11 October 2013
When we (the assistants) got off the train after last weekend in Paris (the weekend of Nuit Blanche) we made bets of how many people would we see between the train station and the high school where we live. Ranging from zero to 5 people, my guess was 2. Well I was wrong by 1 person. We saw three. At 10pm, between the train station and our housing were three people, 2 in a car, 1 walking. Chalons is definitely a bustling metropolis.
This week marked the first week of “work” and it was not quite as smooth as it could have been. Over the past 10 days I think my schedule and room assignments have changed at least (no joke here) twenty times. In the past the English assistant was given his or her own classroom, apparently room 11, which has basically been condemned by the school. I saw the room, and it’s huge, but it has a very strong smell and apparently has dampness issues and has been since taken out of constant use. It is now used as a luggage room for the students to place their bags when they are packed and ready to go home for the weekend (this high school has more than one hundred boarding students who go home for the weekend).
I got the first version of my schedule last week and received my room assignments (the first draft) via email on Friday. By Monday my schedule had already changed and by that afternoon I figured out that some of classes were still lacking rooms. So back to drawing board, which I did, and again on Tuesday when I found out that some of newly assigned rooms already had classes taking place in them, and again on Thursday when I found out that some of my rooms had NOTHING in the way of technology. Now this sounds like only three trips, but on some days I went back three or four times a day. Some of the rooms had no computer, no projector, nothing. Now what the can you do without technology in 2013? It sure makes teaching English difficult! What if you want to use a song, or a movie clip, or youtube, or show a picture. Nope. Impossible. What freaks me out even more than the fact that I was assigned rooms that were JUST rooms of desks is the fact that these sort of rooms still exist in the French system. Furthermore the teachers don’t have their own computers, many of them don’t have their own classes, and the school isn’t equipped with wifi. Imagine that! A school in 2013, in a first world country, that has no wifi. I did, however, after days of asking around, get ethernet on my laptop, which worked for exactly 87 minutes, the entire 87 minutes before I needed to use it in one of my classes. Then it decided to die and I had no internet for my class. Oh well, hopefully it will work next time!
The more I learn about the French system, the more I question it. Some things I understand and accept for being very French. For example, the doors of the classrooms are kept closed and locked at all times. This is strange, I think, but the French love locking things so I accept it. When it’s time for class the teacher either opens his or her door or shows up after having been chatting it up in the Salle des Profs (teacher’s room). The teacher enters the classroom and then invites the students to enter the room. They don’t come in on their own. The teacher then goes to the front of the room and arranges his or her affairs while the students do the same at their desks. Did you hear me say that the students sit down? They don’t. Well not until the teacher tells them that they can sit down. The first time I saw that all I could think of was being in church when the minister or priest says, “You may be seated.” Then worst of all, in English classes at least, the teacher says “Good morning, class,” and the students respond in that awful sing-songy voice that I despise with a passion, “Good morning, sir - or miss.” Vommmmm. I hate being called sir. Absolutely hate it. I will qualify this by saying that I don’t mind being called monsieur when I go into a store as in a “Bonjour, monsieur,” but I hate when somebody calls me sir in English. It makes me feel old!
I’ve also started learning a bit about the teacher student interaction or relationship or, as I’ve noted, the lack thereof. There is no relationship between teacher and student. The teachers don’t really know the students and the students certainly don’t find themselves in a position to know the teacher. The students always talk to the teachers in the vous form (the more formal you) and the same goes when the teachers talk to the students.In general my classes went okay. Some of the students were really enthusiastic and fun and others were not as far along with their studies. With one I just sat down at a cluster of desks and we chatted about American things: food, rights, students, lifestyles, schools, food, stereotypes. It was great. And they genuinely seemed interested. I loved hearing their views of America and what it was to be American. Some of these groups will make for some interesting classes because we’re going to address some really loaded topics. One thing I am quickly realizing is that they aren’t very good at questions for which there is no one correct answer so I’m going to be sure they get plenty of these. I think they should have opinions and from what I can tell they don’t have much education in forming their own opinions.
With one group we got onto the topic of American vs. French schools and how they were different or the same, what the differences were, and whether the students thought one was a better system over the other. Obviously some said the French system was better and others said the American system was better. The problem was, however, that they couldn’t justify their feelings. So I made them break up into two groups depending on their beliefs and then come up with reasons to justify their opinions. Some of them just couldn’t do it; it was really telling. Does this mean the American system is better? I don’t know. But we certainly knew how to justify our opinions and make a point.
In general the classes were okay; of course there were only 12 hours of them, leaving me plenty of time to do other things. Oh wait, I live in Chalons, what else is there to do?! Well as I’ve mentioned before there are a few churches in Chalons as well as a cathedral and three (yeah, three) museums. The Musée des beaux arts, the Musée Garinet and the Musée du cloître de Notre-Dame-en-Vaux. Well since I have no work on Wednesdays and since I was in a fairly miserable mood (it’s hard to be excited in Chalons) I decided I would have a cultural day. Early in the day I decided that I would go into town, perhaps investigate the offerings of the local market and see what things I couldn’t live without. While the market was fairly good, there was nothing that I couldn’t live without so I decided to go to a cafe and avail myself of wifi to see if I could get some class lesson plans figured out. By the time I sat down, I decided that I really didn’t want a coffee, I wanted a kir, and before I knew it I was ordering a full lunch. (A kir, for those who don’t know, is white wine - often chablis - with a healthy splash of crème de cassis - cassis is blackcurrant. It can also be done with strawberry or peach too.)
oh damn, look at all that hot food!
Thinking that perhaps the day was starting to look up, I decided to go to the three museums in town. I went first to the Musée des Beaux arts which, because of my age, was free. What makes this museum a bit different from other art museums in small town France is the fact that they also have a very sizable collection of Asian antiquities collected by a local man in the 19th century. A number of these pieces were currently on display in their featured exhibit on Asian religious art. It was actually impressive to think that such a large and varied collection of Asian art could end up in a little town like Chalons. I spent a bit of time looking over the current exhibit and then went upstairs, which is split into four enormous rooms, two on each side as you arrive at the top the staircase. To the right was a very large room, painted the most soothing shade of industrial green that I’d seen in quite a while. This room was FULL, from floor to ceiling, of glass cases that were full of taxidermied birds. There were hundreds of them, all sizes, all types, all in a similar state of dusty decay. It reminded me of the old Perry’s Nut House in Belfast with their taxidermied animals. Along with the birds were a few monkeys, an alligator, a seal, and lots of butterflies. It was a very motley collection, indeed.
Got Death?
The next room over from the dead animals was a collection of art given to the city by a private collector in the 60s. Apparently many of the pieces in this collection were attributions to certain artists and these attributions have since been disproven. There are a few pieces by “known” artists, but it’s a lot of “French School” or “Flemish School,” and so on. Some of the pieces are really very good, while others just look like paint by numbers.
A bit of Gustave Courbet - a rose between a bunch of thorns
In order to see the other part of the museum you have to go back through the dead animal room, across the stair hall, and then you find yourself in a big room full of fragments from buildings. Normally this would be my sort of thing but really, how many Gothic statues can you see and still be excited? Or how many Romanesque column capitals can you look at without getting tired of them? I’m not sure what the answer is, but I know I’m there. I love seeing them in the churches where they’re meant to be, but it’s so much more difficult to understand them within their intended context when they’re in a museum placed on a pedestal.
The last room was another very long gallery with dozens of paintings, mostly “School of…” but some that were very good. Many of them had be removed from their owners during the French Revolution and became property of the government before finding their way to the museum. The most impressive of these paintings, and clearly the one of which the museum was most proud, was on the wall at the very far end of the gallery and was a gift by the government to the museum. Unfortunately the photo I took of the information plaque is too blurry to read, but it was really quite a lovely piece of art.
These were all taken from a convent in Chalons during the French Revolution
The most impressive piece in the museum
After the Musée des Beaux arts I went to the Musée Garinet, which is the private collection of the Garinet family and was given to the city by Mme Garinet and opened to the public in 1899. It is completely unchanged since the Garinet family left, including the furniture, the wallpapers, and rugs. If you were a decorator you might call it shabby chic or, if you were me, you’d call it tired. Everything is damaged. The prints have mold on them, the rugs are almost worn through in areas, the wallpaper is covered in water stains, nothing has been done to protect the art or furniture… and the list goes on. It’s sad because it could be a really nice little museum. I don’t want to sound like a complete Debbie Downer, because it had some really nice things, but it was just in a sad state of affairs. One thing that was really neat, however, was a large room on the third floor which was full (as in NO extra space) of wooden models of French churches, cathedrals, and monuments all created by a local man in the early twentieth century. Unfortunately they were so packed together that it was almost impossible to really see the models without distraction. Oh well.
The painting at the left is called "Ruth Glanant dans les Champs de Booz" and was painted in 1886 by Alexandre Cabanel
This is supposed to be Notre Dame de Paris, but the glare of the fluorescent lights makes it hard to see
In the 18th century the cloister of the church was falling apart and after much debate it was decided to take it down. So the priests tore down the cloister and built new buildings in the former cloister. The pieces of the cloister, however, such as the statues, columns, and other stonework were use in the construction of these new buildings. By the 1960s these buildings were falling down and the decision was made to take them down and restore the cloister space. In taking down the new buildings the contractors found all of the columns and sculptures that had been reused. Over the next few years they tried to piece together as much as they could and display the pieces in a museum. The museum is in one large room, and although there is as much, if no more, 1970s concrete holding together the sculptures as there is original material, but it at least gives a sense of what once existed.
The Church itself
some of the sculptures that were found
Reconstructions - it's pretty clear which parts are old and which parts are new
The only section of reconstructed cloister arcade. Of course the arches are all new reconstructions.
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