School in BF

Hello friends!!!

It's been a while! 

In honor of the end of the trimester, I thought I'd tell y'all a bit about my classes.

First things first... Some things about the education system here don't make a lot of sense to us Americans. There's definitely room for improvement, but very little of that change can be done on the village-level -- schools have to comply with the Ministry of Education, after all. Teachers and schools do the best with the system they have (admittedly, some are more motivated and do better than others, but that's to be expected) but no matter how good your teachers are, it's really hard to succeed as a student here.

Here's the general info first, and then my next post will be specifics about MY little hooligans!

SCHOOL YEAR

The school year starts on October 1st, and as I said, we're on the trimester system. Although each trimester is weighted equally in terms of grades, the third trimester is only about a month and a half long.

GRADE LEVELS

(Apparently this is the French system, but don't quote me on that)

After primary school (and after passing the national standardized test), you start with "sixième" (6ème), which means "6th." It basically means "sixth from the end," and after 6ème, you continue to 5ème (fifth from the end), etc.

After 3ème, you take another national standardized test, which you must pass before continuing on to seconde and premiere, and the last year is called "terminale." After terminale, you take the final, big terrifying test (the BAC) and if you do well, you can go to University.

CLASSES

At my school, we have one class per grade level, but bigger schools may have a couple sections for the lower grades. At my school (and I think this is normal), 6ème and 5ème are the largest classes, and then they continue to get whittled down by pass rates as the years go on. 

Each class (grade level/section of grade level) has its own classroom, and teachers move between classrooms to teach their classes.

COURSES

In 6ème, students (at my school) have the following classes:

History/Geography

French

English (their first English class)

Math

SVT ("Science de la vie and de la terre" is biology)

In 4ème (I think!) they add physics and chemistry (one class, "PC" - physics for first half of the year, chemistry for the second)

SCHOOL DAY

Classes start at the ungodly hour of 7am. Every day, a group of students in each class sweeps the classroom before the first class...in theory... I have 6ème at 7am on Monday mornings and we never start before 7:10 because "Madame, they haven't swept yet!" 😑

Classes are 55 minutes long, but sometimes have double blocks.

"Recreation" is from 9:45-10:15, and women come to sell juice and snacks to the students (and teachers 😉).

Morning classes finish at noon, and some days (probably 2/5), afternoon classes will start at 3 and end by 5.

Stay tuned for specifics and let me know if I left anything out!

xo, c