Becoming a Teacher

Here I am, a week of teaching completed and a full month living in Bordeaux.  It’s been an amazing time, but it has certainly not been seamless.

On Monday morning, I sat in SIP—a lovely café around the corner from my flat—doing final preparations for my classes starting the next day, and I fought back tears as it suddenly dawned on me that I am completely unqualified for this new position of lectrice.  The week before, the English language professors had given me and my colleagues a crash course in teaching, and while it was informative, I felt in no way prepared to stand before a roomful of university students.  The sudden awareness that I had been sitting in the place of my students just months before floored me.

I could no longer focus, so I packed up my things, left the café and headed home stopping in the corner shop to buy bread and cookies to calm my nerves.  As I am learning from my new British friends, what I really needed was a good cup of tea.

The anxiety eventually faded as it always does, and I furiously tried to prepare until I stepped off the tram on Tuesday morning at Université Bordeaux Montaigne.  Then, I decided to simply pretend.  Just as if I were ten years old in the neighbor’s basement playing school, I marched through the doorway, straight to the front of the room, set down my bag, brushed off my skirt, and tried to act as if I belonged up there next to my chalk board.  And the students actually believed it.

So, after two and a half days of 15 different classes, I am still alive yet thoroughly sick of introducing myself.  At this point, I’m also quite enchanted by the responsibility of molding part of these students’ education and encouraging them reach new horizons. 

The other professors and teachers quickly told me that this is naïve.  They’ve said that the students are unmotivated and will slowly start dropping out, proving to be completely passive.  If that’s true, maybe my romantic notions will be short lived.  For now though, I continue to live in what is likely a blissful ignorance where I believe that most of my students want to enrich their minds and earn a solid education.

My superiors are pessimistic—and perhaps realistic—about the system for two major reasons: the cost of attendance and the lack of selection.  While in the United States we complain about the excessive cost of secondary education, we benefit from luxurious buildings, beautiful libraries, and high tech learning areas.  We have the ability to hold high expectations for the quality of our staff and subject matter. 

In France, however, tuition for an undergraduate degree this year was €184, the equivalent of $220.  If students have financial need, I’ve been told, they pay closer to €5.  Included in their enrollment, the students receive free health insurance and qualify for countless significant student discounts.

In addition, the government does not allow the university to have any form of selection process.  As long as students pass their BAC exam at the end of high school, they must be allowed to enroll in the public university of their choosing.  In the end, for many young high school graduates, the cheapest and easiest next step is a university. 

This means that there is no level of standard for the start of academics.  Specifically in the classes I teach, all first year students are in the same classes despite an incredibly varying range of English language abilities.  Many of them will likely fail out and another good portion will drop out.

Despite all of this craziness, one thing the French do well is the degree to which they value the study of foreign languages. Our students have the opportunity to take phonetics, civilization courses, expression classes, and work in labs where they practice their speech, reading, comprehension, and transcription.  The university delegates some of its little money to employ me and my colleagues, giving the students the opportunity to learn from native speakers.  Putting myself in the place of my students, I realize how much of a gift that is.

Despite how unqualified I may be, these students will benefit immensely from the role I fill simply because of who I am.  As a team, my colleagues and I represent England, Ireland, Canada, America, Trinidad and Tobago, and Australia.  We carry with us not only our education and our often minimal degrees but also our understanding of our respective cultures, dialogues, and values. We approach teaching with our varying opinions and our love for learning; we remember what it was like to be in our students' shoes.  

Each morning, I cling to this idea so that I don’t lose hope when, after twenty minutes trying to look five years older, I leave the house still looking freshly 22. 

It’s quite wonderful to realize that you are wanted simply because of who you are, not how smart you are, not how many diplomas you have hanging above your desk, but because of the history and culture that you represent.  What a beautiful thing.