Teaching English

This week I had my first hour of "stage" at a local school. I take the #1 bus out to a building with copper sides and teach 13 and 14 year olds English. My weekend project is to figure out the names of English grammar constructions so that I know if the kids have actually mastered the past perfect or not.  I was really excited at how welcome I was at the school. When I entered the janitor was fixing the door and he greeted me and pointed me in the right direction. Mariette an English teacher and a really really nice lady took me around and introduced me to all her colleagues and Monsieur le Directeur. It seems from my tour that there are whole ( really nice) sections of the building cordoned off for the teachers. Kids hang out either in the classrooms or outdoors and the teachers get the nice couches and the coffee pots etc... It is in these areas that they gather to gossip shamelessly about their students and to complain about the drama of the day. I got to go to lunch with the teachers and after we had cut everyone else in line we whisked off into a teachers' side lunchroom and I learned about the bad kids' exploits of the morning, the profs who had eaten too much in London over the weekend and the vagaries of the French tutoyer ( the informal you). The school lunch was actually pretty tasty: better than the university fare by far. My experience in the classroom was an eyeful. My teacher was extremely harried ( it was all that cake in London perhaps?) and she knew EXACTLY how she wanted me to procede which of course was not how I wanted to do it. My first moments with her were not like touring the building with Mariette. Without evening allowing me to introduce myself she demanded that everyone ask me questions in the present perfect. They wrote them down on paper while I was left in the lurch--standing in front of the class without yet being formally awknowledged. Then I called on people and answered their questions. French classroom dynamics are very different from American ones. The teachers lash out to maintain order, but I also suspect as a kind of game both with the students and amongst themselves. As I was answearing questions about whether or not I like to listen to music, I became aware of a disturbance which I decided to ignore. The teacher however interrupted me angrily and said " excuse me, I am afraid we are going to have to stop class because Mr. So and So is being disruptive." All eyes on the back of the room, she demanded that the miscreant go to the corner. I confess I was rooting for him when he a) refused to answer her and b) refused to move. Ohhh she was mad mad mad and he just sat there arms crossed with everyone else adding to the drama as noisily as they could. Impass, or so I thought for all of a sudden she said " that's it,  we're leaving. Everyone out. If he won't leave, we will" and so we all left and everyone pushed and shoved each other in the hallway and then filed into the room next door and sat down in perfect order. The whole affair was so bizarre that I actually thought little of it and kept on talking. Things that happen in French instead of English are like this...surreal. People can ask me to do things or meet at a certain time and place and I won't do them even though I understand the words. Nothing seems quite true in French-- in my mind passing the butter in French isn't actually passing the butter. Things remain theoretical probabilities while the English they are physical realities. That and the fact that she actually asked him to go to the corner. How could that be real? I was looking around for the dunce cap because that is what happens next in storybooks. 
That was an interesting debacle, but the rest of the class period was really fun and the kids were cute and mischievious but also visably curious and shy. I sat there feeling torn because I am going to be teaching them alone and need to have respect and attention, but I was also totally with them against their teacher who was demanding respect and attention in her own way. After class she started telling everyone she met about the events of the morning. It was almost as if she had whipped up the drama for the lunch table. This kid, I was reassured in English, was very bad and I would not be teaching him as he was going to "some sort of trade school" she translated distainfully.  I watched a movie for French class at St. Olaf which criticized the limitations of the French education system. One is the fact that only the really brilliant and motivated students benefit from the teacher, and those who can't handle the classroom and its culture of obedience are systematically discounted and left behind. This is the first thing I ran into in the classroom. I am only teaching those kids who already speak a lot and have the most potential. The others wait it out until tradeschool while the teachers complain about them spitefully in the lunch room.  For an American used to hearing lip service to fair chance in schools and in fact seeing a lot of effort to help everyone suceed, the anti-democratic nature of this school was really striking. I now understand the worried cocktail conversations I've been overhearing about children and school. If you don't make the grade and make it early, you are toast.