The World Is Your Classroom

My second day was in a classroom, but a classroom where you teach students how to cook. The teacher taught them how to bake a cheesecake! I don't remember all the ingredients, but I do remember the ingredients and instructions for the crust. To make crust, you must have 2 cups of graham crackers, 2 tablespoon of brown sugar, one tablespoon of margarine. While preparing the crust and the cheese to bake, they are cooperating by words and gestures to point out which ingredients they needed.

In the class of grade 7, I recognized a student from the hairdressing club. I hang out and talked with her during class time.  I noticed that students speak some slang like ''gonna'' and ''whatcha doing?''.

Classroom and Internship
Being in class and to be in a language immersion situation are both good. They have advantages and disadvantages at the same time. In class, by theory, you learn a lot of new vocabularies, but you will forget to use it because the opportunity rarely comes. When you are immersing in an environment, you can become more fluent, set your space of speaking the language and make use of what you've learned in class on the field. You can also learn by reading, listening and observing from near.

During the internship, I had to repeat myself and asks questions several times to communicate clearly. When I forget the word in English, I paused in the middle of the sentence and continued with the right word or I make gestures, eyes contacts or explain the description of the word and they guessed it. If not, I will say it the word in French and they will say the word in English.

New Words
I learned two words. The first one is ''nappé'', the word is use only in cooking. You say ''nappé'' when the foam is liquid and it is not thick and sticky anymore. The second is ''bending''. I learned it when hanging out with a student of grade 7. We saw that the inflatable doll for Christmas decoration, no air on the floor. Shen then said: '' The doll is bending! So funny! '' and we laughed.

Diving In Slowly!

It is the beginning of my interniship; the first real day. When I got into the school's entrance, I was extremely nervous. ''What will she (the host) ask me to do today?'' I asked myself, and I had to ring the bell to let me in, but suddenly, the supervisor opened the door. I was really shy at first because I didn't know what to do, I smiled and said thank you. I walked to the host's office. We greeted each other and she explained me the first task, it was to put documents, a notebook and a pen in the portfolio for a meeting. She showed me around the school and how to photocopy on different paper colors. There were forty copies and portfolios. I guessed it was for the adults, because there were schedules and two versions in French and in English of questions about the school and anglophone communities.

In the afternoon, I put documents together and I participated in the after school activity which was hairdressing. In English, there are polite forms, but compared to French, it is not apparent to see. The ''vous'' in French is the polite form to address and to show respect to older persons, to teachers and to strangers. However, in English, informal and formal pronoun are ''you''. So, when English speakers are using ''you'', you feel like there is no barrier and it makes you feel really close. However, I am accustomed to use polite forms toward adults, there were different levels of comfort. When I speak to adults, I will be more careful of my choice of words and with students from secondary one whom I met in the hairdressing room, I can freely express my thoughts.

In Montreal, there are not many English high schools. It is normal that the schools are not so big compared to French schools. The classes and activities are similar, but different at the same time. As I have said in my first blog, the building is separated between a school for adults and the other side for students in high school. When my host showed me around school, she said that the rooms will be always impair numbers and the other side of the school are always pair numbers. They have activities like hairdressing, cooking classes, basketball and others that I have not seen yet. In French schools, we had cooking rooms a really long time ago, even a sewing room, but they decided to replace them for a normal classroom. Despite that, the high school where I attend my internship, they have decided to keep and teach cooking. I would really love to have cooking classes. Nowadays, we don't know how to cook.

Greetings

 At first, I didn't know how to greet the host. Is it by her first name or last name? Would it be rude if I use her first name suddenly? Between adults, except for the principal, they call by their first name. I noticed students going in and out of the reception freely and they all call the receptionists, even my host by their first names. I find it a little surprising because in French schools, we don't call teachers by their first name. Although they call by their first name, it is not rude at all, because they use ''Miss'' or ''Mister''.

Different Opinions?

Even if people disagree, they will not show hesitation to speak up their mind. They are not afraid and share their opinions straightaway. It is how close teachers and students are between them.

New Words

While I was in the hairdressing room, I kind of learned a new word: ''bleach'' which means to dye your hair.  They were learning how to bleach hair with a plastic fill with holes. We have to pierce through to bleach some hairs on the mannequin's head. They have just named her ''Jackida''. I have learned another word: ''jockey''. When you play hockey, you have to put it on to protect yourself from hurting the intimate below part of the man.