As it turns out, when events worth blogging about occur in my life, I am too busy to write about them. Let’s start with Thursday morning.

Armed with 18 page-size photos from my travels in France, I went to talk to Mme. G’s eighth-grade French class. I knew basically nothing about France prior to going there–which, incidentally, I did with Mme. G when I was in middle school–so I brought photos of all kinds of things. The countryside, villages, food, architecture, even one of Christmas decorations in Strasbourg.

The kids had only been in French class for about two weeks, so most of our discussion was in English. I explained who I was in French and then they collectively worked out all the details. “She’s in college!” “No, she said she finished college!”

The photos were very popular, and inspired a lot of oohing and aahing. The photos of food, particularly one of my birthday cake, were the biggest successes.

At the end of the class, I offered to teach them some less formal French. They really, really wanted to know how to say “shut up.” I first told them “tais-toi,” and when they were dissatisfied with the lack of ferocity in this, I offered “ta gueule” as a possible alternative. I feel a little uncertain about that, because I’ve never heard a real French person say it. I only know about it from watching L’Auberge espagnole. But it made those eighth-graders’ day.

Mme. G was delighted with how the class went, and she asked me to stay to talk to the sixth graders who were arriving. She warned me: “A more squirmy, wriggly, hyperactive, out-of-control bunch of kids you have never seen.” I was alarmed when, before I had really introduced myself, a kid raised his hand and simultaneously started speaking: “I HEARD IT WAS LIKE GETTIN’ DANGEROUS TO GO TO THE FOREIGN COUNTRIES AN’ STUFF BECAUSE THEY’RE ALL LIKE GETTIN’ GUNS AND STUFF.” Oh my, what sort of rehashed Fox News nonsense is this? I tried to politely direct the conversation away from this topic by saying that French people don’t really have guns and it isn’t actually dangerous to go to France, but I was interrupted by an uproar “BUT WHAT HOW COME THEY DON’T HAVE GUNS? THAT’S THEIR RIGHT TO HAVE GUNS AN’ STUFF.”

Mme. G calmed the class down, and from then on it went relatively smoothly. They were very excitable kids, but they weren’t really bad. I passed around the photos again and there were lots of joking cries of “Why are you showing me this? You are making me hungry!” about all the various food pictures. There were also a lot of sweet, wide-eyed “Can we go to France?” remarks.

After the photos, Mme. G wanted them to recite the numbers 1-20 in French for me. Then they fell all over themselves to answer the simple arithmetic problems I asked them. I also told them a silly joke about two cats, which met with great approval. My favorite moment out of all of these, however, came at the very end of the class when this rowdy group of twenty-five sixth graders all begged their teacher to let them sing “Je m’appelle”*. She agreed and they all sat straight up and joined in. Maria Montessori was so right.

*It’s not clear to me if Mme. G invented this song, or if it came from somewhere else. Either way, it was a hit with the 11-year-olds.

Posted in French, teaching by rachel