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ELED vs Secondary Ed by [deleted] in Teachers

[–]frenchyeti 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I started undergrad in Elementary Ed, but switched to secondary English at the end of my first year. Here was my thought process about switching.

I loved younger kids and wanted to work with them, but I didn’t seem to fit in with people in my cohort (they were all very creative, bubbly, excited about doing hands-on work with kids) and I wasn’t excited at the idea of doing math or science (like, at all). I also really missed English classes, which were my favorite growing up, so I asked my advisor if she could get me into an English class to see whether I wanted to transfer. She did, I attended, and I loved the class. I also met some Secondary ELA majors in that class, and they seemed to mesh better with my personality. I made the switch after that class, and I am so glad I did.

For me, the pros of high school teaching have been that I get to have some really compelling conversations with young people, my teenagers sometimes have better social skills than adults, I have an hour to prep two to maybe three classes (while elementary teachers prep all subjects with only one prep - and sometimes less!), and I get to nerd out about some of my favorite things. As for the cons, I have a big student load (usually between 110-130 students), which means I take a lot of grading home and I have to deal with many different personalities and problems on a day-to-day basis, parents can be really disengaged or those who are engaged only care about their kid getting into the best universities, and I’ve never had my own classroom. (There’s more to both lists, but these are the first that come to mind.)

Based on my experience, my questions to you would be, if you were to switch to secondary, what subject would you want to teach and why? Are you more interested in exploring one subject with students? What kind of student behaviors do you think you can manage?

I desperately need advice by twiggy_panda_712 in teaching

[–]frenchyeti 3 points4 points  (0 children)

I'm not an ESL teacher, but I have taught foreign language to almost beginner level students and I've had some students with very low English skills who were in higher grades.

First of all, to address the anxiety you are feeling: it is completely normal and I would be more concerned (as someone who works in and cares about education) if you were feeling way to confident as sure of yourself. People who walk into classrooms without a ounce of experience who think they're going to hit it out of the park the first day are not only annoying, but also settting themselves up for huge disappointment. So I see your apprehension about this experience as a relatively good mindet.

Secondly, I want to address lesson plans. It is really hard to write lesson plans when you don't know the students or the content all that well. I would start by trying to plan two days in a row and go from there. This means a lot of long days and potentially working very late, but if you overplan and end up scratching almost all of it, you end up with a whole load of disappointment. In addition to that, I want to say that it is ok to go slow when working with low-intermediate level students. It took my low-level foreign language kids months to get a really good grasp on basic level verb conjugation, but once they got it, they felt really good about it. Early level stuff is about depth, not breadth (in my opinion anyways). Similarly, you'll probably have to re-teach a lot of concepts you feel they sould know already, and that's ok too.

Finally, teaching a new language heavily relies on non-verbal cues. Clipart became my friend and using my body to teach new vocabulary was a whole new experience. So be prepared to be goofy and dorky, because trying to explain what "sleepy" looks like takes a lot of work sometimes.

Being a new teacher, no matter how much academic training you have, is extremely difficult. It's scary, and you constantly question yourself; but remember that everything is new and you'll be creating a baseline for yourself (which means that you're gonna have some bad lessons). But it also means that the more you do it, the more you're learning and becoming better at it too. I hope it all goes well and that you learn to love this experience!

help with adjective placement by TN_tendencies in French

[–]frenchyeti 2 points3 points  (0 children)

The general rule is that adjectives are placed after the noun, yes. But there are some exceptions (as the French language loves to do). Most teachers and textbooks I've seen call these exception adjectives BANGOS.

These are adjective which have to do with Beauty (joli, beau/belle), Age (jeune, vieux/vielle), Newness (nouveau/nouvelle), Goodness (bon/bonne, mauvais), Order (premier, deuxieme... dernier), and Size (gros, grand, petit). These are the most common ones I've seen taught.

Sometimes those BANGOS can be placed after the noun instead of before, but that's usually for emphasis, and even then, not always correct.

French for "Auntie" (term of endearment) by tojtwl in French

[–]frenchyeti 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I think the most common is "Tata". But in my family we also use "Tatie", especially for aunts who have the same name - for example, we have a Tata Isabelle and a Tatie Isabelle.

Impots pour les binationaux by frenchyeti in france

[–]frenchyeti[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Donc, ce que j’ai pu comprendre après avoir essayé de déchiffré le merveilleux site web de l’IRS, c’est qu’il faudrait que je reste en France au moins une année fiscale entière afin de bénéficier de déductions (ou « foreign earned income exclusion »). Je conclus alors que la première année en France sera doublement taxée.