la Rentrée

The beginning of the school year is always exciting and nerve-wracking.  I usually have a week or so of weird, sometimes scary dreams, usually in which I either forget to get fully dressed for school, or that the kids have staged a coup and have taken over my classroom.  My normal "forgetting to get dressed" dreams are equally terrifying if I am in jeans instead of dress pants.  Yes, at least I would be wearing pants, but jeans are *sadly* never allowed.  I keep working on it though ;)

I did not have the regular dress-code dreams this year, because to my grand pleasure, jeans are allowed for teachers.  Really, anything goes, as long as you still look respectful and are dressed at least as nicely as the students.

The Pre-Rentrée was the Friday before classes started, when all of the teachers came together for a meeting.  We went around the room and introduced ourselves; there are only about 20 or 25 teachers and staff members total, about the size of our foreign language department in Hawaii.  However, about half of these teachers only teach at our collège part-time because they are also stationed at one or even two other schools.  Oh, and often, the "other" school is Belle Ile (aptly named "Beautiful Island") and they have to take the ferry to get there each day.  Can you imagine that commute?  So, it will be hard to get to know all of the teachers who actually teach in the school.

We also received our temporary schedules and rosters.  I had been having anxiety attacks for weeks because school was starting in three days and I only now was getting my schedule and rosters, but I played it cool ;)

The neat thing about the teachers' schedules is that you don't necessarily teach every day.  For example, I have off on Wednesdays and hope to take an art class that morning.  My other four days are pretty full all day.  An example: Mondays I have 6 hours of teaching - an "option" (which is like an elective), two classes of 6e (6th grade), two classes of 5e (7th grade) and 3e FIBRE.  FIBRE stands for Formation Intégrée aux métiers de Bouche et la Restauration.  Mondays are my hardest days. On the other days I generally teach 5 hours a day, with at least one one-hour break.  It will take some getting used to, but I am excited for school to start!