This week I will be visiting the Lycée Notre Dame le Ménimur, an Ursuline school in Vannes. Apparently when the Deputy Principal asked the staff who would like to welcome me in their classes hands went up everywhere.
The school has several different pathways for students in terms of their final Baccalauréat (like the Senior Certificate) - things like science and economics but also health care. They have rooms that are dedicated to learning about specific areas of health care, notably caring for babies and the elderly. They learn practical things like how to lift a person from a hospital bed.
My timetable is going to be quite a mixed bag. I’m currently sitting in a political science class… pretty heavy duty. But these are final year students and they are working independently on research assignments.
Later on today, I have “moral and civic education” and then a class where they work on a personal project. Later in the week I’ll visit English, French, Culture and Health Care classes.
Lots of teachers have also offered to host me at their homes. Tonight and tomorrow night I will be hosted by the principal Monsieur Manuel Krzyzosiak. I will be referring to him as “Monsieur” because his surname is unpronounceable. I think over the 2-3 weeks that I’ll be here, I’m being hosted by four different people. It will be interesting to get an insight into the lives of different families.
The teachers seem to have similar teaching loads here - 18 hours face-to-face a week but no playground duty or assembly. (Interestingly, sport teachers must do 21 hours of contact time because it is considered that they have less marking than other teachers). I’ve just looked at the timetable of the teacher I am with at the moment and he has all of Tuesday free and only one class on Thursday. He is able to stay at home when he doesn’t have classes. Having said that, the days are longer, starting at 8:15am and finishing at 5pm, so he does have bigger days on the three other days of the week. There is a 15 minute break for morning tea and then a lunch of one hour. The students go to a canteen and sit down to eat their lunch. Teachers have a separate cantine. The meals are quite good – I had confit du canard today with a selection of salads and vegetables.
In other respects, the teachers at St Ursula’s are on a pretty good wicket compared to here. While there is a “salle de prof” (teacher’s room), it is tiny in comparison to our upstairs lunch room – perhaps a fifth of the size for 100 teachers. Next door to this room there is a little computer room for the teachers with 10 computers. There is no laptop programme for students or teachers. Teachers must book into computer rooms (like we had to in years gone by at St Ursula's College) with their classes. Teachers do not have a desk, but there is a place (inadequate) to keep their resources in the teacher’s room.
In other news, I’m still enjoying spectacular weather, I haven’t really had to break out the winter woolies for a couple of weeks now. It’s around 20° today with clear blue skies. But as it is Brittany, the Deputy Principal told me it won’t last and the rain is sure to come.
… Later
I’ve just sat in on a class of Year 11 equivalent called TPE - Travaux Personalisés Encadrés (final project). This is where students choose a topic and they have to present an assignment on it. This class runs once a week for 2 hours. It was really brutal towards the end, I could see why the students were getting restless. There is very little teacher input other than telling them they need more in depth research.
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