Today was my first official day of teaching and I have to say, it went better in my head! I had done my planning, got up on time, arrived at the station on time, all ready to go, when I looked at the board and it said my train was delayed for approximately five minutes. Well I thought, no biggie, I can still make it to Saumur on time to catch the bus to my school. Five minutes turned into indeterminé and I thought it was time I texted the principal to let him know I "might" be late. I looked at the little red words flashing on the bottom right hand corner of the board, the delay was due to an accident de personne my first thought was that there's been a suicide, but I couldn't be sure. Five minutes after the train was suppose to leave, the platform number comes up along with my hope of making to school on time. Sadly when we boarded the train an announcement was made saying there'd be a 45 minute delay, yes, a 45 minute delay! Me and the guy next to me exchanged our expressions incroyable before we both started frantically texting/calling others to let them know of the delay. Another three or four minutes of sitting in the train doing nothing, another announcement was made, saying there will be three coaches waiting outside the station taking passengers who are going to La Menitre and Saumur. So I, along with the majority of passengers on the train got off and walked back out the station.
Coincidentally, the coach that I was on also had a group of, I guess, trainee teachers, and of course they were all trying to ring their schools to let them know they'd be very late! Despite the delay, I enjoyed the calmness of it all. The amount of times I've heard the phrase "welcome to France"! I really do feel the people here are used to these sort of things happening. People weren't really worried about it, it was an inconvenience of course, but it wasn't worth getting your knickers in a knot! Even when I got to school, and the principal confirmed that it was suicide, he seemed lighthearted enough and he even told me that these things happen often, though I don't know if he was referring to suicides on train tracks or delays in general, I sure hope it's the latter!
Things didn't exactly go smoothly once I got to school, the copier broke after I had done seven copies. Really, it wasn't my day! Classes, I guess, went OK. Of course I knew it would be a major learning experience, as I had not observed an English class, mainly due to the fact that those did not exist prior to my arrival. So determining the level of the students were difficult. And although I had their exercise books, I later found out that they have pretty much forgotten it all! With the CE2s starting at the very beginning was a good idea, although I need to pay attention about focusing more on the oral at first before handing out the worksheets as once they can read, everything came out with a Froggy accent! Next I had the CM2, this is a really fun class, although I still need to work on my timing, the kids seem to be into it. I got them to do a listening exercise, which I thought would take maybe ten minutes, but it was actually more like 20 minutes and I didn't have time to really do what I wanted to achieve in the class but that was OK. They listened, and sang the Hello Goodbye, not The Beatles version sadly, but Jonas Brothers! I know, shame on me! But the kids knew who they were and the boys liked it too! The CM1/2s, oh dear me! It was that bad that I don't even want to go there. My fault really, I did kind of forget that they are only kids, and whatever they learnt last year would not have remained in their heads four months later! We'll start again on Thursday, baby steps! My littlies (CE1+CLIS) is a laugh! I have 20 minutes with them a day, today we sang The Hello Song and I walked around the class asking them their name. And that was it. No it didn't take 20 minutes but to be honest I have no idea what to do with them. Further planning definitely needs to be done! It's now 20h30, I am absolutely knackered! Going to have dinner, shower, more lesson plans, then bed! I can't wait until Wednesday!
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