Further faux

When I am not busy misconjugating French verbs in class, I find plenty of other ways to make grave faux pas. In addition to the Gabriel/Gabrielle fiasco, I accidentally outed a child with a learning disability and threw away a present another student made for me in front of her. 

Last week, we were playing Simon Says with classroom objects. I noticed that one child was sitting with the teacher matching pictures with names. I thought he was helping the teacher prepare the next activity. So we finished Simon Says and I asked him if he and the teacher were ready to join the class for the next activity, trying to usher in the teacher's project. In my French, this obviously sounded very awkward. The kid didn't answer. The class was silent. Then the teacher looked at me with confusion and said, loudly, that this child did his own work and that he would just continue to work by himself. I realized with horror that he may have had special learning circumstances and I had just blatantly called attention to that in front of the entire class. After unsuccessfully scrambling to make something up and cover my big mouth, I apologized profusely to the teacher. He was unfazed. In France, all students learn in the same classroom - teachers are very open about some students learning differently than others. Some students are taken out for short periods of time, but as one of my other teachers explained to me, the new French school philosophy is that students of a particular grade should all learn in the same classroom, regardless of their learning needs. Many of my classes have two different grades in them. This makes it slightly difficult to teach, but I also appreciate how it encourages the younger children to learn, reinforces concepts for the older children, and allows different levels of the same grade to remain in the same class. The same child that struggles with English, for example, might be a math whiz, and being in challenging classes seems to encourage their learning. 

On one of my first days in the classroom with the teacher I am closest to, I was presented with a very carefully colored American flag. I showed it to the class, thinking the teacher had asked them to color it for me. I then discarded it somewhere. Probably the trash. Fast forward a week. Kat told me that the secretary at her school had a daughter in my class who had made Kat a very carefully done British flag. Her mom told Kat that she had spent hours making her the flag. Not putting two and two together, I asked the girl on Friday if she would make me a pretty flag like Kat’s. She looked like she was going to burst into tears and woefully told me that she had made me a flag last week and I had thrown it in the trash. There goes teacher of the year award. I begged her to make me another flag…so hopefully she doesn’t totally hate me.