Model School

Is it sad that I'm getting used to the french keybord? I think it might be a little... However I promised a blog entry on model school so here it is.
The first two weeks of model school I taught 4éme which is kind of like teaching 8th or 9th grade. Except there is no set age for the students they were anywhere from 11 to 19 and anything from cute and smart to big and smart ass-ish. The real problem being that some of the older students didn't really understand that a 23 year old teacher who has their license really has no interest in a 4éme student... really come on. But I guess thats very much the culture here. As for teaching 4éme itself; I learned alot and not all of it about teaching... in fact I learned more about English grammar in those 2 weeks than I ever thought I would I mean honestly future perfect progressive?? past perfect progressive??? I will have been living in Benin for 9 weeks on September 21st... I had been living in the states before that... who knew? not me thats for sure and really what is the difference between 'If you come late to class the teacher will kill you', and 'If you came late to class the teacher would kill you'...? [thats right #2 is an untrue statement while #1 is a true statement ;)]
As it is now I'm teaching 6éme... and not just because I threatened to kill the students (Mae and Pheobe did too after all... come to think of it we all got moved to 6éme) 6éme is considerably easier to teach (i.e. 'Diane is HIS sister.... or Aaron's sister.... or the sister of Aaron; I stand, you stand, he,she,it stands, we stand, you(p) stand, they stand) not hard really and the kids don't understand words like kill.... late... or well kill is really the important one for them not to understand. ;)
[If you are reading this without your morning coffee you might think that the previous wasn't funny, in which case I kindly ask that you go get some coffee and try again later.]
In any case model school hasn't been all that bad, we lesson plan and then we teach and its all good, or well mostly good, sometimes our lessons bomb big time but model school is all about mistakes and learning so its no big deal if we get one hour of blank stares silence (even though thats incredibly painful to teach) we get through and we don't make the same mistake twice.
I think thats about all for now, i have club francaise (or circle des amis) tonight which is when all of the french speakers get to sound all cool and french and all the other people get to be humiliated by their shite french (mind you its not as painful as it was 7 weeks ago, but it still isn't awesome) only made better by the presence of cookies, soda, and fried yams or gataeu and piment (yum....)
So in order to not be late for my session in how to torture a Novice high french speaker I'll sign off here.
(also, got another picture posted, maybe a third soon?)