Here's to Being Black, Bold, and Broke

Dare I say it’s been awhile…

For starters I apologize for the absence but March was certainly not short of being madness. To not bore you with the details, know that much has changed especially as I near the final four weeks of my France takeover. I’m feeling mixed about leaving this place of course, excited to see friends and family but truly the amount of growth that’s happened to me while being here is mind boggling. Great and necessary but nonetheless a proper stir up of emotions and feelings. 

Now in this post I don’t intend sharing the whiplash of my mental state that happened in March but instead talk about my time teaching, especially because next week is my final week. I want to share my cherries and pits of teaching, with funny anecdotes, because kids are nothing short of unpaid comedians. 

I’ll start with some of my cherries, and the first being how great it feels knowing my students have actually learned English because of me. I see this growth particularly with the youngest group of 3-5 year olds who yell out farm animals, know numbers 1-20 and can tell me the color of anything at the drop of a hat. 

I’ll deeply miss the rush of little hugs and the cheerful yells of “Ra-ven” everytime I enter the room. It’s actually pretty cool feeling like the little celebrity in their eyes who comes in and makes a guest appearance once a week to teach them little English words.  

Another cherry for me though it’s small is hearing little French kids start their sentences with “in fact..” I can’t help but giggle hearing how proper they sound when arguing about the rules of a game they are making up as they are talking. 

Really though it’s the excitement and joy they have when seeing me that makes me excited and energized to teach even when I am exhausted. Which might I add, I have no clue how parents do/did this whole mom and dad thing in their early 20s because as a 22 year old, I know I simply could not do it. All the respect but I will certainly wait a lot longer before someone is calling me maman.

Now a pit I will confess to is how much responsibility was on me as the assistant, to come up with what to teach the kids. As someone without any proper certifications or real experience teaching in a classroom setting, a lot of the things I taught them I had to research on my own. Some weeks I found myself really feeling like just a 22 year old girl cosplaying as a teacher. Shout out to Google and blogs on teaching that answered my questions of what do you teach a kindergartener or esl first grade things to teach. 

I must admit though teaching younger kids was a blessing because I was really teaching English at its most basic level and even with the slightly older kids like 6-10 years old, it was very much how are you, what’s the weather today, how old are you things. Which was nice and easy, and you don’t need many certifications for that fortunately.

A cherry I’ll never forget was during the month of February, Black History Month, it was really fun to integrate my culture and history with teaching. I made a presentation on Black music through the years starting with slave field songs and going all the way to the 2000s. That was a lot of fun and the kids really enjoyed that class knowing Tupac, Michael Jackson, and I’m not sure why seeing as he’s not Black but Eminem was brought up a lot that day. 

Here are some funny anecdotes. 

I laughed so hard one day watching one of the 4 year olds do the “I’m watching you” fingers to another kid on the playground after he took his ball. 

I did a presentation on St Patty’s Day in the US, PG and sans the drinking of course, and after showing how the Chicago River is turned green every year, one of the students asked if the fish were okay and if they turned green too.

And kids will seriously say anything no matter the language. Children are true yappers and if you have ears, trust me they will tell your business without even realizing it. Like how their parents are divorced or how their mom said a bad word this morning because she was tired from traveling the day before. 

In all seriousness, I’ve really connected with teaching in some ways. I’ve really improved my French listening working with the young kids and even with 300 kids I see, they have all made such a lasting impression and memory on me. I’m going to miss the hugs, the smiles, the drawings, the energy of these kids and I know that on the last day I will be an absolute wreck. 

In our final days we’re making me bye-bye cards, decorating cupcakes (which I have to pre-make 200 the day before, but it’s worth it), and I’m simply soaking in these final moments. I can say firmly that teachers deserve to make millions, I personally couldn’t do it as a career but I’ve loved every minute I’ve had with all my French babies and the mark they’ve left on my heart is going nowhere.