Premature Nostalgia

I now have only two teaching days left (and half-days at that, due to mock exams) before I return to England for good. I will confess to mixed feelings about my departure: on the one hand, I'm looking forward to seeing friends and family again, and have been promised one of my Mum's whacking great fry-ups when I get back. On the other hand, I really feel at home here; I walk the cobbled streets of Rennes feeling like it's my city, and I feel like the kids I teach are my kids.

So, all in all, the last week or so has been pretty emotional. It's essentially been a fortnight of goodbyes, as every class has been my last for that group. Three of my students have cried so far, which isn't bad going seeing as they're all over 16.

I'm really going to miss some of those kids. In my last practice oral with him, Philosopher was as breathtakingly bright and enthusiastic as ever - instead of droning on about how bullying was bad, as his classmates had done in response to a particular text, he started talking about Jamie Bulger and debating whether children can be held morally responsible for violence. Remember, this is a 17-year-old kid (whose moustache still hasn't properly sprouted, to his frustration), speaking in a foreign language about a news story most people in his country have never heard of.

As I was going home last Thursday, I walked past a darkened nook, where I could just about make out two students... well, making out. I tend to sympathise with the students on these matters, remembering those days well myself*, so, hearing the Principal leave his office, I decided to give them a heads up.

"Come out, get your tongue out of her throat - the Principal's coming."

And who should emerge, but a scarlet-cheeked Mr Boombastic and one of his female classmates? This is the kid who, only the day before, had announced in his presentation on stereotypes of England that, "English people are all ugly, except Zoe. And English men are especially ugly and they smell really bad, so I think she should break up with her boyfriend and have a French boyfriend."

I grinned and said with mock hurt, "Mr Boombastic, you never told me about this! I feel betrayed!"

I'm only entering the teaching profession because I like torturing teenagers.

Seriously, though, I want to be a teacher because, as I mentioned in a previous post, I've now had that crack-cocaine high of getting through to a kid, and I want more. It's amazing how quickly you forget the crap times after a good lesson. I asked one class to write a short statement (in French) to help me with one of my dissertations, on their opinion of what the point of having a language assistant is. I collected them in after the lesson and started to read them, but had to stop because I was welling up too much to see properly. Some of the anonymous comments, roughly translated, were:

"Having an assistant is definitely a good thing because her lessons are more fun than the ones we have with our normal teacher, because she plays games and songs and does acting, but we still learn a lot."

"Having a language assistant is a good experience because we can learn about her culture. It's made me realise that not all English people are weird and that some of them are actually quite nice."

"It's been very positive for me to have had a language assistant this year because I feel like I've improved my English so much because of her. Normally, I'm too shy to talk very much in class but she's very relaxed and encourages me to try so I don't worry so much about making mistakes. I now have a lot more confidence about speaking English in front of English people."

As I read that last paper, tears rolled down my cheeks and I felt a million miles away from the nightmare lesson I'd had a couple of weeks ago, where I'd stood in that same classroom sobbing after the class had left, but for very different reasons. I realised that this was why I had to go into teaching, for all the warnings about league tables, paperwork and pushy parents I'd received. And then, because some things never change, without thinking, I picked up a red pen and corrected the ending of 'parler'.



* All right, then - imagining those days well myself. I was a late starter...