First Day of School



Last Thursday was the kids first day of school. New country, new language, new/no home, new friends, and then new school  – hence we were expecting a very smooth and easy rentree (note: english really needs a single noun for “back to school time” – can some of you work on that?)

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Luckily when we met with the school Directrice a week or so ago we were able to convince her and Jonah’s teacher that perhaps having him also skip a grade would not be the best thing for him. Since he was born in 2001, he should be in CM1, but according to what grade he was in last year in Canada, he should be in CE2 (don’t ask me what any of that means, or what it stands for, or what it’s equivalent to – I am just now actually remembering that our kids are in Moyenne Section, CP and CE2).

The school seems great. It is a very small school in the village, behind the church, and next door to a nunnery. There are a few English families in the school, so Matea & Jonah each have an anglo-buddy sitting next to them to help them survive. Micah’s teacher has great English, and said she will give him whatever help he seems to need. It’s a private Catholic school – which seems to be more important for the ‘private’ part than the ‘Catholic’ part. The directrice, and teachers at this school seem much more interested in helping kids do their best, and not beating them into memorizing the correct things so that they will do well on tests.
For more on that phenomena, see this article forwarded to me from my brother-in-law.

Luckily we had LOTS of help trying to figure out what the immense list of school supplies was – as things like ‘plastic-envelopey-things-for-a-binder’ were not part of my vocab previously.


Comments

2 responses to “First Day of School”

  1. […] Their class is a GS/CE1 split.  You see – of course – we have one in GS – which is Grande Section – one in CE1 which is “something something 1″ and one in CM1 which is ‘something-I-think-maternelle 1.  Class Maternelle 1 maybe? So yes – we are obviously very involved parents who are right on top of our children’s education. When I was putting the protective plastic wrapping on the work books this evening (don’t ask) I did flip through a reading book and notice that Louis XIV and a crème caramel recipe were in it.  So that should be good. It does seem strange that we are already doing this for a second time. […]

  2. […] This is now our kids 4th year of school in France. (If you want proof you can look at les rentrées:  2010, 2011 & 2012 ) […]

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