We recently spent a day shadowing a French student at a French high school in Rennes, in order to see what a school day is really like here.
I went to Lycée Descartes, in the south of Rennes and met my "host students" for the day, a boy and a girl, both in their last year of high school, called terminale and both in the section that had a focus in Economics and Social Sciences.
My day started off with an hour of math. Naturally, this is payback considering I am not taking math this year, but even I had been, I doubt I could have followed this lesson. They were studying exponential functions and the language barrier did not help matters. It took me twenty minutes to figure out that one of the symbols the teacher kept writing was a six. I had a lot of respect for the students, who somehow seemed to understand the twisting web of symbols and numbers.
Next, we had an hour free period, so after our host students gave us a tour of the school, we sat and talked for most of the period. I had so much fun getting to know them and learning that we actually had a lot in common. They spoke some English, it was better than they thought, but I was happy to hear that I had made enough progress that I could easily follow their conversation.
After our free period was over, we had an hour of philosophy, in which we discussed the utility of art. I took two pages of notes and remarked that it would be cool to have a class like this back home. It made you think and reflect a lot.
Philosophy was followed by lunch, always welcomed no matter what school or culture you are in, and then we had an hour of economic and social sciences. It didn't help that they were in the middle of a topic and we were entering halfway through, but like the math course, it would have been difficult to follow to begin with. They were discussing advanced social and economic structures. Again, I had a lot of respect for the students, even if some of them were dozing a little in the class. That doesn't change despite languages or cultures.
The terminale students were lucky that day because with that, their classes were finished. However, with another SYA student, we sat in on an English class one grade below, premiere, and spoke to them a little about what we were doing in France and our lives back in the United States.
I enjoyed my day in the French lycée and enjoyed meeting students my own age who were just as fascinated with American culture as I was with French culture. It also made me realize that as much as this school year is difficult and French is hard, it could always be a lot harder.
I went to Lycée Descartes, in the south of Rennes and met my "host students" for the day, a boy and a girl, both in their last year of high school, called terminale and both in the section that had a focus in Economics and Social Sciences.
My day started off with an hour of math. Naturally, this is payback considering I am not taking math this year, but even I had been, I doubt I could have followed this lesson. They were studying exponential functions and the language barrier did not help matters. It took me twenty minutes to figure out that one of the symbols the teacher kept writing was a six. I had a lot of respect for the students, who somehow seemed to understand the twisting web of symbols and numbers.
Next, we had an hour free period, so after our host students gave us a tour of the school, we sat and talked for most of the period. I had so much fun getting to know them and learning that we actually had a lot in common. They spoke some English, it was better than they thought, but I was happy to hear that I had made enough progress that I could easily follow their conversation.
After our free period was over, we had an hour of philosophy, in which we discussed the utility of art. I took two pages of notes and remarked that it would be cool to have a class like this back home. It made you think and reflect a lot.
Philosophy was followed by lunch, always welcomed no matter what school or culture you are in, and then we had an hour of economic and social sciences. It didn't help that they were in the middle of a topic and we were entering halfway through, but like the math course, it would have been difficult to follow to begin with. They were discussing advanced social and economic structures. Again, I had a lot of respect for the students, even if some of them were dozing a little in the class. That doesn't change despite languages or cultures.
The terminale students were lucky that day because with that, their classes were finished. However, with another SYA student, we sat in on an English class one grade below, premiere, and spoke to them a little about what we were doing in France and our lives back in the United States.
I enjoyed my day in the French lycée and enjoyed meeting students my own age who were just as fascinated with American culture as I was with French culture. It also made me realize that as much as this school year is difficult and French is hard, it could always be a lot harder.