Ce virus minuscule se propage sur les ailes de notre liberté Enferme-le en nous enfermant Sans ailes nous tous tomberont Cette piqure magique: notre seule arme contre l'envahissement de notre habitat natal Sorciers, sorcières, donnez-la-nous, Nous, les becs ouverts dans le nid de notre folie Et puis, ayant été piqués, nos corps tremblants se lèveront Nos plumes repousseront Nous nous percherons vacillant au bord de l'inconnu
Substitute teaching in a variety of locations has a way of opening one’s eyes to realities we may overlook when we spend much of our professional life in the same building. Sometimes a trip across town is a greater leap than a voyage abroad. This reflection takes a hard look at issues of equality in Canadian schools.
I recently walked into a Grade 3 French immersion classroom in a rural community. The students greeted me with rosy cheeks and cheery smiles as they walked in the doors and peeled off their abundant snowsuits. They immediately went about the serious business of being obedient schoolchildren. They hung on my every word (partly because I spent a good part of the morning impersonating Red Riding Hood in French, and partly because it was their natural habit of mind).
The most challenging students in the room were two boys who were obsessed with measuring things and doing puzzles. I had to confiscate their tape measure at one point because they were estimating and checking when they were supposed to be writing stories. I commented that one of the mathematicians may want to consider being an engineer one day (at this point he was using the springing function of the tape measure to carefully propel objects across his desk). “No,” he said. “I want to be a farmer. My dad wants to take over my grandpa’s farm, and then I’m going to be a farmer, too. I really want to be a farmer.”
The picture of wholesomeness.
The next day I walked into a Grade 3 classroom in an English school in an urban neighbourhood on the literal “wrong side of the tracks.” A little girl in a pink coat was curled up in fetal position on the carpet, and remained there, unmoving, until I left. “Give me back my g**d**m slime!” exclaimed another girl, flopped on a bean bag, grinning feverishly. Little boys ran around in their stocking feet, sugaring themselves with Christmas treats at 9am.
“Is there anything I should know?” I asked the teacher.
Continue readingDo you like the idea of going to remote places? If not, you will find this piece quite funny. You will roll your eyes a lot, and wonder why I’m like this. You will also spend the next few minutes thanking the merciful heavens that you did not join me on this vacation.
If, however, you do like the idea of going to remote places, this post might be just what you have been waiting for. I, on your behalf, will visit a remote place, and tell you all about it. And then you will laugh, roll your eyes, and think twice about your own vacation preferences. Continue reading
Three years ago I had a disastrous encounter with a maestro who shall not be named. It would not be a stretch to say that there were elements of trauma to that evening. Before you go any further, you should probably read the amusing, but heart-wrenching account of my first audition experience in Casablanca.
Now, three years later, I did the unthinkable thing, and repeated the experience. Same never-ending round-about. Same obscure church entrance. Same ghastly maestro. Same everything. But not the same me. Continue reading
Natasha here, reporting in on the aftermath of the infamous DELF B2.
I was worried. Let’s find some better descriptors, now that I’m functioning in my mother tongue. Words like chagrined, nausea-ridden, paralyzed. I dreaded that exam. My entire body was stiff with tension for eight solid weeks, from the moment I walked into my first class to the day after the inquisition. My long-awaited summer in France turned out to be, in many ways, a summer of travail and trepidation.
And then, just like that, I passed. Not just by the skin of my teeth. Not just with a satisfactory margin of breathing room. Not quite with the flying colours I secretly dreamed of. But almost. Almost.
At one point, I re-coined the DELF acronym (“Diplome d’Etudes en Langue Française”) as “Dumb, Enigmatic Lists of Faults.” I still kind of think that. The test-makers are simply méchants, in my well-studied opinion. They rub their hands in delight as they formulate one trick question after another, in a sinister attempt to separate the dumb from the dumber. I know. I met one of them. And she was mean.
But do you know what it was that bumped my score down two points from the 80% I’d hoped for? Continue reading
A few weeks ago, I posted my very first French blog. I am re-posting it today, with two critical changes:
(with many thanks to my good friend in Vichy, for teaching me how to say “hockey” in French, and for letting me teach her a few Canadianisms as well)
For those of you who didn’t read the original story and have no idea what I’m talking about, here’s where it all began…
This summer I got to do a little creative writing in my French class! We were asked to write a funny story that exaggerates the stereotypes that foreigners have of our home countries. My Spanish, Mexican, Brazilian, Korean, American, and Basque classmates shared their stories, and then I offered up this little piece of Canadiana, inspired in part by our beloved Bob and Doug McKenzie.
Warning: This is my very first blog-worthy French composition. There might be errors. You might be offended. Be gentle with me.
Venez! Venez! Venez au Canada! On vous accueille, comme on accueille tout le monde, tout le temps! Venez!
Dès que vous arriverez, on vous mènera à votre igloo, où vous dormirez en tout confort, en portant votre anorak et votre toque!
Le lendemain matin, vous prendrez votre déjeuner (au Canada, nos repas sont tous mélangées): un bonne portion de poutine avec une bonne portion de bière (Molson Canadian, bien sûr). On vous donnera vos patins pour votre premier match de hockey.
Something has happened to my French, and it’s because I’ve made a friend.
She is a retired doctor. She’s travelled the world. She has a tiny little dog called Charmeur. And she loves words. Words thrill her, as they do me. I read her paragraphs from books that stir me, and she recites poetry with all the animation of a master story-teller, and we delight together in this magical, magical space called language.
It’s a space that we inhabit together while seated at the Grand Casino Cafe, so named for its proximity to what used to be a casino, but is now something else. It’s a space that we inhabit together over tea, coffee, kir, water, chocolate. It’s a space we inhabit through the careful completion of grammar exercises, the meticulous correction of essays, and the endless parroting of phonetics. It’s a space we inhabit from 12:15 – 1:45 every day, and it is changing me. Continue reading
Have you been wondering how I’ve been faring since I bade farewell to les vaches?
I am slowly adjusting to life on the French Riviera.
Slowly.
My drive here was uneventful, except for that time my GPS became my enemy and led me in circles for two hours in downtown Nice during the height of tourist season. Navigation systems don’t do well with pedestrian-only streets. That’s all I’ll say about that.
And now I am perched on a hill overlooking the uppity town of Villefranche-sur-mer, with its uppity yachts, BMWs, and fake hedges. Why anyone would need a fake hedge in this lotus land is beyond me, but there it is. Why water a real hedge when you can buy a fake one?
No, to be honest, I’m missing the friendly, down-to-earth charm of my village in the Alps. Well, okay, the cows were not so friendly. But there was an endearing honesty to that place, a sense that life had substance, and that everything else was somehow false.
Not so with the French Riviera. Everything here feels half-empty, like the soul of the place just drained out into the Mediterranean when the people all arrived. I’m sure at one time it was quaint and delightful and historically significant; but right now, it feels to me like a toy neighbourhood, constructed out of blocks and toothpicks and dotted with plastic accessories. Doll houses, all, papered in Euros…
But I, too, am a falsehood, here on the French Riviera.
I dearly wish that I had had the wherewithal to prendre un photo of the cows that ran me down, but alas, stampedes do not lend themselves to portraiture.
Fortunately, I have words.
Do you remember the days before the touchless car-wash? Do you remember its predecessor? The one with the big, sudsy brushes that advance on you and engulf you, while you sit helplessly in the car and wait for it all to be over?
Wait, let’s back up a bit. And by “back up,” I mean, reculer, in case you didn’t know. But of course you did.
My day started with to-die-for jam (peaches and spice) and conversation around the breakfast table at a farm in the Southern French Alps. I learned that the French drink tea out of rather big bowls, and that parapente is the French word for paragliding. More on that later.
Scene Two: I am in my rental car, fiddling with the GPS, and then setting off ever-so-slowly down the winding mountain road to my first activity for the day. I am leaving early, so I have plenty of time to get lost or have some other disaster befall me, both of which, of course, happened.
I have been stressing out about French. Have you noticed? Likely not, because you think I’m still obsessing about the Royal Wedding. Forget that. I’m over it.
No, French is my ongoing obsession, more than ever now, as the stakes creep higher in equal proportion to my rising self-doubt.
What if I can’t do it? What if, no matter how much I study and how long I persist, I never pass beyond the blundering idiot phase of language learning? Oh, sure, I’m less of a blundering idiot than I was three years ago, when I couldn’t say, “I want to walk up the hill.” But the subjunctive has its own mode of blunder induction (did you catch that, French-speakers? Its own mode?). The more I learn, the more I blunder.
Now, these rising stakes of which I speak so melodramatically. What are they? Well, you know. Employment. That about sums it up. You see, I miss Canada. Continue reading
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