Lack of classes

[saphron]

Hey everybody,

Is anyone having the problem of very few classes, or classes that never show? I've tried several times to work out a schedule with the english teachers here, one who's more frustrated than I am about the disorganization of it all. They think that I can't have any classes while they do, which I understand, but the Lyéen schedule is so packed, for all the groups, that finding a free hour for me to have access to them is nearly impossible! One of the teachers joked today "tu es au chômage" - which is practically true! A lot of the classes I do have (so that's like one!) are divided into half hour splits, so it's really hard to engage them in 25 minutes...
Not that there's anything to do, since each school is different, so I was just wondering if anyone is having the same troubles. Mostly it's a pain to show up to a "scheduled" class where there's no students. But sometimes there are, so you have to show! Annoying. What's your experience?

[marychow]

I can't believe that an entire country can be so ridiculously disorganized, it blows my mind every day.

[Fionawcook]

Yesterday i turned up for a class, twiddled my thumbs for an hour, then i found out the kids were in Paris for the day. I also had another class with the same teacher 3 hours later so if i hadn't found out earlier than he wasn't going to show at the later time and i had turned up i would have been really pissed off! I am also in the same situation with the students not showing up sometimes and you get worried that YOU'RE in the wrong. I feel your pain!

[littlemysteries]

speaking of a lack of classes... i've had a total of 30 hours of class time since the contract started on Oct 1. In theory, I should have had something closer to 70 hours of class time by now. Yeah... I had one week where I had zero classes, absolutely none. I'll have 7 classes on a very good week. I brought it up to my responsable after the second week in Oct, but nothing's come of that conversation. I discussed it the the directors of my orientation and there's a possibility that things will change... ::sigh::

[Parishereicome]

I've been thinking about applying for the language assistant program because I really want to find a way to live in France for a while, and it looked really good. Anyway, in general, do you get paid a set salary no matter how many classes you have, or is it on a class-by-class basis, which is dependant upon how many classes actually show up every day? What range of pay should I expect to get. I'm hoping to get something in Paris, if possible.

[julie_in_the_88]

No, you're paid a set amount no matter what hours they actually give you.

[Parishereicome]

Thanks a lot. That's good to hear !

[Madelyn]

My classes are nowhere near as bad as yours sound, but I do quite often drag myself into school just to find myself sitting in an empty classroom for an hour - especially irritating when it's an eight a.m. class and you could have had an extra couple of hours' much-needed sleep. But my school - I don't know if this is the same for everyone - gets teachers (uh, and me) to fill in a slip of paper for each class saying which kids didn't show up, and then they send a letter home to the parents saying 'Jean wasn't in English class on Tuesday', which seems to work for most of my kids.
I also, on a similar note, find it really annoying when only a couple of kids show up. It kind of feels like a waste of my carefully-planned lesson, if two-thirds of the class are missing out on it, plus most of my lessons are conversation-based and are all about getting all the kids to express themselves, which takes way less time with two kids than with twelve, so I have to come up with three more filler activities for those two kids and feel like an idiot who hasn't planned her lessons properly, even though I know it's not my fault and if a reasonable proportion of the class had bothered to turn up my lesson would have worked perfectly. Um, rant over.

[brandon_simpson]

My classes are nowhere near as bad as yours sound, but I do quite often drag myself into school just to find myself sitting in an empty classroom for an hour - especially irritating when it's an eight a.m. class and you could have had an extra couple of hours' much-needed sleep. But my school - I don't know if this is the same for everyone - gets teachers (uh, and me) to fill in a slip of paper for each class saying which kids didn't show up, and then they send a letter home to the parents saying 'Jean wasn't in English class on Tuesday', which seems to work for most of my kids.
I also, on a similar note, find it really annoying when only a couple of kids show up. It kind of feels like a waste of my carefully-planned lesson, if two-thirds of the class are missing out on it, plus most of my lessons are conversation-based and are all about getting all the kids to express themselves, which takes way less time with two kids than with twelve, so I have to come up with three more filler activities for those two kids and feel like an idiot who hasn't planned her lessons properly, even though I know it's not my fault and if a reasonable proportion of the class had bothered to turn up my lesson would have worked perfectly. Um, rant over.

Wow. That does sound irritating. I'd be pretty annoyed if I woke up early to find that nobody showed up to class. Is this a common thing in France, kids not showing up? Or the teacher not showing up?

[AIMTeacher]

It can be. It's mainly due to a lack of organisation and/or communication. When I was an assistant, I loved in the same town as my school for the first six months then moved 60km away to live with my bf. I gave each teacher a copy of my timetable and my mobile number, telling them to let me know if class was cancelled or of they wanted to swap lessons with another teacher. I didn't want to get up early, drive 60km only to find all of my classes out on a field trip. Luckily most teachers at that school were pretty good and the only times when they did forget to tell me it turned out that it was the last lesson of the day and therefore I could just go home early.

I work at a uni now and communication sometimes is pretty awful. Like the start of first semester this year. I was given my timetable and start date, and so was the other teacher. I turned up the first day, ready to go and no students.... They hadn't been given their timetable even though I'd had mine for 2 weeks. Needless to say I was not impressed, especially since I live 75km from work! A 3 hour round trip for nothing!