MY BEST LESSON

Ecoutez, s’il vous plaît! You must be joking? I was an NQT and I had the worst class in school – I was struggling to teach them English, never mind French. I weakly protested to my head but he assured me that teaching a modern foreign language was no longer optional.

Two days later, armed with only a 10-year-old B in GCSE French and a feint recollection of Madame Baker’s tried and trusted ‘ecoutez et repetez’ teaching method, I took a deep breath and began my first ever French lesson.

It was bizarre – like teaching a different class. They looked like my class, they smelt like my class, but they didn’t behave like my class. Maybe it was because, to them, it seemed like they had a different teacher. Gone was the grumpy Mr. Thompson they knew and hated and there, in his place, was the eccentric Monsieur Thompson.

Teaching French allowed me a bit more freedom. I went into character, and there was no need bring back my old irritable self during the lesson because the kids, for the most part, stayed on task… and even if I did lose the odd pupil, I just told them off in French like a mad old professeur.

A lesson that I was dreading teaching became my favourite 20 minutes of the week. An added bonus was that, by occasionally dropping back into character at unexpected moments during the week, I had a new behaviour management technique which kept the kids on their toes.