I'm back with a new apartment and some teacher anecdotes!

I'm back in Paris now, after that fabulous two-week trip of a lifetime. I started my grammar class this week, but my University classes don't start until February 4th, so I've got a lot of free time on my hands. Not a lot to do with said free time at the moment, but it's there nonetheless. I do have one major update for everyone on the other side of the pond: I have a new apartment and a new family! I have also been officially abandoned by more than half of my new American friends, so I don't have a lot of social stuff to talk about. But it has been about two weeks since you heard from me, so I'll try to make this post worth the wait.
First up, the new apartment and family! For a few reasons, I decided to change host families for the second semester. There were some issues that I'm not going to go into here. The point is that it just wasn't working out, so I'm in a new place now. The family is really nice. Madame is a child psychologist, and her husband is in business. Right now he's on medical leave because he just had major abdominal surgery. So I see a lot of him; he does beautiful oil paintings in the living room. My room is actually separate from the apartment. I live in what is called a "chambre de bonne", which is basically a maid's room. Pretty much, think Downton Abbey servants' quarters. In the old days, these big apartment buildings were serviced by live-in maids and butlers. There are six apartments in the building, one on each floor, then about ten small apartments on the seventh floor, accessible only by the service stairway. The only way to access the stairway is either through one of the main apartments or by the door on the ground floor. There's no elevator access, so I climb all seven flights of stairs at least twice a day. I'm definitely not complaining, though. I'm training for a 5k when I get back to the States, so all the stairs are definitely doing their job. The room is really nice. I have a mini-fridge, a shower, and a little kitchenette with two burners and a sink. I share a toilet with other people on the floor, but there are only about four of us, so that's not bad at all. the room is pretty small for everything it contains, but it works for me. I think it's about 10 feet by 14 feet. It has a slanted ceiling and a window with a nice view. I have room for all of my things and the family is great, so it all worked out in the end. The food here is a little different than in my old family. This family does a lot of traditional French cuisine. For example, I had my first aspic a few days ago. For those of you who don't know, an aspic is pretty much a hunk of meat encased in meat-flavored jello. I am completely serious. I haven't really cared for jello since that was all I was allowed to eat before my colonoscopy a couple years ago, so I knew I wasn't really going to like it. I did try it, and it was just as disgusting as anticipated. But hey, it's all part of the experience, right? They have made crêpes from scratch a couple of times since I've been here, and the other day, they helped me make one by myself. It took a couple of tries, but I got it! So Mom and Dad, you should probably get a crêpe pan before I get home this summer if you want some.

Mostly what I've been doing since I got back to Paris is teaching. I'm still giving private English lessons to two kids once a week, and helping out at the French middle school nearby. I feel like I'm getting through to my kids, which is great, but I myself am also learning so much. I can't wait to get finished with my schooling so I can have a class of my own. I haven't completely made a decision about where and what I'm going to teach yet, but I do know that I love doing it far too much to set it aside for something that I'm paid better for but don't like half as much. For a while, I really thought I was just going to stay here in France and get a job as an English teacher. After spending some time in the French schooling system, I'm starting to seriously rethink it. In some ways, I love France; but I can tell you right now that I would never put my kid in the French school system. Not because the teachers aren't good or the kids don't learn, it's more of an attitude thing. The teachers are incredibly strict and there's just such a sense of austerity around the schools. It's depressing. When I was in elementary and middle school, we learned, but we also knew how to have fun inside the classroom. I was never afraid of my teachers or of raising my hand in class. From what I've seen since I've been here, most French students have enormous respect for their teachers, but it's the sort of respect that Severus Snape always possessed; the kind you get when everyone in the room is terrified of you. That's not the sort of environment I want to contribute to. The English teacher I work with generally isn't as hard-core strict as some of the others at the school, but she still gets after them for things I'd just let pass. The best and simplest way I can describe it is that French teachers tend to enforce punishment more than praise. For some kids, that is the best way. But I can say that if I had gone to French schools from the beginning, I probably would not be where I am today. I've always felt that an emphasis on positive reinforcement is the key to interacting with kids in any way. Yes, some kids may respond better to the opposite, but is it worth potentially killing the spirit of another child when everyone responds on some level to positive reinforcement?

Getting down off of the soap-box now. Some of the things that I've really loved about getting to teach is the interaction with all of my kids. I love them all, and they help me think outside of the box when teaching vocabulary and grammar. Also, they really like me too. While I was on vacation, I missed a class with my boys at the middle school. Apparently they were all asking about me when I didn't come, and their faces just lit up when I came into class this week. Working with these kids helps me understand both French and English so much better. For example, I help little 9-year-old Angèle with all of her homework, not just her English. In French schools, they actually spend a lot of time learning how to conjugate French verbs. We don't do that in the States with English verbs, but I think that's mainly because English is such a phonetic language. French is definitely not. Take the French verb parler (to speak). I'll do a quick little present-tense conjugation for you to make my point.

je parle                             nous parlons
tu parles                           vous parlez
il/elle/on parle                  ils parlent

Parler is a regular -er verb, the most common type of French verb, and those that fall in this group generally follow this conjugation. Now all you non-French speakers, I'm about to throw the curveball that makes French so frustrating sometimes. Phonetically speaking, the je, tu, il/elle/on and ils forms of this verb all sound pretty much the same. There are minor differences, but in everyday conversation you have to rely on context clues, especially when trying to tell if someone is saying that "he speaks" il parle or that "they speak" ils parlent. On paper, you know what's going on, but in everyday conversation it gets a little hairy. My point? Oh, yeah. French kids have to learn in school how to conjugate the verbs of their own language as well as any other they might be picking up. This week, I was working with 11-year-old Louis on his English grammar. His English is pretty good. He understands nearly everything I say and is getting pretty good at expressing himself. We were just doing some conjugation when Louis started having some trouble and expressed frustration at the weird way that English verbs are conjugated. I'd never thought about it, but they are. Let's take a look at what he was working on. The book had an exercise using the verb "collect". There were sentences with blanks for the conjugated verb.

to collect
I             collect             we    collect
you        collect             you   collect
he/she/it collects           they   collect

Seems pretty simple, right? Just remember that the third person singular has an s, and the rest just follow the root. But wait... What happens if you ask a question in the third person singular? Or if you make it negative? Take a look.

Does he collect stamps? Yes, he collects stamps.
She doesn't collect shells.

Poor Louis. I'm going through his work, correcting it, and he just lets out this huge grunt of frustration. "But why is there no s after this one, ('Does he collect...?'), when there is an s after the other one ('he collects stamps')?" At the time, I had no idea. I had to really think about it for a second and do the conjugation in my mind to come up with a rule he could remember for the future. It's little things like this and the almost-constant confusion all of my kids have with both the pronunciation and meaning of "now" and "know" that help me think and teach in a way that is outside of the English-speaking box. It's good for me both as a budding teacher and a French student. They say it's the students who teach the teacher, but I never really understood it until I really got my hands dirty.

That's all I have for this week. I do have a little announcement, though. Starting next week, I will be updating twice a week, once on Wednesday night and again on Saturday or Sunday night. The Wednesday posts are mainly for all my French student friends back home. I've gushed about my grammar teacher here Mme Mellado before, so you all know how awesome her class is. Last semester, my friend Claire would post her notes from the class on her blog. Now that she and some of my other friends have gone back to the States, they have requested that I post my notes for the second semester so they can continue the course from afar. There will be a new tab on the home page for these posts. These won't make sense to all you non-French speakers, so you guys can just skip over them. It's an advanced grammar class taught mostly in French, so it may turn out that most of my notes that I post will be in French. Of course, anyone is welcome to take a look, but the Wednesday posts will be mainly for my fellow students' benefit. That's starting next week. The weekend posts will remain the same as they have been in the past. I'm turning 21 this weekend, so you can expect a fun post about my celebrations on Sunday night or Monday afternoon. À bientôt!