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 1st
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
(4th and 5th 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 5th 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 (3rd, 4th,
and 5th graders), then a combined CP/CE1 class (1st and 2nd
graders), and then a MS/GS class (preschool and kindergarteners). On Thursday
afternoons, I teach a combined CE1/CE2 class (2nd and 3rd
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!
