La Petite Pamplemousse: Reality Check

A lot has been happening the past two weeks here in Lyon; the weather has turned from cold to sun to spring showers, the trees have begun to show their blooms and the grass is now a radiant lime green, and my life is finally jumping out of the winter slumber as well. Where oh where to start? =)

I guess with this amazing quote: "Any change worth fighting for will be hard to achieve; indeed if the struggle in which you are engaged is not difficult, you may confident that it is not worthwhile, for you can be assured by that measure that those from whom you need to wrest power are not threatened by your efforts. We will know that our approach is working only when it is violently opposed."- George Monbiot

In honor of all those in the Middle East who are fighting for change; stick up for yourselves, you can do it.

Last week consisted of all sorts of frustration on the work front. The kids were absolutely horrendous with their manners let alone lack of interest in anything I said (or their teachers for that matter). We all vented to one another every recess about the little rascals. I forget who said it, but it hit me so hard that I wrote it down: "C'est fini pour eux. On ne peut pas faire plus pour eux; ils s'en foudrent." (Translation: It's over for them. We can't do anything else for them; they don't give a f***.) That's exactly how I was starting to feel by the end of the week after putting hours of my time into lesson plans. Why am I even here? Luckily this week is a lot better but boy oh boy, I never realized how frustrated elementary school teachers must be. Props to all of you out there who do this for a living; here I was thinking high school would be the hardest. Surely not all schools have this much trouble, but I suppose I never thought that an eight year old would have the attitude of a seventeen year old. All I kept thinking last week was, are they going to just turn into the majority of their parents who take advantage of the nice benefits the French have for the unemployed? Are they going to drop out of lycée (high school) or even worse, college (middle school)? Are they just going to sit around and let their lives waste away? I want to help them all succeed, but goodness its hard to keep that mentality sometimes. And then, last Thursday night I opened this bundle of papers one of the 2nd grade girls gave to me during class and read this:

"Dear Kati, I would like to thank you for all of the classes you've given us up until today.-Juliana"

She's an amazing artist, non?

Furthermore, I found out that it's not just the kids, it's also the local education department that doesn't seem to care. As I've told some of you before, we've had a lot of problems with substitute teachers. If a teacher is not there, we more than likely won't have someone available to come take over the class and then 28 students or so are dispersed into other already rowdy classes. Moving on, last week one of the 5th grade teachers, Olivier, got a letter in regards to his training. It said something along the lines of this: "We regret to inform that your training has been canceled because of the number of pregnant women in your school." Please, feel free to re-read that; it's no joke.

Here are my concerns:

For one, they're acting very sexist for a country whose government won't allow Muslim women the right to wear the full veil, covering all but the eyes ( a law set into action hoping to promote Women's Rights).
Second, why should his training be canceled when there were three teachers (one of whom is pregnant) last week at a 2 week long training? His meeting is supposed to be later this year; how does that make sense?
Thirdly, why does he lose the chance when it's their problem (the department of education) to A) hire enough substitutes, long term or short term B) make sure all teachers get their required training so that the kids get the sufficient amount of education needed to be a good citizen C) THEY SHOULD CARE ABOUT THEIR DAMN SCHOOLS AND HOW THEY WORK. We have more than one classroom where the floor tiles are coming up and the past two days there hasn't been any heat.

Right. Continuing on, I'm reading like my old undergraduate English major self. The two books I highly recommend for those who are interested are Dambisa Moyo's Dead Aid: Why Aid Is Not Working and How There Is Another Way For Africa and George Monbiot's The Age of Consent: A Manifesto For A New World Order. Both have been eye opening experiences and make me sick to my stomach that I'm a part of the process, as you will find out most of us are. I always found it interesting how my favorite writers were ex-patriots, but I never thought I'd look down that path until reading these books (not saying that I favor any other country more at the moment, but I'm also disgusted at a lot of things we do).

In other news and events, I went to Annecy last Wednesday for my day off. It was absolutely spectacular with the sun and warm breeze. I wish I could have stayed there a lot longer ( and ate another amazing ice cream cone). Let's just say summer is going to do me in with the ice cream here in France.