Today was the official "rentrée". Larry and I dropped the girls off for their first day (which went very well), then I headed off to school. I went up to "my" room, but it was occupied, so I set off in search of la salle des profs. Other than being a little embarrassed at not being able to open the doors to the student-filled "cour" on the first try and going in the wrong door initially, I found the teacher's room. I actually had a "casier" (mailbox) with my name on it and my photocopy card was in it, along with a notice that two more students had been transferred to my class of 31, which brings my grand total up to 165 students. I made some copies, then the other English teachers started showing up. We discussed pedagogy some and even collaborated a little, though I am surprisingly free to do whatever I want with my classes. It is both liberating and intimidating - on est vraiment seul, quoi. A centralized system in some ways but very individualistic in others. Next I got a few administrative tasks completed - turning in paperwork, getting a lunch card, getting some chalk, giving the school gift to Monsieur Joly. I had lunch in the "cantine" with Bénédicte, who I think I can tentatively call my first friend. She is so nice, very helpful and pleasant. The meal was huge compared to my typical fruit and yogurt! And ah, the bread was soooooo good!

After lunch I went up to my (thankfully empty) classroom, put up a few decorations (fortunately I had brought my own tape), and wrote some things on the board in preparation for my class. I opened a window, which scared me a little - they are huge windows and they open at the top, not at the side, so it seemed as though the whole window was going to fall on me. At first I marvelled that there was no graffiti on the desks, but upon closer inspection saw that "f***" had been scratched into one of them, in English. That made me feel more at home.

There are no drawers in my desk; no storage space in the classroom at all, in fact. After school I went out and bought a "desk" - a sort of box/folder that I will keep my stuff in from now on. The school doesn't even provide paper; students bring their own. There were, however, two trash cans. Feast or famine, I guess.

As the hour of my class approached I noted the sounds of students in the hallway, so I went out and looked. There they were, waiting around outside. I tried to leave the door open so they could come in, not knowing which students were mine and so unable to invite them, but it closed automatically. Finally they came in and sat down.

The class went extremely well. I threw caution to the wind and, contrary to Fulbright recommendations, smiled and joked with them. I wrote some survival expressions on the board and they seemed to like the fact that I taught them how to say, "You are the best teacher in the world." (Thanks, Ellen!) In fact, they laughed at my jokes and seemed to enjoy the class. Their English was quite good, though some of them were not too good at past tense. I kept asking them if they understood and if I was speaking too fast, but they seemed to be fine.

Before leaving school I checked out the piano in the music room and actually played for a few minutes. It was sooooo nice.

On the way home I stopped at la Poste to send a fax for Larry (yet another thing I could have done for free at WHS) - nine euros! Then I walked back to meet Larry and the girls for our annual eat-pastries-and-tell-about-your-first-day tradition. The girls did very well; both made some friends and seemed to understand quite a bit. When we got home I helped Caroline cover her books and filled out some paperwork for both of them. After supper Caroline read me some of a short novel she got at school today - she wasn't sure whether it was for homework or not. She did a great job reading it. The author is one whose works I read in college - Jean Giono. I am not sure if it was a simplified version or not, but it was pretty advanced.

Now I need to do some work and get to bed. Tomorrow will be a big day - four classes!

1. I have no desk drawers or closet space in my room. (In fact, it's not really "my" room.) Teachers bring all their stuff with them, every day. The only thing the school supplies is chalk.
2. There are light switches in the hallways. The lights turn off automatically after a few minutes (it seems). So, when you walk through a hallway in the morning or after lunch, it is dark.
3. There are no water fountains in the hallways. None of my students had beverages with them or took out food of any kind.
4. You need a key to open the teacher's bathroom. Classrooms are kept locked at all times. Students hang out in the hallway, not in the classrooms. They do not enter until the beginning of class.
5. There is what appears to be a student lounge, and it has a POOL TABLE in it.
6. I had to consciously stop myself from speaking French in class. I had to tell students to stop speaking French and speak English instead!
7. ALL of my students, without exception, had not only pen and paper with them on the first day, but different colored pens so their notes could be color coded.
8. When I asked them to, all students immediately began taking notes. One student even got out a ruler and neatly underlined the title of the vocabulary list (in a special color, of course).
9. I have no duties and no faculty meetings EVER!
10. On days when I start teaching late, I don't have to come in until five minutes before my class starts. When I am done teaching for the day, no matter what time it is, I can GO HOME!

We just filled up the gas tank. 83 euros, which is close to $100.00. The good news is, we have been here for three weeks and this is the first time we have filled it. Guess we'll keep on walking!

Another thing I forgot to mention was the photocopy issue at school. We get a limited number of photocopies (no one told us how many). Everyone gets a card with a special code to use. It was probably the issue that caused the most discussion at the faculty meeting yesterday and the one that seemed to make M. le Proviseur the most nervous when he was discussing it. Then, when we (the English teachers) were discussing using an oral participation sheet for every student, the teachers were concerned about upsetting the "budget photocopies". Imagine, being nervous about giving a handout to every student! However, given the amount of paper American teachers waste (yours truly admittedly included), it is perhaps better in the long run. It does, however, affect the way you plan your lessons. More note taking, fewer handouts - promoting more student responsibiity, perhaps?

Wow. What an amazing experience to actually be a teacher in a French school. Yesterday was the pré-rentrée (inservice day before the start of school). I walked to school, fun in itself, except that I had worn new shoes (ouch!), a tactical error. I made it to Alain Chartier at ten minutes to nine with band-aids on my heels. I think I was the first teacher there. A group of three other new teachers arrived shortly thereafter. I sat with the documentaliste (the Deb Locke of Alain Chartier), who is new as well, and another teacher whose name escapes me but who was very nice. Monsieur le Proviseur, le Proviseur-Adjoint (assistant principal), la C.P.E. (disciplinarian), and one other woman - the accounts person, I think - sat at a couple of long tables in the front of the auditorium. The next two hours or so consisted primarily of Monsieur le Proviseur going through the nuts and bolts issues that schools typically go through at the beginning of the year - personnel (I think I got the longest introduction of anyone), last year's BAC results, number of students enrolled en gros and par classe, the school calendar, policy and procedural changes, etc. Some interesting differences/observations:

1. I was struck by the amount of centralization. Everything proceeds from the Ministère de l'Education (merci Napoléon) - everything! It's almost like the principal is a functionary rather than a leader. There was a marked absence of goal setting, discussion of new initiatives, etc. Any time anything was disputed, the answer was always the same: la loi. The French love citing the specific laws, always with a date attached, genre: "Ceci selon la loi du 15 juillet 2006." It seems, however, that there is some disparity in terms of what is actually practiced. For example, smoking in public places was prohibited in France many years ago, but in this school there had been a smoking room for staff. The principal decided, it seems, just days ago (he mentioned it when he gave me my tour) to eliminate the smoking room for staff. One of the French teachers protested, saying that although he was not a smoker, he found it discriminatory against smokers to have no designated smoking area. The principal pointed out that as students are not allowed to smoke, it isn't really fair to allow the staff to smoke. When the teacher continued to argue, the principal fell back on, "C'est la loi."

2. There is much less student choice. Students stay with the same "classe" (group of about thirty kids) all the time, except for the occasional "options" such as which language they are taking. The principal's announcement that each student was getting his/her own individualized schedule this year was met with applause by the staff. "What did you do before this?" I asked the woman next to me in disbelief. She told me there had been one schedule for the whole "classe", with everyone's electives listed in a very complex way that took the P.P. (professeurs principaux) an hour to explain. Also, the Proviseur-Adjoint announced that there would be essentially no class changes allowed. There will be two days in which the students can make a request, but pretty much, this is it. There are no guidance counselors here. Career advisors come occasionally to the school to meet with students, but there is nobody "sur place".

3. There was an awful lot of "bavardage" while M. le Proviseur was talking. I hope that is not what my classes will be like! There was also some joking around and laughing.

It's a very young staff. I wonder if that is typical of the profession in general or just my school.

After the meeting we finally got our schedules. Each department went off to a department meeting, and I was relieved to see it took my colleagues several minutes to interpret their schedules. I couldn't make heads or tails of mine until I got some help. I think I've got it figured out now - more on that later.

Then we went down to la cour for un apéritif. Our department was late so all that was left was orange juice, but it appears there had been both wine and champagne. Lunch was on the house (not too impressive, I must add, at least for vegetarians!). I talked to several very personable teachers during this time and sat with my mentor, who is a math teacher. I received several compliments on my French, and one person even asked me if I was French. As the day wore on, however, I felt my French deteriorating. After lunch (two hours!) the English department met again and we worked on a common rubric for speaking - right up my alley. However, by 4:15 I was brain dead and exhausted and happy to head home.

Now, my schedule. I have roughly the same number of hours of teaching as at home if you add them all up, however ... are you ready? I have SEVEN classes, 163 students, and (thankfully) only three preps. On Mondays I teach four classes straight, then have lunch (one hour), and another class. Yikes! Tuesday I have two classes before lunch and two after, but can sleep in ... I don't start till 10:20. The nice thing is that if you don't have class, you don't have to be there. On Wednesday I only have two classes but finish at 10:05, in time to make the Wednesday market. Thursday is another busy day - five classes - but Friday I start at 11:15 and then have two classes after lunch. The latest I finish every day is 3:25, and Monday I'm done at 2:30. And get this - NO faculty meetings, ever! No department meetings either.

My smallest class is 14 students. I have two really large classes - 31 and 32, but according to French law, any class over 24 has to be "dédoublée", which means I see the entire class once a week, but the class is divided in two each week as well. I will have to work really hard to keep the classes synchronized. My other classes have 24, 24, 21, and 17 students. I wonder if I'll learn all their names before December. Today I purchased a grade/plan book (not provided by the school!), so I imagine it will take me a while today to get everything organized so I can keep all the classes straight. I'm thinking of using a color-coded system, so we'll be off to Champion shortly so I can buy some different colored pens.

Fortunately, I have only one class this Monday since classes are meeting with their P.P. in the morning. I am starting to wonder how I will be able to make much progress with such large classes, some of which I only see for two hours a week. I will just have to cram as much as I can into that hour, and give them lots of opportunities to speak. I am a little nervous, but excited to get started.

On another note, I found a way to thwart la Poste. I discovered that the plastic containers in which you get Carte d'Or ice cream are just the right size for mailing a small box of chocolates. HA! I found what passes as packing paper and actually, at long last, mailed my two packages today (one of which was in a pasta box - not quite as sturdy but probably sufficient). Hooray!

This morning the girls and I awoke early and hustled into town to buy Larry a birthday cake, a newspaper (en anglais), and some morning pastries. I also bought a magazine - l'Express - for me whose cover story is entitled, "Profs: le gâchis français" which I look forward to reading.

After breakfast I called the girls' school and - SUCCESS! - actually talked to M. Glover. We made an appointment for the afternoon and went in. (It turns out he had left me a message yesterday which I had not received.) After a very little paperwork (they didn't even ask for the girls' immunizations; I offered) Monsieur le Directeur gave us a tour. It is a wonderful little school, recently renovated. Annika got to meet her teachers as well (two part timers who will share the class). Annika was particularly delighted to see the days of the week posted in English in her classroom; they will both have English classes. It will be a long day for them; 8:30 to 4:30 on Mondays, Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays, and Saturday morning classes. They will, however, have Wednesdays off, which will be a nice break for them, I think. Caroline has a large class - 30 students; Annika will have 19 and it will actually be a mixture of CE1 and CE2 students.

After that we went to the beach. There was blue sky all day today - unusual for here. It was cool to sit and do Sudoko on the D-Day invasion beaches. I watched a man teaching his son or grandson to play boules on the beach for a while ... sooooooo French.

Larry thoroughly enjoyed his Charlotte aux fruits, though I had accidentally bought him trick candles. He had birthday calls from two brothers out of three; not bad. Now I am going to get a little more organized as I prepare for the pré-rentrée tomorrow. I am excited but getting very nervous now. I can't wait to get my schedule.