My First Day as a Comenius Assistant

Today was my first day as a teaching assistant in a Primary School, I got a bit tipsy and kissed the Headmaster! But it’s not what it sounds like! I’ll explain all…

My first challenge was getting the bus to school, actually having said that my first challenge was probably trying to drag myself out of bed at 6.45am, I can’t remember the last time I had to do that! I miss student life already! Anyway, back to the point, I finally managed to get out of bed and stumble to the bus stop half awake. I was glad that what they say about French public transport hardly ever being late turned out to be true in this case and my bus actually arrived a bit early, so I hopped on board armed with my newly acquired bus pass. Unfortunately, although I was armed with my bus pass, I had no idea what to do with it and attempted to hand it to the bus driver, who looked at me a bit puzzled and pointed at a machine by the door of the bus. It turns out my bus pass is a bit like an Oyster card and after attempting to swipe it first in the wrong place on the machine and then back to front I finally managed to swipe onto the bus and take my seat, albeit a little red-faced! The bus journey took about 25 minutes and for the last ten minutes or so I was the only person on the bus (apart from the driver, obviously!). My mentor said she would be waiting for me at the bus stop so I got off the bus and greeted the only person in sight with a kiss*, only then did it occur to me to check that she was in fact my mentor and not some poor unsuspecting person, thankfully it was! *(For those of you that aren’t accustomed to French ways, I’d better explain...In France the way of greeting each other is to kiss each other on the cheek, hence why I also kissed the Headmaster when I met him! The number of times you kiss varies region by region but here it’s one on each cheek.)

It was a PD Day today so I got to know my way around the school and meet all the staff (and the chickens!!) before the children arrive tomorrow! First of all I sat in on a meeting between all the teachers in the main school, which I didn’t really understand a lot of because they spoke too quickly! Then I helped my mentor rearrange her classroom ready for ‘la rentrée’ (the start of term) before discussing my timetable and what I’m going to be doing at the school. I only have to work 12-16 hours a week so I was hoping to have either Monday or Friday off so I can travel around at the weekends but it turns out she wants me at school every afternoon, as well as two mornings a week. Luckily I’m not being thrown into the deep end tooo much as I’m only going to be observing lessons for the next two weeks to get to know how things work in the school. After that I’m going to be helping my mentor teach English in her class (Year 4) and two other classes, as well as teaching P.E and Art in small groups, all in English. Neither P.E nor Art is exactly my strong point, but I’m sure it’ll be fine! (there goes that phrase again!)

After that my mentor informed me that they have a tradition to go for ‘apéritifs’ with the Headmaster and the other teachers on the day before ‘la rentrée’. So we gathered in one of the classrooms, I was handed half a plastic cup-full of ‘Pineau’ which is a fortified wine made locally and I proceeded to sip at it warily, it turned out that it was actually quite nice! I was a little bit worried that given that it was only midday, I hadn’t eaten since 7am, the Pineau was 17% alcohol and I’ve only drunk once before in the last 3 months or so, that I wouldn’t make it through the rest of the day! But I didn’t want to seem ungrateful so I finished it and hoped that the impending lunch hour would make me slightly less wobbly! The headmaster also provided some nibbles, including some Wotsit type crisps that were peanut flavoured, amazing! Why do we not have these in England?! I added a big box of Marks and Spencers chocolates and caramels to the mix and they seemed to go down well!

My mentor’s husband is also a teacher in the school and at lunchtime we went to their house in the village where we had lunch and I met their son and daughter. After a nice, relaxing hour-long lunch in the sun we returned to school. My afternoon was a lot less eventful as I spent the whole 3 hours covering books with sticky-back plastic; I got through a huge stack and am now a master at it! My mentor told me that she had to go into town for something after school so she could drop me off so I didn’t have to get the bus, she gave me a little tour of La Rochelle on the way which was nice of her. By the time I got home it was about 5pm but most of the shops here are open until 6pm so I went for a little wander in town, I walked past some very yummy looking pastries and decided to treat myself to my favourite- a ‘mille feuille’ after my long first day at work and returned home to devour it!

 

 My Mille Feuille wrapped up all prettily!

Yum yum!

 

I’m a bit nervous about my first day with the children at school tomorrow, but I think the children’s French will be more my level, so that’s a bonus!

À bientôt!