Today was the first official day of school for the majority of French children. On the news tonight, they showed tearful parents taking their 3-year olds to school. Education starts quite young here! In Poix, we welcomed only the sixième (6e) and cinquième (5e) - the equivalent of 6th & 7th graders - today. Each grade is divided into groups - 4 for the almost 100 students in 6e and 3 for the 70-something 5e. I spent the morning with one group of 6e and their professeur principal. The PP is in charge of the class and serves as an intermediary between the school, teachers, parents and students. I feel lucky to have been paired with Mme Mallejac today, because I learned so much about how things work at the school.
The students in 6e were welcomed by Mme Patin, the principal, in a general meeting first thing this morning. This is their first year at the collège, and there are many differences between their new middle school and their old school. Among things she and Mme Lenoir the vice-principal talked about were proper behavior - how one enters the building (quietly) and how when an adult enters you classroom, the students are expected to stand. She explained the importance of starting the school year off right by doing their homework. And I love that she reminded them to say bonjour and merci to everyone - politesse is so important in France.
Mme Mallejac and I took our group back to her classroom and spent at least an hour helping them decipher their schedules. While they will have most of their classes with the same group of students, they are split between those who choose to study both English and German, and those who just do English. They took out their highlighters and marked where they were to go each day ... and each day is completely different than the one before. Our students at CSAS have enough trouble remembering if it's an A-day or a B-day - imagine the difficulties we'd encounter with 5 completely different days!
After lunch, the students had sports challenge to help them get to know the students in 5e and to start the year with a different sort of activity. I didn't witness the competition - instead, I made copies and hung posters in my classroom. I stopped by the bank to pick up my checkbook (enfin !) and made an appointment to get my back-to-school haircut a couple of hours later (which deserves a separate blog entry). Tomorrow's Wednesday, so no school for me. My REAL first day is on Thursday... and yes, I'm extremely nervous!
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