Cour d’Assises or Parents Meeting?

Posted on January 25, 2013 by frenchimmersion

Yesterday I headed out in the chill wind to my first Lycée parent meeting. As ever, the meetings were behind time, and there was a quantity of parents grumbling outside the door. I had been suprised when my daughter had only handed me one meeting time. I should have been forewarned!

Inside the classroom, the tables had been turned to form a wide ‘U’ of 8 professors, intimidatingly seated side by side, whilst some three metres away on the other side of the room, a lone table and two empty chairs lay in waiting for the unwary parent. The table was in fact so far removed from the professors that I looked for reassurance from them that this was indeed my intended seat;

With an inward snort, It was all I could do to refrain from declaring,

“Guilty as charged, your honours”

…before throwing myself at their mercy.

Remembering that this was my daughter’s educational future at stake, I took my seat meekly.

My daughter has a place on the OIB (Option International Brittanique) in which History/Geography and English Literature are taught in the English Language. One of my little perks through collège has been to ‘test’ the quality of the various English teacher’s command of the English language at parent/ teacher meetings, giving them a minor attack of stress whilst at the same time giving myself a much needed break from the intense French conversations with the other professors. Imagine my delight when I was offered the choice of the entire 8 professor/parent meeting in the English language for the first time in three years.

Barely had I uttered my agreement than the French teacher not only disagreed, but point blank refused to speak English before launching a french tirade against my daughter’s mastery of the French language. The result was that all the other professors were forced to follow suit. The language reverted to French. Had I been in the individual man to man meetings which so identify the collège privé, it would not have mattered that one teacher preferred to speak in a particular language, everyone was at liberty to make a personal choice. However the ‘assises’ method guarenteed that the most forceful professor held sway and dominated the proceedings, rail-roading any other voice in the room.

“Elle manque les bases” she declared. Her declaration that I should find my daughter a private specialist French teacher was generally underlined by the opinion that if one has not mastered the intricacies of the French language then one is stupid. Was Madame Française not meant to be the French teacher? I have read about this attitude suffered by other non- maternal French speakers, but this is the first time I have been a recipient in all my time in France. The intimidating layout of the room did nothing to encourage a conversation though I had a good attempt at arguing my daughter’s corner, inwardly amused that my own mastery of the French language, so much inferior to my daughter’s was in all probability excruciating to her ears. But at the end of the day it was hierarchy verses the subordinate.

Guilty as charged for the murder of the French Language!

On orientation for Premier, the French teacher clearly believed the Bac L (literature) choice would be a ‘mauvais idée’ (bad idea), Monsieur Math speculated on a choice of the acclaimed Bac S (science) since the proportion of marks allotted to literature subjects and essay writing were reduced, but there was a squawk from Monsieur Chimie (chemistry)at the far end of the table. Like me my daughter is not keen on things exploding out of test-tubes! Bac ES (economics and sociology) it was then! Discussion over! A happy medium for a happy daughter.

It was our first experience in the state sector, and it was a far cry from the accessibility of the private one. Perhaps this situation is universal or perhaps each school is unique in it’s approach. Certainly the layout of the room gave no room for confusion about the way the meeting was going to proceed. Sadly I left the room at the end of the allotted time knowing only the feelings of the French teacher. My daughters progress in all the other subjects remains a relative mystery.

“Elle est mignon” – offered Monsieur Math as I got up to leave, (she’s cute)

“Well thank heavens for that” I thought as I left the room….

…..If all else fails at least she’s pretty!

Did none of them remember her Brevet Mention Bien?

Mention Très Bien – 17/20+

Mention Bien – 15/20+

Mention – 12/20+

Aquis – 10/20+

Baptism of Fire!

Posted on October 17, 2012 by frenchimmersion

This year my daughter moved from Collège Privée to Lycée Publique. It has not been uneventful! Last year she was barely a minute’s walk from her school, this year she has to rely on public transport.

We are very fortunate to be at the epicentre of the public transport system- less than a minute from the Central station and its underground metro, and surrounded by various stops for many bus routes. My daughter and her fellow lycéens took a week to determine which was the most efficient route to allow them the most ‘shut-eye’ in the mornings and were particularly enamoured by Thursday EPS skating lessons for which there was a direct bus leaving from outside the door to the ice-rink, and allowed them to remain in bed until 7.30am.

All had fallen into a comfortable routine until, of course, on week three the public transport system decided to go on strike! ‘La Grève’ (strike) is a public pass-time in France. The right to strike is part of the National Constitution and as little negotiation occurs between the governing bodies and the workers until decisions are made, strikes are commonplace as the workers respond to management decisions. In front of the ‘Palais de Justice’, crowds congregate and banners are waved on a regular basis. The crowds generally then disperse into their vehicles and drive around the centre of the city with a fairly alarming din of car-horns and fluttering flags.

The first Thursday of the TCAR (public transport) strike the students caught their regular bus to the Ile Lacroix for their skating only to find that 5 minutes into their journey, and still a good kilometre and a half from their destination, the driver parked up at a bus stop and disappeared off to a local cafe for a coffee. He didn’t return. Somewhat bewildered the students didn’t know whether to descend and complete the journey by foot or remain waiting for the driver. The arrival of the bus inspector determined that they would walk. The students, laden down with their bags of books, bags of sports equipment and ice-skating paraphernalia arrived at the rink only to receive a text from their sports teacher to say that ice-skating had been cancelled. They were then obliged to walk the 4km uphill back to Lycée.

The strike is of course a logistical nightmare for those that work, or have children in various different locations, and that, it goes without saying, is entirely the point. That it is now running into it’s third week, with some drivers choosing to run, and others not, and with the strike times changing on a daily basis only increases it’s inconvenience. This week, my daughter begged me to take her to school, only for us to find ourselves driving along-side her regular bus because the driver had taken it upon himself to work that particular day!

Having now accustomed ourselves to the strike, I was somewhat disconcerted to receive a phone call from my daughter mid-afternoon declaring in a somewhat breathy tone “I’m alright”.

When I got to the bottom of the matter I discovered that she was standing in the school courtyard surrounded by a school-full of students, fire engines and ambulances and that the part of the school that contained her English classroom was now in flames. Some wise-cracks had decided to set off some explosives in the boy’s toilets.

“Well”, I said, when words returned to me…

“This really is a baptism of fire”

Wrapping up the summer!

Posted on August 28, 2012 by frenchimmersion

The sky is still a clear blue with little puffy clouds scudding across it; The stripey awning over the kitchen window is protecting the kitchen from overheating. Half of me can’t believe we are at the dawn of a new school year, but the fact that it’s dark by 9pm is unequivocal. Looking at the piles upon piles of ‘fournitures’ (stationary for the uninitiated) on the floor, and for any non french resident who hasn’t gone through the rentrée process of buying up an entire supermarketful of exercise books (cahiers), coupie double and copie simple (filepaper), lutins (file of plastic sleeves) and classeurs (files), there is no dispute; The new term is nearly upon us.

It’s true: I bought the shop!

Until this year I had spent a considerable amount of time worrying about the madness of carting four non francophone children across the channel and expecting them to ‘just get on with it’. But this year I really feel I can sit back and enjoy the peace that will reign in this house when they all depart on monday morning bags in hand. And ‘Yes’ we have had to endure the ‘my bag’s no longer cool’ issue too!

All this anticipated peace of mind is grace to my daughter, now 15, who arrived 3 years ago without a word of French, and who has gone from strength to strength! Let me tell you a secret, to all those considering such a move –

It can be done!

I’ll take you back to May – the beginning of the summer, when stress and anxiety were our middle names. Having arrived at school drop-off where my daughter was sitting her final Brevet Blanc with ‘Tiers Temps’ (extra time), I was precipitated into the office of the Directrice of our Collège to be told that the Academie Française had changed their mind. There was to be no more ‘Tiers Temps’. Not being fluent in French for a French exam was not considered a handicap! Having sat every exam to date with an extra hour, my daughter was to sit ‘the real thing’ in the standard allotted time after all. You can imagine the ensuing panic!

For the following weeks there was wistful hoping on her part that she might pass; a great deal of pushy mother syndrome (24 hours of revision a day is not enough); a little adolescent rebellion and a few ‘being caught out on Facebook’ issues; And when the exam days dawned we had tripled checked her ID was in her bag and yes, we arrived for the exam a good hour early!

Need I have worried? Well actually ‘No’. Two weeks after the final exam, and out of a possible list of scores – ‘Aquis’, ‘Mention’, ‘Mention Bien’ and ‘Mention Très Bien’, she scooped a ‘Mention Bien’, and received her acceptance to the OIB at her chosen Lycée.

Unlike those poor UK students who have to sit through their entire summer holidays wondering how they did and if they were ‘In’ to their higher education, we set off on holiday, happy, reassured and relaxed…

Which is a bit how we are starting out our new school year.

But this year it’s more than that… after a steep uphill struggle, now we feel that we’ve carved a niche, we’ve concreted our first foundation and we are starting to build…

The things you wish you knew about Troisième – Applying for Options International, Européen and Anglophone.

Posted on June 25, 2012 by frenchimmersion

Troisième is a year of choices, options and decisions. Today, the culmination of all these decisions took a unforseen twist.

For those that remember my last post on the subject of Troisième, they may remember that there are three basic choices for the Baccaleaureat General once one has decided whether to follow the Science, Literature or Ecomomic route. Broadly these are the OIB (Option International Baccalaureat in which the student will gain not only the bac in the leaning of their choice, but also A levels), the Option Anglophone or Européen (which follows essentially the same course with one subject studied in the English language and receives a ‘Mention Européen’ but no A levels) and the standard Baccalaureat.

In April we filled in our application form for consideration for the OIB. There are only two Lycées in Normandy which provide this option, Lycée Gustave Flaubert at Rouen, and Lycée Privée St Joseph at Le Havre. Each lycée has only 35 places and it is considered an elite course. The application was detailed and required a ‘Lettre de Motivation’ from each potential student – in English for the French applicants, and in French for the English applicants. Included with the application were the last three years of school reports and a personal report and declaration from the Directeur/ Directrice of the current Collège, as well as from the Professor Principal for the student’s class and also from the English teacher. There was also a score card (1-10) assessing the student’s ability in reading, writing, oral and comprehension.

A fortnight after the application was submitted, all the applicants were called to sit an entrance exam. This consisted of a written paper and an oral exam, thankfully for us in English, and which I imagine was the most daunting part of the process where the French students were concerned.

Before one starts to imagine that the oral was a ‘piece of cake’ for the English students, factor in conversing in English with a French examiner with a heavy French accent, and aged 15 answering these type of questions –

“If the price of oil rises in the Middle east, what will happen to comodities in Europe and why?”

The other terrifiying aspect of the whole process was the parental ability to misread the timetable and documentation and to forget to arrive at the exam hall with the student’s passport. No passport – no entry! Having lived on the edge of my nerves desperately trying to meet all the deadlines, I was hugely thankful when the process was over and the wait for results could begin.

However, there was never going to be just one option and just one application. With an initial starting point of 500 interested applicants, there needed to be a ‘fall back’ option.

In January we had interviews at two Lycées privées to register for the Options Anglophone and Européen. At both Lycées we were welcomed with open arms. Our daughter was a prime candidate for their Anglophone and Européen courses, they said. In front of us they read the three years worth of ‘Bulletins’ (school reports), ticked all the appropriate boxes on the Inscription forms, handed us the registration form to be completed at home and gave us a deadline for its return along with it’s obligatory ‘reservation of place’ cheque for 150€. It was in the bag. If the OIB didn’t work out we had an excellent ‘fall-back’…

or so we thought!

Suddenly in early June, a letter arrived in my letter box from one of the Lycées requesting that we filled in an application for the ‘Option Anglophone’. Hadn’t we done that already, I mused to myself -but knowing that France likes its paperwork, I sent the form into Collège to be duly signed and completed by the Directrice, the Prof principal and the English teacher. My daughter sat down to write another ‘Lettre de Motivation’ and we rushed it to the Lycée with a day to spare before the deadline.

On the 22 June I received an identical letter from the other Lycée Privée requesting the exact same procedure for the Option Européen. The deadline was the 21 June. You see my problem! It had been lost in the post. It was friday evening and would have to wait for monday before I could ring the Lycée to explain what had happened, and the French are strict on their deadlines.

On monday I returned from work to find a letter in my mailbox for the Option Anglophone. My Anglophone daughter had been refused a place for the Option Anglophone. It dawned on me that I had paid 150€ in the belief that I was reserving a place for an Option which in fact was not a certainty, and had only been offered the general bac instead, but not only that, thanks to the postal situation I had also paid 150€ reservation fee for the Européen option for which I had missed the deadline for application. And would she have got onto the option if she had applied in time anyway?

The good news is that we have heard verbally that our daughter is accepted for the OIB at Gustave Flaubert which is where she really wants to go. So all in all it’s a financial loss we had been prepared to take anyway, even if right at this moment we feel a little misled.

But I won’t rest easy until the confirmation letter is in my hand.

Troisième – Brevet Blanc

et Tiers Temps

Troisième –

Choosing Lycées

Troisième –

La Stage d’Observation

Troisième – and the Stage d’Observation.

Posted on March 14, 2012 by frenchimmersion

We didn’t have an easy run up to the Stage d’Observation. It’s a compulsory part of the school education programme, and as such is awarded a grade by the school which goes towards the Brevet.

In December my daughter came home from collège clutching a wodge of important looking papers. The paperwork was fairly complex and a little daunting, but my daughter had a good idea of which employment sector she wanted to be in, and having already been published in Liberty Dimanche, Rouen’s sunday paper, I had a contact; and contacts are everything. “What” I thought “could possibly go wrong”.

Since my daughter wanted to be a journalist her first port of call was Paris Normandie, the main ‘Journal’ of the region. She suffered an instant knock-back and was very disappointed. We then approached our ‘contact’ at Liberty Dimanche, Paris Normandie’s sunday paper, but were disappointed to discover that the newspaper ‘giant’ of our region did not offer stage’s at all. Having graduated in a major recession back in 1992, and having written literally hundreds of applications to find my first job, I realised that a very proactive approach was called for.

We missed out on one major journalistic stage oportunity simply because we hadn’t cottoned onto the fact that it was going to be more difficult than we had anticipated, and because we hadn’t known that my daughter’s dream ‘stage’ at Paris Normandie didn’t exist. Darnetal, a sector of Rouen has it’s own local paper, but by the time we actually contacted them, all 10 places had been taken.

By the time we had firmly grasped the scope of our difficulty, we were bogged down in revision for the Brevet Blanc, and I took it upon myself to make initial enquiries by email to all papers, local magazines and publishers. I’m not sure that my intervention helped the situation. My written french grammar is a little ropey, and I probably wasn’t best qualified to enquire after stage possibilites in journalism!

After our 15th letter despondency had begun to set in, email after email received a negative response, and we were definitely running out of options. Classmate after classmate turned up over the remaining weeks successfully organised, some having only applied to one place. Stages in law, in boulangerie, in radiology, in childcare; the variety was endless.

With only a fortnight to go, the fabulous staff at Collège St Do took pity. We had by now reached our Twentieth application. They corrected it with a fine tooth comb and took personal responsibility to deliver it to the only journal from whom we were still awaiting a reply – The Rouen Magazine at the Mairie of Rouen. The Mairie for Rouen is a tough cookie. They rarely take stagières, and in the meantime my daughter had decided to alter course and consider a marketing stage; Fererro Rocher was at the top of her list!

The very next day, just when I was least expecting it, I received a call. I’m not good with phone calls, my speaking ability reduces by at least 50% along with my ability to understand. A delightful woman breezed down the phone that they would be delighted to accept my daughter for a stage. Would she please get in contact and rapidly rattled of her name and number. The poor woman must have thought she’d reached an imbecile as I struggled through the mine field of ‘quatre vingt seize’s and soixant onze’s, then, proceeding onto her name which of course just had to have both ‘I’s and ‘E’s, which sound like ‘E’s and ‘Ur’s. Having got to the end I was praying that I had correctly noted the phone number and puzzling that her name, once written, REALLY didn’t look like a proper name at all, and before I knew it she had gone – skiddadled – hopped it.

I had a momentary celebration that my daughter had a stage, which quickly turned to despair. I had completely failed to get a company name. Was it Ferrero, was it the Mairie? And what on earth was my daughter going to say when she rang up to organise the final details – “Thank you for my Stage – but who are you?”

I had the great idea of going to the school secretary, I imagined that she would have the panache to ring the number, if indeed I had accurately noted it down, and extract the company name without raising suspicion. She tried in vain, reaching an answer phone none the wiser. Finally, turning to me she declared, “Well Madame Axton, C’est merveilleuse that A has at last got a stage, just a shame we don’t know who it’s with” exactly at the moment that the school headmistress entered the room. ‘Que les anglaises’ (only the English) mumbled the Head, …..and myself, before I turned a charming shade of lobster.

It was my daughter, after several moments of justifiably berating me for my inadequacy, who had the brainwave of ringing the number and leaving a message for the woman to email me with the details. Lo and behold on the Monday morning up popped a message from the Rouen Mag at the Rouen Mairie in my inbox. My daughter had scooped the jackpot!

Two weeks later she walked into the ‘Rouen Mag’ offices to spend four days learning about journalism. Firstly she was taken to the printworks to see the latest publication come off the press, and by the end of the week she had had three articles published on their online site. What made me truly proud is that, unlike her mother, the final of the three articles was passed without a single grammatical correction necessary!

I think they should have got her to do the editorial of the front cover, don’t you – It looks like her mother did it!