The Life and Times of the Curious Cockroach

You learn more from students than they learn from you.

Before coming to The Village and teaching at a high school and middle school, I thought that the above was just a cliche. I mean, come on, I was going to teach these kids English expressions, slang words, Canadian culture, maybe throw in grammar here and there. I had to teach, and they just had to sit back and be teachable, right?

Not quite. For a twenty-year-old who had never worked with kids/teens before (and no, there was no younger sibling guinea-pig), the experience turned out to be a lot more difficult than expected. But I got a lot out of it, and I can now say it myself: my students taught me more than I taught them. And that’s no cliche.

My main role as Language Assistant was to get my students to practice their oral English as much as I could, while their English teachers took care of the grammar bit. So here are my observations and recommendations that never made it into the Work Journal.

Working with pre-teens (Ages 11-13)

• Boundaries, boundaries, boundaries. As soon as I stood in front of my middle school students without a teacher at my side, they tested my boundaries. At first I took this personally … What? I don’t look scary and authoritative enough as I am? Is it the way I talk? Is it my hair? … It only took about seven months (out of my eight-month contract) to realize that it really didn’t have anything to do with me. They were just kids faced with a new teacher, trying to make sense of the weird limbo. Every teacher has his/her own limits and rules. These students were just trying to figure out mine, by getting as close to the line as possible until I reacted. Nothing personal.

• How to set boundaries, boundaries, boundaries. Have clear rules, and for heaven’s sake, STICK TO THEM. “If you talk out of turn two times, the third time you’ll have detention” is one basic example. If you cave in to Johny’s puppy eyes, even if it’s his third warning, you are breaking your own rules. That means you lose credibility in front of everyone. Your rules will evaporate. And sooner than later, the kids will eat you alive.

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November 15th, 2010
Location: high school
Activity: surrogate mothers in India, medical tourism, video + discussion
Classroom enthusiasm levels: low

Haze of tobacco in front of high school doing wonders for stress levels, should really consider taking up smoking.

November 18th, 2010
Location: high school
Activity: not applicable (n/a)
Enthusiasm levels: non-existent (literally)

Some teachers on strike. No one showed up to class.
Apparently strikes are against President Sarkozy’s attempt to bump retirement age from 60 to 62.

December 2nd, 2010
Location: high School
Activity: n/a
Enthusiasm levels: v. high, but not inside classroom

Students now on strike too. How lovely that they are so far-sighted and are already thinking about their retirement. One student showed up to class, but only to ask me if I wanted to go on strike as well. Said I feared Ministry of National Education would deport me back to Canada.

Spent rest of class looking out of window, twiddling thumbs, watching my students making picket signs in courtyard. “RETIREMENT AT 62, MY ASS”  and “SARKO, YOU’RE FUCKED” were some of the more popular ones, apparently.

Then it looked as though students were barricading school doors with garbage bins, so decided it was time to vacate the premises.

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Dear Reader,

I am pleased to tell you that I’ve been asked to write a guest post for An Ache For The Distance (http://www.saharanscot.blogspot.com), a blog written by a Scottish traveler named Stuart Mathieson.

We’ve both taught abroad, so I figured it would be only fitting that I write the post about work. Also, seeing as I’m safely across the pond and back in Vancouver, Canada, I can finally write about my students without fearing scandal in The Village.

Below you’ll find the guest post, which consists of excerpts from a work journal I kept during my sojourn in The Village. Let’s just say that putting an utterly inexperienced 20-year-old in a room-full of hormonal French kids led to some pretty funny, and pretty terrifying, experiences. (All names have been changed)

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October 14th, 2010
Day: -3 (3 days before teaching)

Am officially in France. In France!!! Am v. excited. Three days before work starts, but am not nervous. Probably because have no idea what work will involve, since no one responded to my twenty emails during the summer holidays. Am guessing that here in this Southern French village everything is chill, everyone is chill, and work in general will be chill.

Have this image of what being a Language Assistant will be like. Image goes like this: 1) will sit cross legged at back of classroom, dressed smartly,  glancing at teacher from time to time, giving an important nod at this or that; 2) will receive subtle looks of curiosity and wonder from students, from time to time, 3) will be called on to correct this mistake or that 4) will organize maple-syrup-tasting parties, from time to time, 4) will have ample free time, to be used mostly for eating and other types of exploration.

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Date: May 22nd, 2011
Written while living in The Village

Apart from my colleagues and students, nobody in The Village spoke English. So when it came to French language immersion, it was as authentic as you could get. This post is dedicated to the awkward, unpredictable, and immensely amusing world of language immersion  – from my initial experience in Belgium to my time in The Village in France.

Witness accounts:

Immersion veterans have different ways of describing the experience. Some say it’s like having a double ear infection, where your head is filled with muddy sounds and you cannot distinguish one word from the next. Others say language immersion is like being dropped into an aquarium, where everyone communicates via gurgling noises, and whenever you try to speak, you realize that the gas mask stuck to your face makes the task mighty difficult.  And there are still others, who prefer not to talk about the experience at all. Personally, I think of language immersion as a battlefield, and no grammar boot camp back home can truly prepare you for it.

Stage 1: Shock, Seclusion, Pain

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(A quick post I wrote at home before firing it off from internet cafe. No longer have internet, will be traveling to villages around Nice for the next little while. Stay tuned.)

Location: The Village,  Southern France
Date: May 2nd, 2010

I think it’s time I introduce you to The Village. It’s my eighth month here as a language assistant. I applied to work in the Toulouse school district, and in the work placement gamble, the French Ministry of Education sent me here. It certainly isn’t Toulouse, and it isn’t anywhere close to Toulouse, but I’ve grown to love it. So after getting intimate with The Village – through its deep winter hibernation to its spring awakening — it’s time for the official introduction.

The first thing I must tell you is that The Village is not actually a village. It’s considered as a city by French standards. And by French standards, any middle-of-nowhere hummel with no stoplights or running buses becomes a city when it acquires its three-thousand-and-first inhabitant.

The Village was born out of the medieval times, and probably hasn’t expanded much since then. It  has all that’s needed to make it a wholesome, overall cute place to be. There’s a town hall, a post office, a church, a tea shop, a market square, a few bakeries, an ancient nunnery-turned-school, and a lovely river that’s harnessed into two or three canals as it runs through The Village.

Night Life

If you walk along the canals on any given evening, you’ll see the same pair of old ducks, cleaning themselves on the same rock. They are not the chattiest of types – no amount of human quacking will solicit a quack back. Still, if you’re a restless soul looking for night life, this is probably the closest you’ll get.

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Date: April 18th, 2011
Location: The Village

You would think that a blooming young lady, who comes to France from the faraway lands of Canada, would at some point find herself in a most unfortunate situation. No doubt she’d meet a charming lad during her stay in France, and everything — decisions, emotions, visa extensions — would become impossibly sticky. The young lady would be trapped like a fly in a web, bobbing this way and that, slowly being digested by her own thoughts. Needless to say, her stay in France would become a nightmare and she’d live unhappily ever after.

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Date: April 11th, 2011
Location: The Village, France

A near-death experience, brought to you by the Curious Cockroach.

13:45
Yippee! On an afternoon hike. Have come back from Ukraine (and its bitter temperatures) to find The Village wearing its spring suit. Cherry and pear trees in full bloom, migrating frogs flattened on roads, sunshine all around. Maneuvering bike around each frog is getting difficult, so have decided to go exploring by foot.

14:01
Have just discovered a lovely little path heading from my village to one called St. Jean Lagineste. Map tells me to cross a green field. Yellow arrows indicate same thing. Wondering if this is correct.

14:05
Have just crossed green field. White sheep left right and center, little huts in the distance. Breathtaking! Can’t believe that used to be afraid of sheep. Sheep definitely less frightening than electricity and flying on airplanes.

16:30
Yellow arrows are leading me from one hamlet to the next. Have not seen a single person for three hours. A little unsettling, but probably part of general countryside charm.

Beginning to feel a bit like Little Red Ridinghood. Except am the modern equivalent, because am wearing little red raincoat. I wonder what the girl thought about while she was crossing the forest and fields. I mean, she didn’t know that she was about to be eaten alive, so she probably  thought she had another good sixty years ahead of her. I’ll bet she was trying to figure out what to do with her life after the food delivery. An internal existential crisis no author could have picked up on.

16:32
Am refusing to think about what will do with own life after this hike, and after returning to Vancouver, and after finishing undergraduate degree. Am instead focusing on avoiding all these electric fences. The yellow arrows must have been drawn by someone drunk.

16: 45
Have discovered something wonderful! While walking through a hamlet, have come across a miniature village made entirely of mosaic tiles. Shiny ferris wheels, a red-and-white butcher shop, a dark blue river carefully laid out  between the little huts. Miniature village is right beside an old house, which is cute and colourful itself.  Wonder if the mosaic artist lives here? With his magical elves?

16: 59
No people or elves in sight, everything still and silent. Am floating in a sublime state of zen. Have spent a good while looking at miniature village, imagining its tiny inhabitants.  Am the Little Red Raincoat, in a secret marvelous land.

17:01:13
Ah! Bloody hell, what’s that howling? Howling getting louder! Louder still!

17:02:40
Large dog charging at my red raincoat like some enraged bull! Am wearing the raincoat! Am live target!

Dog is not slowing down! Dog is not slowing down!

17:02:56

“REVIENS, ESPECE DE SALOPPE!!!” (“COME BACK HERE, YOU BLOODY BITCH”)

Elderly lady just appeared on pathway. Hopefully lady is yelling at dog. Dog not listening.

“REVIENS, JE TE DIS, REVIENS, PUTAIN DE SALOPPE!!!”

At last second, dog swerves to my left, executes a loop, and runs back to elderly lady. Lady catches dog, holds him by the neck, then keeps him still between her knees, all the while smoking a cigarette.

17:03

Am rooted to my spot, trembling. The lady looks at me curiously, then exhales a large cloud of smoke. She gives me little nod. Then continues on her way, with beast growling at her side.

I take a few steps, then chance a look back. I see her walking through the mosaic village, then into none other than the magical house.

The End.

And this is how fairy-tales go down in France. Except this one actually happened.

‘

Dear Reader,

We regret to inform you that the Curious Cockroach has been eaten alive. The incident occurred during a particularly heated game of Bingo with French 11-year-olds.

The said 11-year-olds were having their last class before school holidays. Excitement levels were already alarmingly high. The Curious Cockroach’s fatal error was introducing candy into the equation.

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Written: December 1st, 2010
Rediscovered: February 13th, 2011
Location: petri dish
Physical state: questionable
Psychological state: questionable

The Village is getting smaller by the minute. I feel I’m being watched all the time. I’ve been sick this week and had to leave work early yesterday because did not want to risk vomiting on one of the high school students (even though that totally would have set the chatty buggers straight). By the time I arrived at the boarding school at the other side of the village, people greeted me with a strange look in their eye and some asked if I was feeling better and I swear, I swear one of them asked me to confirm if it was indeed me who almost passed out at the pharmacy yesterday, because as far as he knew I was the only Canadian in town and he heard that a Canadian almost passed out at the pharmacy, and at this point I think my fever started picking up again because I started panicking and thinking I was a bacterium in a petri dish, and everyone’s microscopes were turned to me and all my movements were measured and they were trying to stick a Canadian flag into my eye as part of some new tracking system… And when I started wondering if, being a bacterium, I even had an eye, I knew I had to lie down immediately. Which I did, because my apartment was only about five steps away. Oh the joys of living in a petri dish.

Date: January 30th, 2011

A few years ago, I had a particularly memorable piano lesson. It started out like any other: I came in after school,  having just wolfed down a tuna sandwich, and, with the same kind of delicacy, hammered out my Beethoven Sonata for my teacher. Here I don’t use the word “hammered” lightly. When I played the last chord and felt the piano steady itself beneath my fingers, I looked up proudly at my teacher. But she only shook her head.

“When you played that sonata, what did you imagine?” she asked.

I told her the truth: “nothing”.

“Me, I imagined a hippopotamus at its first tap-dancing lesson,” she said.

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