Our first day at Centre Socio Ménager

Friday was our first day at Centre Socio Ménager. It was fun, but very difficult as we did not know how to say everything we wanted to say in French. 

A classroom in College Protestant

The first year students did not know how to speak English and we had difficulties with speaking French so it took some time before we made ourselves understood. We tried to see if they could present themselves in English and in French. Some did it perfectly others were struggling a bit more. I felt like I was in the same situation as them, just vice versa.

But after some time when all the twenty students had presented themselves we said that we wanted to play some games. We moved all the chairs and tables away and stood in a circle (at least for a little while...). We tried to play a name game where we have to make a movement together with our name and repeat it for every person who was before us in the circle. This was almost impossible as they did not understand what we wanted to do and they did not know each others names! They had been in the same class for one and a half month and they knew maybe two or three names tops. So we moved on to some other name game after starting from scratch several times.

After the games we sang “Head and shoulders, knees and toes” with them. That was quite fun! Sara-Jeanette told them to try to “Oublier” (which means to forget) what we had done that day, when she meant to say that they had to try to “Rappeler” (remember), we had a good laugh about that when we finaly were finished! I probably had more faults when I tried to speak French...anyway it was fun!

But for our first time in the class teaching English in French, I would say it went all right! It will be fun to return and get to know the second and third year students too on Wednesday!


Johanne Teresie