Fame! I Wanna Teach Forever...

My professional goal is to be like the professors on Un, dos, tres (1990s Spanish version of Fame). They're all fantastically attractive, talented, dynamic, tough, devoted to their students and in turn beloved by them. They're all also unquestionably buenos profesores, without ever really bothering to show much of the content of their classes. Maybe that's the part that I like so much. Most of the classroom footage just involves the professor dismissing the class or if we catch a class in action, the prof is invaribly watching their students/stars of tomorrow dance.

Vague undefined course content and curriculums abound in public French universities, too. Although hopefully not in my classes.

My guilty pleasure (péché mignon, in French) is that I quite enjoy the 1990s Spanish version of Fame. I don't watch it very often but it's all over my free (and download/streaming-less) source of trash TV (M6replay) right now and I like the drama among the teachers, since I can relate to them more than to the students. I watched an episode yesterday and I found myself really sincerely thinking things like, I hope Adela ends up with Cristobel. They also have fun Spanish names like Adela and Cristobel, which helps.

In terms of actual pedagogy of the performing arts, though, I have to admit that classes on the show are not only vague on course content, they're really just excuses for professionally choreographed dance routines or inappropriate manifestations of personal conflict.

Nice Day For A... YouTube Comment

I think this probably shows me to be the biggest loser, since quoting these is way worse than writing them in the first place, but various You Tube comments that I read tonight included:

"I love this so much, I'm licking the screen right now." About the REM Out of Time album, no less.

And:

"Bill Idol gets laid every day."

(For the latter: would you ever have imagined reading that sentence, even if a computer program existed just to create random subjet, verb, object, and adverbial time phrase combinations? Plenty of unusual musings come readily to mind, but I honestly never thought about how often Billy Idol, um, rebel yells... Especially in 2011).

Most Frequently Discussed Topics, A Field Study

In my job of being an English Teacher Slave to the French ruling classes (meaning I teach Business English to French Business Professionals on their company dollar. Or Euro, as the case may be), I feel I do a lot of ethnographic fieldwork about the Busy French Executive. To share some of their joys and sorrows, here are the most frequently discussed topics by my students in my classes during free conversation breaks.

1. Vacation (ha, no surprise there, right?) :
-My Next Holiday
-My Last Holiday
-My Next Long Weekend (because no, just one day doesn't count as a real vacation).
-Where I'm Thinking of Going On Vacation but I Haven't Decided Yet.
-Where Other People I Know Went On Vacation and Had Either a Very Good or a Very Bad Time.

2. Work
-My Boss is Crazy
-My Last Boss Was Crazy
-The Last Time I Had To Yell At My Boss/Coworker Because He/She Was Being Unreasonable
-I Hate My Officemate
-I Hate Open Plan Offices
-I Hate Talking On The Phone In English
-I Have SO Much Work
-I Don't Want To Talk About Work (Although This Is Business English Training That My Company Is Paying For)
-I Don't Have Time For This Class, Can We Postpone It Although It's Supposed To Start in 2 Minutes? (You're not trying to make a living or anything, are you?!)

3. Family
-My New Baby Is Cute
-Teenagers Are Hard to Raise
-My Next Big Family Gathering (usually a baptism. These are still a huge deal, even in ex- Catholic athiest France. Although no one goes to church, we still celebrate every Catholic holiday known to man. And God. No kidding, things like Assumption and Ascension are days off when even grocery stores close).
-What My Children Are Learning In English In School Now. (Sometimes they even bring me their kids' homework and ask for help!)

4. Hobbies
I Enjoy:
-Gardening
-Home Improvement (constant kitchen and bathroom remodeling)
-Aquagym
-Sailing
-Having Barbecues
-Impossibly Cheap Luxury Trips with the CE (comittee d'entreprise).

Now That's Entertainment. Depending On How We Define Entertainment

So a French friend and I indulged in a typically French annual ritualistic passtime recently: looking up the questions that were on that year's bac (national exam to leave high school) and trying to answer them. I'm not kidding, the French love to do this and discuss these topics for fun and then look at the Official Answer (because there is, of course, one right answer). Every year, at least 1 French person has done this with me around national exam time and the questions are published in the newspaper. If I remember right, one year the philisophy exam question (this is generally regarded as the most intellectual question that requires the most cleverness to answer) was "why do people work?" This one made even more headlines than the bac philo question usually does.

The questions were (to me, anyway) typically French: abstract, general and philosophical. This gives you a little insight into how the French are taught to think in school, which is endlessly fascinating because it's really different from how Brits and Americans are taught to think. The French academic goal is analysis for analysis' sake: to demonstrate capacity for analysis by giving reasons in favor and in opposition to the question and maybe at the end suggest a possible compromise (general structure: "yes, no, maybe"). The anglophone academic goal is to persuade: choose a position, develop an argument and provide concrete examples supporting your position (for example, "yes, for these three reasons").

To be anglophone and example-driven, here are some concrete examples from this year's exam so you can see just how general, abstract and philisophical they are:

Can a theory be proven?
Does liberty threaten equality?

I think this explains a lot about why anglophone and francophone logic is so different. Put a question about that on next year's bac!

Kiss My First Conditional

Student: If I get a raise, I'll make a case to HR.

Me: Make a case means to argue in favor of something. If you get a raise, you should thank HR, not argue with them!

Student (to general student hilarity, titters and giggles): No, make this, mwah on the lips.

Me: Ah, the verb is to kiss.

Student chain sentences with the first conditional then went like this:

If I get a raise, I'll kiss HR.
If I kiss HR, I'll get fired.
If I get fired, my girlfriend in HR will help me find a new job!

At least they learned the grammar point.