No limits...the very Frenchness of it.

There something about being a teacher which is both rewarding and giving; it feeds off the excitement & enthusiasm of the students, their sharpness and their curiosity. I have spent years with pupils who have barriers to learning, limitations, confusions, even arrogance...blocks to learning.

But now I find that I have encountered something new, a student who has no apparent limit to their abilities,who is multi directional and socially highly mature. This young lady has a capacity to learn in every area we have shown her, she appears to have no weaknesses and any uncertainties are turned intoto successes. She  is without arrogance or self deceit .

I can honestly say it has been a joy, maybe even a privilege to teach her. She absorbs every experience, every conversation, every activity, every minute with equal & pure passion. This intensity has encompassed logic & problem solving, general knowledge, practical skills like cookery, games like bowling & mini golf, creativity like jewellery making and drawing, she even has a sense of humour. In deed we have yet to find an academic area she does not absorb, develop , blossom & flourish in ...its quite amazing, exhausting and delightful.

So had she limits? Well yes of a sort, and that is in her very Frenchness. This showed itself in a deeply embedded  belief that, her nationality,both  the methods used in learning and indeed the culture itself, must be right; not merely different, but correct.
The example that best shows this is a discussion on table etiquette, because in France how you attend the table,sit, place your hands and eat all have importance.

So how do these cultural differences limit? Well it started as an interesting cultural exchange,talking about the differences and then the phrase 'personal choice' was used. Suddenly it was evident that, though  French culture can accept that other nations may respond differently, fundamentally the French have it correct. They  allow these lapses in their fellow man because they are not French. Well that led to a very interesting debate about 'correctness' and 'change', really fascinating!

So our delightful young  guest returns to Paris and her Baccalaureate studies, wiser in the spoken English word and  importantly in perceptual cultural  differences. After all we learn more from our uncertainties than from our successes...

Full circle ....la rentree

Summer is over and 'La Retree'  is upon us. This is the manic time in the French, and indeed English school year, when the students and children  return to the classroom. In France this is one of the biggest sales times for the leading supermarket chains,in terms of academic stationary and ancillary goods. From mid August the retail publicity shouts about books, clothes, desks and even IT hardware, all trying to compete to get the French parents to purchase these for the new school year.

Anxious parents and intent children carrying the 'List' of essential school materials scour the shelves of stationary. Exercise books of various types & sizes, writing & drawing implements, assorted  items like glue & correction fluid, plus the essential school agenda must be bought. Not to forget the bag to carry it all in, plus means of filing & storage, possibly even a desk for all those hours of homework!

And all this, paid for by the parents ,though state help is possible for larger families or unemployed / low income families,says one thing very loud and clear....responsibility & commitment. The parents see it as their duty to provide these materials, not the text books or the teaching materials, but every other element of their child's schooling.
Now parents in the UK are just as committed and responsible, but the emphasis is on the schools & local authorities to provide these disposable materials. The school must provide text books, paper, rulers, crayons, whatever is needed. Some children  may have additional utensils, but these are seem as non-essential and personal. The difference can be seen is in how the children respond in the classroom. In France; no bickering about  a lack of pen or pencil, arguing over  crayons half broken or felt tips run dry and certainly not wastage of paper or graffiti covered  books. Imagine trying to explain to your French  parents that you just fancied scribbling over the cover or breaking 'le Bic', when they have to earn & pay for it. Result neat books, care in ownership & use of materials, sharing & enjoyment; indeed a pride in what is produced.

 In England having jointly class owned materials, with  some children owning additional items and perhaps not wanting to share, can cause tension & frustration. When UK schools purchase they are limited to suppliers and when these firms have won the contracts from local authorities the choice, quality & cost can be arbitrary. When the French parents purchase the big chains and smaller stores compete to provide customer choice & keep prices down.

Advertising leaflets drop through the door publicising  additional activities for the usual (though not always) school closure every Wednesday. Little Thomas could go to judo, karate, learn tennis or athletics, play a musical instrument or learn to paint & draw; all extra curricular to mainstream French education.In England  young Jane can participate in physical activities;  sports, learn music and develop her art, all within the school curriculum and Wednesday is a working day.

 But what both cultures have in common is the trepidation & excitement of the return and that includes the teachers. Why, because it might be a return, but be you teacher or student, everything has changed. Class members, curriculum, timetable and sometimes even the school itself ,change.

So you leave in July confident in where you are & what you know and return in September uncertain in what is to come & how difficult the coming academic year will be. That's why teaching is called the 'Chalk Face',its hard practical, intellectual & emotional work, your job is to get the very best out of those pupils.
 
 Its not about subject knowledge or techniques its about the ability to communicate and the passion to inspire.Vive la rentree!

Learning should be fun...

We now have a new English Immersion student,an intelligent young man with an open smile and great curiosity. He is very mature in all he does, well mostly and, has studied diligently the work set by the company, even though some of it is very dusty.

It seems that there is part of the French educational psyche that feels that it is essential to have tight packed formal worksheets requiring that all important  ability to rote learn & regurgitate. Other areas of work are lighter; crosswords and puzzles.

For example: do you know the English  for papaya, the American for courgettes or a six letter word for French phrase, legumes verte?..... answers on a post card please.



But yesterday & today I have seen him learn from activity, socialisation & drawing and did he progress.
Saturday an English party & socialising
Monday Accrrobranche; for the uninitiated a high wire / tree climbing assault  course on scary scale.
Tuesday sketching  & describing paintings.




The outcome:

• One chattering young man, who actually forgot he was speaking English.
• One determined young man who sounded very fluent and forgot he was working.
• One exhausted young man who found that the English can be fun.

Now that I count as a success...

Incidentally the answers in reverse order are greens, zucchini and paw paw, never thought I put those words together in a single sentence.

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.