Thursday, June 6, 2019

Ready or Nantes, Here I Come!

TL;DR: I'm going to live in France again!

When I was a senior in high school, I had a life plan. I was going to major in elementary education and French, and I would teach either at a French immersion school in Minnesota, or teach English at an elementary school in France. I was certain I had my whole life figured out.

Needless to say, a lot has changed since then. I won't bore you with the details, but I'll catch you up a bit. I graduated from the University of St Thomas in December with degrees in political science and French. The plan is to go to law and/or grad school at some point. But as you probably know, I like detours.

While I was at St. Thomas, I learned about a program called TAPIF (a very fancy acronym for the not-so-fancy title of "Teaching Assistant Program in France"). Each year around 1200 - 1600 (I couldn't actually find specifics - except that this year it's 1520 and it used to be less) Americans teach English in schools across France (and its overseas territories) from October 1st to April 30th. About 3000 young people from other countries are also part of the program, teaching their native languages to French students, too. I think it's a brilliant idea, and I'm not sure why the closest U.S. equivalent is only in higher education.

In early April I got the e-mail I had been hoping for - I was accepted! From October 2019 - April 2020 I'll be teaching English at an elementary school in the Nantes school district. My life and plans may have changed a whole lot in the past few years, but I still get a chance to fulfill my dream of teaching in France. Basically I could be anywhere in the Nantes region, and I won't know any more details until later this summer. In case you're curious about the general region I'll be in, I found this map of France's school districts. Nantes (pronounced like naant - no s - here's a vid: pronunciation) is the purplish one in the northwest.


That's all I know for now, but I'll post an update when I have more info!

Allie 

No comments:

Post a Comment