France, November 2008 - #5

Miss Becky

So I realized I have not yet posted about teaching, which is technically what I'm here to do! So here goes. I started teaching the second week of october, and I've had a two week vacation already, so I haven't actually been doing it for that long. But each week it gets a little easier as I start to get the hang of it. For my first class with each grade, I introduced myself and told them to call me Miss Becky. If they call me Becky in class, I say, "uh uh uhhh, MISS Becky." Hahaha I get such a kick out of it! But also I think It's important to know how to address people, right? (Mostly I just think it's so cute when little French kids say "Mees Béckie?") I also told them the three rules for the class: 1)Raise your hand to speak 2) Don't talk to your neighbors 3)If I ask a question in English, you have to answer in English. This last rule got a gasp from more than one of my classes, and then I taught them two key phrases: How do you say ___? and I don't understand. Hahaha sooo cute and they actually use them all the time! So that was my first class.

So far I have done Halloween lessons and some basic stuff like colors and days and months. After Obama won, I put a big picture of him up on the board, and asked why it is important that he was elected. Most of my classes had pretty legitimate discussions about it. They are between 6 and 10, and when I asked them that question, they were pretty well informed. They knew that he was the first American black president, they said he has good ideas, he wants to stop the war in Iraq, he wants to help poor people, he wants universal health coverage. I was pretty blown away by how aware they were. Some kids were a little confused about things they had heard on the news though - one girl thought that Obama was replacing Kennedy because he had been assassinated and we didn't have a president anymore. I think she misunderstood the comparisons between Obama and Kennedy, but then I explained it and it was much clearer. Then, I showed them pictures of Obama's family and told them that his daughters were their age, and asked if they could imagine their fathers becoming president. When I showed them a picture of the white house, they were thoroughly impressed, and gasped audibly. (Also very impressed with my mac I might add:) ) They asked how many rooms were in the White House, and many kids said, Do they have such a big house only for their family? A lot of kids also said, Wow, I would like to be president. It was fun to show them pictures and answer their questions, and one little girl brought me back a copy of the LA Times from Nov. 5 because she was on vacation in the states! I was so touched!

What was very striking is how racist they thought America was. Because the French news spent most of its time talking about how Obama is black and how much it would affect the election, and because there are so many movies about the 50s, 60s and 70s, many of the kids thought that America was this incredibly divided and racist country. One student told me that she thought Sasha and Malia would not go to school but be homeschooled instead because they were black and it was too dangerous for them to go to school with other children who would hurt them. I had to explain that we've come a long way since segregation and the civil rights movement, but that is something that is very hard to explain to an eight year old! I was starting to get really worried before the elections because I was thinking that race would be a serious problem even though I definitely didn't feel that way in the states, and I realized that it was a result of the amount of time the French media spent (and spends) talking about Obama's race as opposed to what he's all about. I think, in the end, that all of the talk about racist America is more of a reflection of the racism that exists here rather than the reality of things in the States.

Anyway, I did a class about Obama and the President, and now I'm moving onto other fundamentals before I get into Thanksgiving. I have A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving that I am going to try to show to my oldest classes, and maybe I'll do hand turkeys with the little ones. I teach three days a week, from kindergarden to fifth grade, at three different schools. The teachers are really nice, and helpful if I ask them. Otherwise they mostly just correct homework or hang out at their desks while I teach. I helped one teacher translate a letter from her class to her American cousin's class in Florida. It was adorable! The French students asked about recess and if they American student's teacher was nice! Overall, I don't love teaching, but the kids are really cute and I don't have to work that hard, so I can't complain. And, after all, I get to be Miss Becky. What could be better than that?