The Berliet School: Quite a tightly run ship!

This morning I went to my last new French school, the Berliet, of Cité Berliet. One of the teachers lives near me in Saint-Priest, so he picked me up outside of the Boulangerie that I go to (just across the street from my apartment). On our way there he gave me the history behind this little area of town (which is located much further away from the Saint-Priest village center). Marius Berliet was the founder of the Berliet automobile company (back in the early 1900's?)... which is somehow now tied to Renault, a major car manufacturer in France today. In any event, in this part of Saint-Priest, there are several car factories (Renault being the largest) and 75ish years ago Mr. Marius Berliet decided to build a neighborhood around these factories for the factory employees to live in... which created Cité Berliet. I'm not quite sure, but I don't think Berliet has its own town hall or anything because it is still technically Saint-Priest, but I could be wrong.

Anyway, the school building itself is huge, but in population is tiny. They only have 5 classes (2 maternelle or pre-k, one combined CP/CE1, one combined CE1/CE2, and one combined CM1/CM2). Apparently the area has lost a lot of its inhabitants, but will soon begin growing again with the rise of a few new apartment complexes. The school population was noticeably different than the other 2 schools. Les Marendiers seems to be the most affluent, whereas the Signoret school seems to have a little more mixture in economic status, and Berliet seems to be on the other economic status end.

But, this school is like a well-oiled machine. La Directrice, Murielle, stands at the entrance gates and says Bonjour to every mother, father, grandparent, and child who walks through. She said she does this to reinforce the value of politesse (politeness, respectfulness, etc.). Before the students arrived, she walked me around to every classroom to introduce me to each teacher, and on our way through the halls she even stopped to introduce me to the cleaning women.

To begin the morning, I was in her room (often, with such small elementary schools, the Principal is also a teacher). She has her students write the date and do the attendance in English everyday. It's an interesting class because it is a mixture of Cm1-Cm2, so 9-11 year olds all together. Her CM2 students know a great deal of English. They have been the only class to ask me several questions in English (Where do you live? What's our favorite color? What's your favorite subject? etc.). Her CM1 students aren't yet to that level, but they sat and listened, and then the teacher gave them context clues to help them understand. We finished off the hour (yes, at this school I'm in each of the 3 elementary classes for a full hour) with a question and answer segment in French so that the CM1's could participate.

Then, this class switched with Hossein's class (the guy who gave me a ride this morning) and the CE1/CE2 combined class came over for their English lesson. In this class, there are 2 students with learning disabilities, so they have an aid. I asked if there are ever any other types of special education classes, especially for those students with greater needs, and the teachers didn't really understand what I was getting at... which is probably the most telling answer. I've done a little of my own research, and for the most part, children with any other type of disability besides ADD/ADHD/learning disabilities are dealt with at special schools instead of at their base school or one near home.

Anyway, this class had just read the Very Hungry Caterpillar, by Eric Carl. The teacher quizzed them on some of the vocabulary from the book (like leaf, sausage, cupcake, etc). Then, she split the class into 3 groups and each adult took a group to play a memory game with pictures and vocabulary. The kids were very funny trying to pronounce the words in English, but some (especially the CE1's) are still very new to the language. We got through about half the game and the bell sounded for the mid-morning pause (or recess). (Funny side story- The teacher was trying to explain how to pronounce "pear" by comparing it to "leaf," which made it end up sounding like "pier," hehe, at least it's close!)

After the break (which was spent out on the playground watching over the kids and not in the break room making tea like at the other schools), I went over to the CP/CE1 combined class. This group is made up of 6-7 year olds, and I was so impressed with how much English they knew in comparison to some of the other CP/CE1 classes. They asked me, "What's your name?" and they said "Good morning." The teacher asked them how to say hello in the afternoon, evening, and at bed time (Good afternoon, Good evening, and Good night). Then, we played a game where I asked them to show me something yellow (and then with all the colors), and they all had their little markers out to show me their colors! The teacher even apologized that the greetings and colors were all they knew... and I wanted to say- yo, those others schools are still on "Good morning" with their older kids!

Then, Mr. Hossein drove me home during the lunch break (so looks like it's just going to be Mondays that I'm fed at the cantine). The whole experience was so incredibly different than the others, but I really enjoyed myself. The teachers were very professional, the kids were well-behaved, they raised their little fingers when they wanted to speak (they do that instead of raising their hands, it's too cute). And the directrice asked me if I could bring my books the next time so we could start planning. I mentioned that Thanksgiving always falls on a Thursday, so maybe we could do something for that, and she was like,"Oh yes, isn't it always the 4th Thursday of November...." I was like, sheesh! This lady's on top of it!

I don't have any cool pictures today, but I'm not planning on doing much exploring this afternoon. I'm to await the phone line installation guy/gal between 15h-17h (3-5pm). So until then, I thought I'd write a quick update while my free wifi works (it didn't work at all late last night or this morning, so frustrating!).