November 11th to November 17th 2023
This week has been really good, but I have to admit that it was accompanied by a lot of stress. It was my first official week of teaching, which was already stressful in itself, but the week got harder once I found out that I was dealing with a bug problem in my apartment. I knew that there would be challenges along the way while I was here, but this was a humbling week for me. I tried to stay positive, but I also realized that even when I don’t have things nearly as bad as other people, small things still mentally affect me.
I mentioned last week that I am teaching at two different schools. A private school, Saint Gabriel, and a public school, Lycée Philbert. This week, I found out that I will be moving around between 40 different classes ranging from 6th grade up to 11th grade. This means that I will be seeing around 2000 to 2500 different students. That number alone is pretty overwhelming and I’m not quite sure how I am going to manage that, but I trust that it will all work out. As of right now, I have been showing up to classes and the teacher hands me a notebook and I teach the lesson for the day. This system makes me a little anxious because I have woken up each morning with literally no idea what I will be teaching for the day and to what age level; however, once I started teaching, I had a fun time and all the students were engaged. While some lessons could have gone better, there were a few that I thought went especially well.
I taught a lesson to the 9th graders about Thanksgiving in the U.S. which they seemed to have enjoyed. The 9th graders didn’t like talking much in the beginning, but I got them to warm up to me and more people were volunteering at the end of the class. I taught a lesson on verbs that were happening at the present moment, such as playing, doing, etc. to the 7th graders that went well. I acted out what I was doing, charade style, and then they had to tell me in English what I was doing. They were laughing a lot, so I think they liked it. While these classes went well, I did have a poor lesson where I accidentally gave a 6th grader a bloody nose. I was trying to teach them about first, second, third, and fourth, by doing a race and having them say who got first; but unfortunately, one of the students tripped on the other and fell into the desk giving her a bloody nose, so that could have been better.
I also went to the American Corner this week to participate in their discussion group. We talked about things that make us happy, such as our families. I am always impressed by the different ideas that the people share with the discussion group. The American Corner also has a 3D printer, but no one uses it. So, this week I spent a day trying to get it to work so I can begin teaching people how to design things in CAD and print it out.
I mentioned earlier that this week was stressful because of the bugs in my apartment, and well, that was definitely the low-light of my entire week. I knew I had ants in my building, and I was learning to deal with it, but, as I was going to bed one night, I found some sort of bug in my bed. I had also been waking up with bites, and both of these instances freaked me out a bit because even though I use a bug net I was still being bitten by something. I wasn’t sure what type of bug it was, but knowing I was getting bit made me nervous especially cause some of the bugs here can give you diseases that I’m not used to in the U.S. Mosquitoes can give you malaria and fleas can give you the Bubonic Plague. Both are treatable and I know everything will be fine, but it has made sleeping really difficult this week.
Overall, this week was stressful, but I signed up for this and knew that there would be challenges along the way. I’m hoping next week I will be able to get a better schedule for my classes so I can prepare more and find a way to deal with my bug situation in my apartment.