Teaching in the 18th century

Recess time on the cement pad

Yesterday was a shock to the system. Courtney and I taught for our first full day. We have to teach Aesop's Fables , 10 stories in 8 teaching days. The teachers have asked us to teach the story moral, which is incredibly difficult with the language barrier, not to mention the school culture. School in France is night and day from school in Canada. We were asked to prepare a worksheet for body parts in English, that's how the children are expected to learn. The children come into class, sit in their little desks in rows and learn curriculum through memorization and work sheets. The children are shushed when they are working on their worksheets. There is no Reggio here, there is no inquiry here. There are blackboards and text books. Its hard to approach the children with the lense of inquiry and then be expected to teach in a typical French way. Its even harder to sit and watch how the children are treated when they misbehave. Some of the teachers publicly yell at the students and ask the other students to wait, and other teachers physically remove the child from their classroom and tell them not to come back until their work is finished. I feel as though childhood is not respected in the same way here as it is in Canada. The image of the French child is unequal to adults. Its hard to experience.