Things I like, no. 1: the SNCF

For some reason, I seem to like writing blog posts on the train. In fact, I'm doing that right now, speeding along towards Paris in the first step of getting home for a couple of days. I just feel generally more productive while travelling, perhaps because it makes me feel like one of those suited-up businessmen, refusing to waste a single moment of my precious time. (Let's not mention how much of my time I do waste when I'm not on the train.) Or perhaps it's just because, quite simply, the French railways are good places to get work done.

Okay, so that last point might need some explaining. I'm used to National Rail: perfectly serviceable, of course, but not exactly conducive to relaxing and enjoying yourself. If you've gone into London from Reading at any point, ever, you'll know about the challenges of finding a seat. Coming to France, I expected something more or less the same. What I found, though, was altogether different. Different, and if I dare say it ... better. In some ways, at least. If you can spare me a few minutes of your precious time, I'll justify my opinions (to quote the GCSE French marking scheme). Part 1 of this new mini-series, then, on things about France that I like: ladies and gentlemen, the Société nationale des chemins de fer français.

The SNCF logo. This one is the newest version, with a
couple of changes from the one before it: for the graphic
design nerds, try to spot the three main differences ...
(Old version here)

When it comes to why I like the SNCF, the name itself is a good place to start. Unlike in the UK, every aspect of the railway system is nationalised, including both the tracks and the trains. And the system works, too. Fares (which I'll come onto in more detail in a minute) are by and large less expensive than in the UK, and recent projects like the construction of the TGV-Est line out towards Strasbourg have made the French very proud of their railway company. Of course, they get private companies to do things like their graphic design work, but almost everything else is 100% owned by the French government. At the risk of generalising a little too much, it taps into that spirit of solidarity that I find to be so strong in France, encompassing as it does everything from the numerous mutuelles that offer personal and professional support to the adorable signs on the buses in Reims that advise you to give up your seat par solidarité ou par courtoisie.

Because it's state-owned, the government retains control over fares, which in turn means that some of the reductions they are able to offer are superb. One of the SNCF's slogans is une carte de réduction pour chacun, meaning that everyone is able to make some kind of saving with a savings card. In my case, it's a Carte jeune, which guarantees me at least 25% off all my train travel. If you book far enough ahead, the savings are ridiculous: €28 return between Reims and Paris, anyone? It gets better, though: that was in first class. The SNCF appears to have adopted the attitude that first class should be accessible to everyone, rather than using it as a tool to leech money out of commuters. Very often, first class tickets only cost a couple of euros more than standard class; occasionally, due to the mechanics of my Carte jeune, they're actually cheaper. For comparative purposes, I went and did a little bit of research into the price of equivalent journeys in France and the UK. Booking one day in advance and using a young person's railcard, a first-class ticket from Reading to London Paddington (30 minutes) is £41. Do the same thing in France (over a slightly longer journey, 45 minutes from Reims to Paris Est) and it's €25 (£21, or almost half the price).

But the best part of the SNCF is probably the trains themselves. There are so many charming things about a train journey in France that I couldn't possibly list all of them, but personal favourites include the flat caps worn by the ticket inspectors; the wifi that, even if you don't buy access, will still show you your destination and time of arrival when you open a web browser; and, most notably of all, the sheer speed of the things. The TGV (Trains à grande vitesse) is the national high-speed rail network, which regularly reaches speeds of up to 330 km/h on the Reims / Paris line (trust me: it literally just happened). The TER (Transport express régional) system is not as quick, obviously, but it still takes a surprisingly short amount of time to get to Épernay from Reims. And the time spent on the train is made all the more pleasant by the voitures themselves: there's always a spare seat, and even second class is likely to have a power point near to your seat. First class is quite the experience : you can lounge over seats big enough to accommodate a family of four, and handy screens show you how far away you are from your destination.

Now, I'm not saying that the SNCF is perfect. Of course, it has its problems: like any rail operator, it faces challenges with track maintenance, and recent reforms in its loyalty card structure have riled a few people. In light of all its positives, though, I'm far more likely to forgive its foibles than I am with Network Rail. So as the train glides into Paris Est, I'll leave you with this, a fitting tribute to the single-bar ditty that's heard from Calais to Montpellier:

How does a lycée work?

Last time on this blog, I said I'd take a look at the French school system. With that in mind, and an empty Sunday ahead of me, I thought I'd deliver on that promise. I've said several times now that I'm "teaching in a lycée", but what exactly does that mean? What is a lycée? What do the students study there?

At its heart, a lycée is broadly similar to an American high school or a UK sixth-form college, in that it forms the last part of secondary education (l'enseignement secondaire) before universities, or other forms of tertiary education. Students are split into three years: seconde (15 - 16 years old), première (16 - 17) and terminale (17 - 18). The first of these is effectively a continuation of the collège, but also marks the point where an element of student choice enters the system. Students can opt to take different enseignements d'exploration, which will likely inform their choice of specialisation in future years. Arts-inclined students will likely take littérature et société, budding economists will be more attracted to sciences économiques et sociales, and so on. For this reason, the seconde year is also sometimes called the cycle de détermination.

Coming into their première year, students must make this choice. There are two main decisions to make here, the first being which voie (literally "route") to take. There are three to choose from here: général, for most traditional "academic" subjects; technologique, for more "applied" options; and professionel, which often leads directly into a work placement (and which is selected immediately after collège, without a cycle de détermination). Each of these gives its name to the kind of baccalauréat exam that the student will take at the end of their terminale year.

Within their chosen voie, students must also select a série ("series"), and then potentially a further specialisation in their terminale year. There are quite a few of these, so I thought the best thing to do would be to summarise them in a handy diagram:

Regardless of the specialisms chosen, the baccalauréat exam itself differs from A-Levels in number of ways. The most important of these is that it is a single qualification, incorporating a range of different subjects: students receive a single certificate, rather than four different ones for each subject. Also crucial here is that some subjects are still obligatory, including (in almost all the séries) at least one modern foreign language. This is a huge contrast from the UK, where a student might have dropped modern languages altogether two years before the Bac even starts.

The school I teach in is a Lycée générale technique, meaning that it offers a mixture of général and technologique series. In this case, it offers ES and S qualifications from the général series; a large number of the seven technologique series; and one professionel series (traitement des surfaces). This does, of course, mean that none of my students are doing the bac L, and that hence none of them will go on to study English at university. Although this can be a little discouraging, it's more than balanced out by the fact that the school does have a section européenne. This means that one class in every year will, in addition to having extra English lessons, be taught one other discipline non linguistique in English. Since my school is largely scientific, our section européene is in the sciences, but this varies between schools.

"But what does this matter to you, Edward?", I hear you say. "Surely, if English is obligatory for almost everyone, you end up teaching more or less the same thing to all students in the same year group?" And that's not entirely wrong - although there are some minor variations in the programme, I'll likely find myself teaching the same lesson on Robin Hood to a group of 16-year-old economists as I would to a group of 16-year-old human resources specialists. However, all of this does have one very, very big impact on my timetable: acronyms.

Riveting, I know. But when your timetable says something like "2D Euro at 10am, followed by 1STMG1 at 11, then TSSI3 at 2pm", it's worth deciphering what all these mean. Plus, it really helps when it comes to getting to know your students. So let's break down a couple of acronyms together! (Note that I don't actually teach any of these classes.)

• 1SSI4 - Premières (1), Bac scientifique (S), sciences de l'ingénieur (SI), fourth class (4);
• 2D3 - Secondes (2), cycle de détermination (2), class 3 (3);
• TMerc3 - Terminales (T), mercatiques (Merc, a specialisation in STMG), third class (3);
• TSB4 - Terminales (T), sciences biologiques (SB, a specialisation in S), fourth class (4).

Fancy a challenge? Try working these out (some of these are actually classes I teach): 2D Euro, 1STMG1, TSTAV3, 2D9. Hope you enjoyed this essay / blog post: now, lesson planning beckons ...

Sources

1. 'Wikipedia' (sorry!), Le Baccalauréat en France, fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/

2. ONISEP, Les enseignements d'exploration en seconde, www.onisep.fr

3. Ministère de l'éducation nationale, Le baccalauréat, www.education.gouv.fr/

The first two weeks back

As Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire put it, Christmas holidays always seem much longer before 25th December than they do afterwards. This year, it didn't help that I only had two days at home before Christmas; and so it came to pass that, after what felt like the shortest holidays ever, I was back at London St. Pancras, helping out old Belgian ladies with their bags and waiting for the Eurostar.

The shortness of the Christmas break didn't stop me enjoying it: being back in the UK for more than a couple of days was, after all, a very pleasant experience. It was good to see friends, to spend time with my family, and to see in 2013 by playing Scrabble. While back at home, it was also good to be able to play the full-sized guitar for a change. I mean, don't get me wrong - I love my travel guitar, and will possibly be using it in a performance one day soon, but I do miss the bass response on the full-sized version.

Once safely ensconced at the lycée, lessons began again with an almost-alarming speed. Fortunately, I still had a couple of lessons left over from last term to finish, so for a few of my classes there was next to nothing to prepare. Before too long, though, I was again sending out those interminable emails to teachers asking what they wanted me to work on. By and large, my new lessons have worked rather well, particularly the one about emigration to America which consisted of analysing the Pogues' seminal 1988 classic Thousands are Sailing. It's not all been plain sailing, though (get it?): the lowlight of the term so far has been a lesson which took an absolute age to prepare, including recording an interview with two Australian exchange students; a lesson which, it transpired, did not get a good reception. Still, you live and you learn, and I'm definitely going to think a bit more about different groups before starting my lesson plans.

One other lesson merits mention. To get my premières students back into the swing of things after the Christmas break, I gave them a semi-creative writing task that involved deciding who to put on the back of a new £10 note. The idea was to encourage them to think about British heroes, since one of the units on their curriculum is called "mythes et héros", and to justify their hero status by explaining why they should appear on currency. Two groups came up with reasonable suggestions - Churchill and Shakespeare; another group settled on Molière (decidedly not British, but okay). The other group was a little more ... interesting. I shot down their first idea, Woody the Woodpecker, by pointing out that fictional characters don't usually make it onto banknotes. Ten minutes later, when I came back to check on how they were doing, they'd made their decision.

To be fair to them, they produced the best writing in the whole class. Unfortunately, I don't think the Queen would be very pleased to find herself on the same banknote as Tupac.

But it's not all been classroom antics here in Reims: other, arguably more exciting things, have been happening here too. Particularly worthy of a mention here is a visit I recently made to Paris, in order to meet up with a good friend and to see the King's Singers in concert. He describes it better than me, so please do read his blog to learn more about a wonderful evening. I've also been trying to see a bit more of the other assistants this term, which has led to a couple of wonderful (and cheap!) dinners. Who would have known that enchiladas were so delicious? Or that I could make such a mess of pumpkin pie?

Tune in next time on Reims and Repeat, where I'll be dissecting the French school system ...

Obligatory geeky Harry Potter referencing, MLA style: J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (London: Bloomsbury, 2007), pp. 377 - 378

Things I'm learning from teaching

The last week of term has just finished, and already it's blurring into this confused whirlwind of things that happened: going to see The Hobbit with one of the American assistants (thanks, Heather!), ice-skating for the first time in years, the weekly English-speaking night with other assistants and students from the university ...

Not that all my weeks are nearly as exciting as this, of course. But in a week like this, you might be forgiven for forgetting why I'm in Reims in the first place: teaching. And boy, have I learned a lot about it since I arrived. Almost enough, in fact, to write a whole blog post about it. (A blog post which will be  a shameless copy of my sister's post on the same subject, which you can read here.)

Don't be too ambitious

This is one that I wish I'd learnt earlier. In hindsight, I think I was kind of still thinking in a university mindset when planning my early lessons, even when these were for the equivalent of Year 11. They're a smart bunch, but after three hours of textbooks they really don't appreciate another hour. On a related note, I've become a lot better at estimating how much will fit into one lesson: my typical lesson will feature a warmup for 5 minutes or so, something led by me for fifteen minutes or so, and then a freer composition-type activity for the rest of the time. On more than one occasion, I've tried to fit too much in, only to be brought back to a correctly-timed lesson by an IT failure twenty minutes before I was due to start. So don't try to cram everything you can possibly think of into an hour: you'll only end up beating yourself up that you didn't manage to, and if you try to, your students won't take it all in.

Be flexible!

For instance, one morning recently I noticed that my entire class had dozed off. Not literally, of course, but they were all staring into the middle distance, plainly wishing that the lesson could end there and then. It was sort of like 'the silence', but much worse. One game of 'Simon Says' later, and they were much more awake. (Yes, I really did this. Which brings me to ...)

Make a fool of yourself

You might think that this one would seem very obvious, but it took my a surprising amount of time to really get used to it. One of my last lessons of term focused on War is Over by John Lennon, so I decided to get my class of 15-year-old boys to try and sing. And sing they did, although it did require quite a lot of energy from me. They certainly won't forget me shouting, 'Louder, guys! Louder! There aren't any lessons next door!' any time soon, and hopefully that'll translate into them remembering the song.

So yeah - there's been a great deal going on on the teaching front. I'll probably post again before I head back for la reprise des cours, but before then, have a lovely Christmas!

Good news, bad news, great news

Welcome to an occasional new feature for this blog! Here's today's instalment:

Good news

Lessons finish an hour earlier than normal, so I can play badminton! Yay!

Bad news

Transport strike means I can't get out to the sports hall.

Great news

One of my students came into school the other day wearing this on a T-shirt.

I'm not very good at this!

A guide to alienating your blog's readership (by Edward) 

1. Promise an update "soon", while teasing about some ridiculous purchase that you've made;
2. Do not update said blog for three weeks.
3. Done.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is how it's done. As you can see, it's a fine art, particularly when it comes to the "not-updating-your-blog" step, but it's something we're all capable of if we just apply ourselves to it.

Three weeks can be quite a long time on a Year Abroad, and indeed, quite a lot has happened since then. I've finally become a proper member of both the badminton club and the oft-mentioned Régates, procedures which both required me to submit myself to a medical examination. This was a somewhat unnerving procedure, particularly when I was handed a cup and it took me a moment to realise what it was for, but thankfully I passed it. Thankfully there was no-one else there apart from me and the doctor, so nobody caught a glimpse of just how ridiculous I must have looked after doing fifteen squat-thrusts and having my pulse taken with one of those clamp-on-your-arm thingies.

But of course, it was worth it in the end: I'm now able to play badminton and cox rowers without being asked constantly whether I've paid my cotisation. Both of these ends are going swimmingly, by the way (although that may be the wrong adjective to use when rowing's involved): I've been coxing some rowers from the nearby Reims Management School, which has been a very rewarding experience. My badminton skills have also got correspondingly better, meaning that now it's just 14-year-old girls who can beat me, not 10-year-olds any more.

The teaching experience has also been getting steadily better. It's now taking me less time to prepare lessons, and I've also learnt the danger of over-preparation: if you try to cram too much into one 55-minute lesson, then you'll (a) have wasted your own time in planning, and (b) not be able to give the material that you do teach enough depth. It's a hard balancing act to make, under- and over-preparation, but it's one that I'm learning to deal with. For instance, I'd prepared a lesson on female SOE operatives during World War II, only to find that I couldn't print off some of the activity sheets that I'd got lined up. In the end, it turned out that, if I'd tried to do that activity, I'd have ran out of time, so I guess that's one problème informatique for which I can actually be thankful.

There's one other thing that I learnt last week: don't use an electric radiator to dry clothes on. I won't go into detail about what happened, but let's just say this: it involved panicking; unplugging the radiator; using lots and lots of water from the sink; going into the office and saying that "I may have just done the stupidest thing I've ever done in my life"; and subsequently buying lots of air freshener. Yeah.

Finally, time for the stupid purchase! I promised you an update, so here it is: I bought a kazoo! Yeah!

No, really - I did.

He's called Antoine, and he's absolutely brilliant. I mean, really annoying for my neighbours, but brilliant. Adding kazoo solos to War is Over has to be one of the most amusing things I've done in a long time. Now, should I use it in lessons, I wonder?

I can explain ...

Well, that was a long and unexpected absence. Two weeks is the longest time I've gone without posting, so I can only apologise for that. The strange thing is, it's not like nothing's been happening - in fact, it's been one of the busiest fortnights I've had in ages - but for various reasons, blogging hasn't been very high on my priorities list recently. But now I've got a bit of time, I thought I'd give you a rundown of some of the things that have been occurring on this side of the English channel.

As far as teaching is concerned, it's going pretty well, actually! The students are starting to get used to me and to each other, so 'class control' is becoming less and less of a problem. I'm still confiscating an average of two phones a week, but behaviour is definitely improving. Just as importantly, I think I'm also starting to gain an appreciation of how to make a good lesson: in the last few days, I haven't been afraid to deviate from the lesson plan a bit if needed in order to liven things up a bit. For instance, last Wednesday I was doing a lesson on 'presenting yourself', which is hardly the most riveting topic to have to teach, and what I call The Silence had descended over the class. The Silence here refers not to a Doctor Who monster, but to that awful moment during a lesson when everyone is looking down, not meeting your eyes out of a fear of being asked to talk. It's a horrible sensation for a student - I remember it well! - but it's ten times worse for a teacher, who's left wondering what they did wrong that allowed this situation to develop. Now, I could have just ploughed on with my lesson plan, leaving the students counting down the minutes until the end of the lesson, but I decided to do something just a little bit different. And so it was that, for the last twenty minutes of the class, we all sat down and invented a character to describe. Of course, the students did try to base it on someone they didn't like, but thankfully I spotted that during a casual glance at the register ... All in all, everyone just seemed to wake up during those twenty minutes, and so it became clear to me that lesson plans aren't necessarily things that need to be followed at all costs.

And ... and ... and ... my teaching website has gone live! While I had a few days spare over the school holidays recently, I decided to make a website for my students, in order to allow them to access resources that I'd made during lessons. If you'd like to take a look, I'll put a link below: any comments will be warmly welcomed.

What else has been happening? Well ... I've been trying some coaching at the rowing club, as well as coxing, which is a different experience: different, but rewarding. I also got my Pass Éducation the other day, which will get me into various national museums for free. As you can expect, I'm quite looking forward to making use of it.

More news is to come shortly, including an exciting update on my first ridiculous purchase in Reims ...