...' might contain! To say I was surprised when son,  his girlfriend and our grand-daughter all stepped forward, is an understatement. I uncharacteristically screamed (not good in an airport arrivals lounge)...elbowed my way through the throng and wept copiously over everybody. Apparently this has been in the planning since Christmas & I had no idea.

The weekend was spent in a whirl of presents, barbecue, a super restaurant meal and even crazy golf, it was fantastic! But it was my elderly French neighbour who put it all into context as we chatted that first evening. She greeted everyone, smiled and in answer to my garbled French explanation of what had happened simply looked at me, shrugged and said, "well that's family".

The French certainly have that right, they keep the family as the core, why work more days, longer hours, earn extra when you can enjoy the time and on high days & holidays be with the family. They give people their time.

So today, 'Quinze Aout'...the 'Feast of the Assomption' and a national holiday, every French family will gather. Not because of any deep religious conviction, but because they can.

Because they can sit in the sun and enjoy the finer things of life, good food, fine wines and the people they love.I think I finally learnt that, though we don't choose our families.indeed sometimes they actively break the link, close family are precious & priceless..."Ah c'est votre famille".

Ah c'est votre famille

The Liberation of the Mayenne... a lesson to learn

   Sometimes its about what you learn from the French view on things that makes you stop & think. Last Sunday was the celebration of the Liberation of the region of Mayenne by the Americans in 1944. In honour of this there was an American camp set up in our local town of Gorron. Military vehicles of the era, men, women and whole families in full dress of the period.

They camped out for the weekend in  tents, using equipment from the 1940s, catering & eating food from that time; a whole community living in a time bubble from sixty years ago All this to show the admiration for the troops of ordinary young men & women & resistance families who put themselves on the line back in 1944.

Three things were poignant. First the demonstration of the Sherman tank, why...well because of the effect this vehicle had. Apparently in in a nearby village is a house whose shutters are never opened, because as a girl the old lady who lives there opened the shutters to see German tanks rumbling down the main street. So traumatised was she that she shut the shutters and they  have remained shut ever since. I couldn't help but wonder what would happen if by chance she opened them that weekend as the vehicles toured the area, but this time she would see an American convoy and an American tank.

Second was the image of an elderly gentleman clambering on board the tank desperate to get to the top & be taken for a ride round.The look on his face as that great machine rumbled around the field  made you wondered how long he had waited to fulfill that ambition...what memories did his internal camera run?


All this celebration...being back in an American war time camp, but not a single American in sight. Care in the detail and such passion for the accuracy of the memory. And who organised it? Well, the participants were all ages, but the committee and the chairmen and the organisational people were in their twenties, now that's impressive .




Some memories jump time and the people touched by them are transformed by them.I think on Sunday the French taught me a little about time travel

Let's play......Olympic coordination

So  Olympic mania has hit the UK and is reluctantly trickling over the channel  to France. I think the enthusiasm of the French for their Olympians is not so much a disinterest in the sports, but more about the fact that France lost out in the competition to host the Olympics in 2012.


Linked with a small village school in  England, I have been working on the Olympics with the children in the village school here. 'Les Jeux Olympiques' has been  engaged via conversation, verbal games, bingo, board games and an assortment of action games, which is where the fun started.




I had made a series of cards depicting team and  individual sports and one activity required the children to look & verbally identify the sport and action. So picture of boxer & fighting; hurdler and jumping, which immediately presented a problem because the children couldn't look and say both the sport and the action together. Well not all the children, as the two bi-lingual children had no problem with this, so I reversed the game and asked the children to do the same thing in French and the same problem occurred


Perhaps I should have read the runes at that point, but you know when you think well this seems like a good idea, so I demonstrated how they could add an action to the response e.g.sport swimming,action to swim and a swimming action. Well, we ended up with a sequence that ran: sport/gap/verb/gap/ action. A bit like what happens when you try and pat your head whilst rubbing circles on your stomach, for the French children it was impossible to do simultaneously.
 Meanwhile the two bi-lingual children asked which swimming stroke they should imitate and when I offered choice (front crawl, breast stroke back crawl or butterfly...adeptly translated for me by my young bi-linguists), chaos reigned. Try to imagine  combination of all those strokes randomly used, whilst the French class teacher looked on in bemusement  and I tried desperately  not to collapse with laughter


 But it was not a case of poor task coordination, more the fact that  the sequence required was  was individual & too much left to chance: the cards in random order , the sport word plus verb and then a choice of actions....too much. 
Sometimes it's definitely a case of 'Less is More'.

Making the connections

An Anglo/ Franco electronic newspaper 'Connections' has contacted me following a response I sent to an upcoming item about comparative education systems. Strange really, all the years in Educational Advisory work & Local Authority Management in the UK and I was never been asked my  opinion by the press and yet here, well that's France anything can happen & does.

So what do I say, when asked to comment on the differences? Well based on one small village school & limited private tuition it all seemed rather surreal. I talked about learning styles in both countries and the need for those differences based on the demands of  the system and  in particular the languages.

This is highly evident in French when the need for rote learning & sequential memory is vital if all those verbs, genders and conjugations are going to be learnt. Hence, weekly tests of a rote learned verbal piece and a dictation, are essential for the French children. While their counterparts over the channel would not have done this type of activity for several generations, when the uunderstanding of structure and meta-language were vogue in the earlier part of the 20th Century in England.

21st century English teaching does not see  detailed structure of language as essential; such  knowledge is balanced by viewing the style & the purpose of  the language. After all its the enjoyment of a book, the understanding of a text, the appreciation of a poem and the pleasure in communication (spoken, heard & written) which is what language is about.

So what's better,well neither its a case of balance and what works for the language in question. And for those bi-lingual children its a case of linking the method & the language. As I told the reporter," Its about making Connections"...he seemed to like that.

English Immersion...teaching with a difference

Our current 'English Immersion' student is a very serious,intelligent, hyper-active, young Parisian from a middle class family.
Well educated, with a good grasp of grammar and English vocabulary, but little motivation to actually speak. Coming from a family of mathematicians, engineers and scientists we find the conversations have to be formulaic and topic based.But today we saw a different person when he was taken outside his 'comfort zone' and had to rapidly learn new practical skills.

We visited Jublains, a Roman fort and surrounding town, to watch what we thought was to be a demonstration of Roman music .We ended up sitting on straw bales each making a real set of Pan Pipes from wild bamboo canes. Forget the Health & Safety; hacksaw blades, files, sail makers needles and hot wax, but this is where France wins out

The expectation is that children & young people, will take responsibility. So, our young guest applied himself and completed the task admirably and made some splendid Pan Pipes. As a musician himself he was fascinated with the notes & the practicality and forgot about his uncertainty of talking. Meanwhile we watched as the French teenagers struggled with physical skills that their English counterparts would have found relatively easy.
Strange, less skill knowledge, but more responsibility.

Home again and little by little we see the curiosity & intelligence of the young man  overcoming the reluctance and disinterest of the teenager.The contradictions & anomalies of the learning process and culture in France continue , but some things, 'adolesence', are the  same the world over

That's impressive.......one very motivated young man

Well teaching has taken on a whole new dimension with the arrival of our first French, 'English Immersion Student'. Now these working hours run from 8.30 till 10.30 and are continuous. OK its not all formal teaching its a lot of activities and conversation, but the professionalism has to stay the same, the training of years.
So everything has to have the full explanation, be thought through and discussed with this delightful young man from the south of the region. Its tiring but enjoyable work with no down time as everything is an opportunity for language:game to play, language; film plot, language; even a cup of coffee, language.
This morning it was the vide grenier and he had to translate the announcements, then on to a traditional English Roast in, believe it or not, The Red Lion, surrounded by fellow Brits and listening to different accents and determining the content. He loved the food (yes you guessed Roast Beef), though was confused by the Yorkshire 'Pudding'..."is this a desert?"

And now back to the formal, work provided by the company and mostly grammar exercises, but some refreshing though difficult crosswords and a creative 'Scrap Book' to be completed over the week.


 Well motivated and with good humour this 13 year old has chosen to spend his holidays working on his English....now that is impressive!

Making a spectacle...

                                                   

The first day of July, or as near as possible, is  the designated day for the village fete. Now this is no ordinary do, with a few stalls and a meal, no this is big time. The school gates are fronted by decorated floats first the Moulin Rouge, then China, later a London bus decked in Olympic colours and finally the dancing troops and the musicians. All the children and I have to say most of the adults love this, its a parade , a beauty pageant and a chance to be part of  'Le Spectacle'.

And all this is in celebration of the village and  'le maximum show' as the publicity screams.
So what do the young girls see when they watch, or join in, well its easy they see the adoration of the 'Majorettes' (no its not Christmas) and the chance to see and maybe one day be, Miss France.I know it sounds odd, rather old fashioned, but its simply understood. It leads a whole new meaning to the my Granny's phrase about, "making a spectacle of yourself".