Teaching Origins: France.
Ok, I’ll admit it, I’m a teacher. Well, if you want to split hairs, I’m a tutor, meaning I mostly teach privately, one-to-one. Occasionally I get asked to persuade a class of ebullient Italian teenagers to put away their phones and explain cultural differences between Italy and England, which invariably leads to a protracted discussion on the superiority of Italian cuisine, all the while reminding them to resist canoodling and to pronounce their “h”s.
Why did I become a teacher/language instructor/tutor? To be honest, I kind of fell into it (or maybe it sucked me in). I majored in French and Media Studies at university, and that entailed a year in France either studying my course at a French university on a student (shoestring) budget, or taking a paid position as an English teacher in a French school. There must have been something innately teacher-ish embedded in my psyche, because I never really considered the first option. It could have been that I was insecure as to whether my French was up to the task of dissecting obscure aspects of the media – some of it was confusing enough in English. There was also the fact that I’d spent the previous summer at a holiday camp in Minnesota teaching American kids how to fall off a horse for $55 a fortnight, so I figured teaching in a classroom would be a doddle in comparison. Last but not least was cold hard cash: the impoverished student in me definitely fancied the idea of getting a pay check to splash around Paris as opposed to scraping by on a grant.
In the end, I think I made the right decision: I only taught 12 hours a week (on 3 days) and the money was very decent – especially considering I lived rent-free at one of my schools. Yes, it closely resembled a prison (you had to be buzzed through a security gate before undergoing a mandatory strip-search); yes, my mini-studio was no more than a small, mosquito-infested classroom with a few items of old furniture thrown in; and yes, there were two bomb threats in my first week. But still, you can’t beat a bit of free. So my not-so-hard-earned money went on beer, transportation, films and food – and roughly in that order.
It wasn’t easy work at first, teaching a room-full of French teens just a few years younger than I was, and I’m not proud to recall that when the alarm of the second bomb threat cut short a frustrating lesson that was going nowhere, my immediate reaction was a blatant sigh of relief and a fist pump. Luckily my students saw the funny side (no doubt they were as relieved as I was).
By the way, that part about the strip-search was made up. Just checking to see if you were paying attention.