No Substitute, No Problem

For Thanksgiving, I baked homemade pumpkin pies.
You can see how well they liked them...

On Thursday, I became a full on teacher for the day. I am currently working in the class with the 6 year olds and the teacher had to go to Paris for the day for a Conference. Instead of getting a substitute, the obvious solution was that I would become the teacher. Without any real credentials, I was thrown into the situation of being responisble for 40 French children (luckily only 20 in the morning and 20 in the afternoon!). Overall, taking into account that they are 6, I'm only allowed to speak English and I'm not actually trained to be a teacher, it was a success!
     If a teacher is absent from school in the US, there will always be a substitute. I honestly cannot remember a single day where there was no sub brought into the school. Here in France, I was told that most of the time, there is no sub. Instead, they take the children and split them up between the different classes and have them sit and do busy work in the extra chairs of the other teachers. The children aren't allowed to talk, ask questions or move. They must just do the work that the teacher gave them. If the teacher is sick or an emergency arose and didn't have a chance to give some papers to the students, they're given a sheet of blank paper and that is supposed to suffice them for the time until the break (around an hour and fifteen minutes).

View of the 1st grade classroom

     Thursday, I took advantage of having no teacher telling me exactly what I'm allowed and not allowed to do to spend more time hanging out with the kids students. I tried my hardest to follow the routine of a typical school day which goes like this...

     8:35-9:45 School starts. I have class A in the morning and we do things like the day of the week, the weather and the temperature (which honestly, I didn't know how to tell because I've never read a thermometer that was just Celcius before. I just smiled and nodded lol). Then we reviewed some vocabulary, did a paper about phonics (sounding out different words) and a paper on habitats before the recess.

     9:45-10:15 RECESS. The students get a break from morning classes and go outside and run around like crazy people! Honestly, I'm surprised that there isn't more supervision/rules! At least 3 people bleed every recess!

     10:15-11:15 Math review. We reviewed things like doubles, the difference between thirty and thirteen (it keeps me on my toes with proper pronunciation!!) and shapes. Then we split into 4 centers to continue working on groups of 10, shapes, more and less and patterns.

11:15-11:35 We regrouped on the carpet where we sang a couple of songs and I read a story.

11:35-1:35 LUNCH BREAK! Lots of French students go home during this and eat lunch with their families. If not, they eat lunch at school in the cantine (where they spend at least 1 hour in the lunchroom).

School started again at 1:35 and we switched classes so that Class A went to the French teacher's classroom and I took Class B and did the exact same things with them as we did in the AM class. By 4:35, I was exhausted, my voice a bit raspy from repeating to be quiet but I felt fulfilled that I was able to help my students. Honestly, I love my job so much and am so happy to have had this experience working with French children!

Recess yard. That's right, no grass...

Here are some observations that I have made about French elementary schools...

-Schools do not have a lot of money. There isn't a computer in every room. There isn't even internet in the rooms at my school. There is 1 laptop that is shared with the WHOLE school. The map that is used in the 2nd grade room is so old that the USSR and Yugoslavia are still on it...
-There are no parent volunteers. Teachers have to do everything themselves.
-French students are much neater and have a lot more responsibility than children in the US. They love to give the kids things to cut and paste and they spend so much time doing this! Their handwriting is all uniform and cursive and everyone dots their i's and crosses their t's at the exact same spot.
-Teachers are more strict and show less emotion to their students.
-Starting at the age of 6, students use a blue pen. They use a ruler to make every line that they ever need (like an equal sign in math ). Everyone in the school has a white board that they use almost everyday. They have to keep ample amounts of gluesticks, blue pens and whiteboard markers in their pencil case and are scolded when something runs out.
-Like previously said, Recess is the most dangerous thing that I've ever seen when it comes to children. They are given soft padded balls which fly every which way and it doesn't seem that there are any rules to touching/wrestling/pushing as long as no one falls/starts to bleed.
-There are no extra staff other than the typical grade level teachers. There aren't really any secretaries, nurses, or janitors. The teachers do everything. When a child gets sick, the teacher cleans it up. The principal, one of the teachers, has to answer the phone and phone. During gym class, the teacher has to help out the assistant that is sent from the city.
-Students call their teacher "maîtraisse" or "teacher" in my class. When they raise their hands to answer a question, they hold one finger up and shoot their arm as high as possible and hold their elbow with the other hand while making annoying "ooh ooh" sounds.
-No school  transportation. Everyone is picked up at the gate. Noone takes the bus.
-There isn't really a dress code for the teachers. Some of them dress up wearing high-heeled boots, short skirts and black tights and others wear sneakers and jeans.
-In general, t


he attitude inside the classroom is much more intense and the attitude outside the classroom is much more lax.