Christmastime in France

Hello again!

This month I’m going to be talking about everything Christmas!

The first weekend in December in France, there is always a telethon for funding research for genetic diseases. So instead of our normal Friday afternoon doing our APEs (after-school activities) and garderie (homework help and watching the kids until their parents pick them up) we took them to the APE room and they had their snacks from 4-4:30, then we took some of the kids to the high school/middle school to watch the mayor light up the Christmas lights in the city.

As we started walking to the school, it hailed and the sky was orange which was pretty surreal. Because it was so cold, we went quickly, but once we were there we stood around for a bit. Then, the mayor took a torch and lit up a bigger flame and at the same time all of the Christmas lights in the city turned on, and that was pretty cool. In Place Morny, by our house, there is a nice setup with trees in the center and Christmas lights radiating out from the center. After the lights were lit up, we went into a room in the school and did garderie until 6 when it was over.

As far as Christmas lesson plans go, so far in most of my classes (all ages) we have been listening to and learning the song “We Wish You a Merry Christmas.” The kids love to sing along and dance to the song! With the younger kids, we have been learning and practicing Christmas vocabulary. With the older kids, we’re going to be writing letters to Santa and have been learning Christmas and toy vocabulary, as well as English and American Christmas traditions.

Last weekend I had the opportunity to go to Strasbourg, France and visit my host mom from when I studied abroad there in college. We went to the Christmas market and I got to see her 5-week old granddaughter. It was a magical time, with lots of little vendors and Christmas lights all over. In the cathedral, there was a humongous nativity scene which was super cool to see. To top it all off, on Sunday morning, it snowed!

Ornaments at the market 

Christmas tree in a square in Strasbourg

Strasbourg Cathedral in the snow

My family is coming to visit over the break, and I am getting excited to welcome them to the house and Deauville! We found some Christmas decorations in the closet under the stairs, including Christmas lights, a Christmas tree, and some ornaments, so we have a little corner of Christmas that always looks so cheerful!

Until next time!

Denise

A Day in the Life

Hi, to everyone reading this blog! I hope you’re having a fantastic day!

                

For those of you who don’t know me, my name is Denise, and I’m currently a TA in Deauville, teaching English to French kiddos aged 3-10 years old. In this blog post I’m going to be talking about a typical day in the life of a Deauville TA, or at least my own typical day. Actually, this is going to be more of an overview of my week, so let’s all get pumped for that!

The "Maison des Americains," our home

                

My schedule is pretty complicated, so it depends on the day what I’ll do. I’ll try to be as clear as I can be, though! If I have classes in the morning (Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays) I’ll wake up at 8 to get ready, and leave our house in Deauville at around 8:45 to get to the school in St. Arnoult, which is a town about 7 minutes away by car, and set up for classes starting at 9. I teach the MS class (preschool) and then the combined GS/CP class (kindergarten and 1^st grade) on Tuesdays and Thursdays, splitting the GS/CP class into two different 30-minute classes on Thursday. For example, I will take the GS kids and teach them a 30 minute lesson, then the CPs. I also teach the combined CM1/CM2 class (4^th and 5^th grade) on Thursday morning.

Place Morny, near our house

A lot of the classes are combined, because there aren’t a lot of people who go to that school. There are only 4 classrooms for an entire school of kids younger than preschool to 5^th grade at St. Arnoult, and there are only two main teachers at Tourgéville, the other school where I teach. It makes for an interesting vibe in each class; there are many different levels that you cater to, all at the same time.

I don’t have morning classes on Monday, but we typically have a meeting with us three Americans and our director to talk about how everything is going from 10:30 to 11:30. On Wednesday I have no class, which can be a nice break to catch up on sleep and lesson planning and other errands I might need to run. This Wednesday I got to go to the Humane Society in the next-door town and walk dogs with one of the other Americans, and had a blast. I am looking forward to getting my dog time in by going there a lot in the future!

                

So, after the morning is over, I go to the school in Deauville for lunchtime, which starts at 11:45. Let me just talk about the school lunches that they serve here. They are amazing. First, they serve an appetizer-type thing. Sometimes it’s soup, sometimes it’s a salad, sometimes it’s something else, but every day it’s good. Then, they serve sliced baguette, and then they serve a meat and a side. After that, they usually serve a fruit or another type of dessert. Sometimes they serve a little cheese and bread before the dessert. Everything they serve is made very well and is delicious.

               

In the actual cafeteria, it’s very much unlike an American cafeteria, or at least the cafeterias I grew up with. There are tables with six people at each table. There are actual, real-life place settings for each person, with a plate, fork, knife, spoon, and glass. Food is brought to each table individually in separate dishes with enough food for six people, and there are pitchers of water at each table. The animateurs (that includes me and the other Americans, as well as many other people) sit at the tables with the kids and eat with and supervise them during this time. The younger kids at school have recess and then they eat, but I eat with the bigger kids, who switch with them and eat first and then have their recess.

               

I leave at a little after 1PM each day to go teach, and at this point the kids have finished lunch and are still playing so I don’t get to be there for the whole recess. I take the car to Tourgéville if it’s a Monday or Tuesday and to St. Arnoult if it’s a Thursday or Friday. I start teaching at 1:30 at both of them. On Mondays and Tuesdays, I teach a combined CE2/CM1/CM2 class (3^rd, 4^th, and 5^th graders), then a combined CP/CE1 class (1^st and 2^nd graders), and then a MS/GS class (preschool and kindergarteners). On Thursday afternoons, I teach a combined CE1/CE2 class (2^nd and 3^rd graders), and on Fridays I teach that same class but divided into two different groups (30 minutes for each group), and then I take either the CM1s or the CM2s and teach, but the grade I take alternates week by week.

              

The kids I teach are super energetic (sometimes scary energetic) and a lot of them are very motivated to learn English, which encourages me and raises my spirits. English lessons are 45 minutes long for the older kids and 30 minutes for the younger ones, and time can definitely fly by if I have planned my lesson well and they’re interested in it.

                

After class time is over, I lead after-school activities, or APEs as they call them here, at the school in Deauville, starting at 4. On Mondays and Tuesdays it’s kind of a rush to get back to the school, because I finish teaching at 3:45 at Tourgéville. The activities are led by the animateurs. The kids have signed up for which activity they want to do, depending on which activity is available for their grade level. I lead a Craft activity with CMs, Board Games with the CEs, an activity about Art Vocabulary with CMs, and then an American Folk Dance activity with the CPs throughout the week. These activities can be super fun, but they also have their challenges. I think the kids for sure enjoy them!

                

After the activities (APEs) are done at 5, the animateurs have garderie. This is a time where the kids are allowed to play outside for a little bit, and then we go inside and help them with their homework. Usually they have reading, spelling, or math to do. They can go back outside after their homework is done, but recently since the time changed, it has been too cold and dark to go back out, and so we play games inside.

                

Deauville Beach

At 6, the Americans are finished with garderie and go home. At this point, I am usually pretty exhausted, so I start getting dinner ready, change into more comfortable clothes, and chill out and plan lessons or do some other activity (recently I’ve been on a kick of listening to podcasts. If you have any good recommendations, please let me know!) until I write in my journal and then go to bed. I try to go to sleep by 9:30, but a lot of days that doesn’t happen. Then it starts over again!

               

I hope this has been informative for you and that it gives you at least a little sense of what it’s like to be an English TA in Deauville! There is so much more to say about specific events and stories, things that have happened, and our travels over our recent fall break, but I think I’ll save those for a later entry. So stay posted!

                

I appreciate you and wish you all the best! Goodbye for now! 

Christmas Time

The holiday season in Deauville wore bright Christmas lights running down every street to create refuge in winter’s time. In December, the sunsets as early as 5pm. These early ends to daylight would be depressing had it not been for Deauville’s bright holiday aesthetic: the roundabout entering the town was surrounded by dancing horses of light, the place Morney had a factitious starlit sky, and the Casino was brighter than ever before.

The holiday season spent into the schools as well, from the courtyards to the classroom. Each class is decorated with a jolie sapin (pretty Christmas tree) and the English lessons gravitate to this most wonderful time of year.  In English class, we’ve spent our late November and early December days of Christmas flashcards, Christmas classics, traditions and the choral sounds of “We Wish You A Merry Christmas” graced our ears for the months to come.

With one of my classes we prepared the aforementioned holiday jingle for holiday event with the parents. As I work at three different schools, I had the pleasure to attend three different Christmas holidays where the teachers meet the parents and exchange holiday cheer. Deauville even hired a magician for an afterschool event to celebrate the season.

The joy and restless children brought us to the final major event in Deauville before the break: turning on the town Christmas lights. The whole school and a large part of the town attended the event, the little ones sang, and an even younger child had the honor of pressing the button for the lights. Despite the cold and dark times of the year, Deauville finds a way to keep the reverie shining.