Parent - teacher conference

This morning we attended Ella's classroom meeting. The teacher spoke for about an hour about the structure and the details of the class and answered questions from the parents. We were very impressed with the teacher, who exudes confidence and competence, and the details that she presented about the class. She talked a bit about her teaching philosophy (which we really liked), and went over the daily schedule. The daily schedule is:

8:20 Accueil - Welcome
8:40 Regroupment - Circle time, where they talk about what they are going to do that day, make decisions about important class matters like how to decorate the classroom, etc.
9:00 Maitrise de la langue - Language mastery, for example each month they are going to work on an "album," which is a storybook with lots of accompanying activities. They just finished "Little wolf goes to school." Next they will start a book about witches.
9:40 Bilan - This is a chance for one group of kids to summarize the work they did in the morning - what it was about, what was hard, easy, etc. It's a chance to process the reasons behind the work, so they can get more out of it.
9:50 Recreation - self-explanatory
10:20 Ateliers scientifiques - Hands on science time, this also includes math which happens in lots of little ways thoroughout the day (calender, counting the # of kids absent each day, baking, etc).
11:30 Sortie - some kids leave for lunch. Most eat in the cantine. The interval between 11:30 and 1:30 is not technically considered school time, there's a different team of teachers assitants who come in and supervise the kids - often doing planned actvities, but all just for fun.
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13:20 Accueil - welcome back to class
13:30 Lecture/Ecoute - reading and listening, the teacher reads stories and/or they listen to stories on CD or tape.
14:00 Education artistique - this includes both music and "plastic arts." Some art themes they have planned for the year are blue, transparancy, and the body. They are also planning a couple of field trips to art museums.
15:00 Education physique & sportive - they will go twice a week to the gym next door to the school (where our swimming pool is), twice a week to the school gym (which Ella adores), and once a week to do group games either inside or out depending on the weather.
15:30 Recreation
16:00 Langage - if you haven't figured it out yet, language is a major theme of kindergarten. This is the time where they will share what they wrote, drew, pasted, etc. over the weekend in their cahiers de vie (life notebooks), they will make up stories using cards with characters, objects, places, etc, they will write letters to their companion school, and other language oriented activities.
16:30 Sortie

Exhausting, isn't it! But, we can see why Ella loves school - there is so much fun stuff going on every day (and I've only given the highlights here).

The question and answer time was interesting. There was a lot of talk about the mixed age class, and whether it's an advantage or a disadvantage (the teacher's perspective is that it's neither one; I think for Ella it's an advantage to have some younger kids in the class to give her a bit more confidence). There was also a lot of talk about school on Saturdays. The parents were asking for clarification "should we bring our kids to school on Saturday?" The teacher's response was that there is school on Saturday, but because parents don't bring their kids, the teachers don't actually teach anything on those days, so it's a waste of time for any kids who do come (seems to me, if you teach them, they will come ...) I think the teachers like having the work day without the kids there, but don't want to admit it. A delicate subject obviously, though I'm glad we're not the only ones confused by it.

After the meeting, we met Abe's friend Stuart from his French class and his family at a cafe near the Pompidou center. Stuart's wife, Jane, is on sabbatical here from South Hampton University in England. They have three daughters (Olivia, 6; Juliette, 4; and Sophia,1). Stuart is a reporter for the BBC [although right now he's on a leave of absence] and is the only other English speaker in Abe's French class (Abe has also learned that out of 17 people in the class, 3 others are architects). We had a nice lunch outside while the kids ran circles around the fountain.

Then, we went to a fantastic exhibit at the Pompidou Center called Shadows and Light. They had wonderful interactive exhibits playing with shadows and light. They had screens you stood in front of and it recorded your shadow, stories about shadows to listen to while resting on giant cloud shaped pillows, and a twisted up wire that projected a shadow of a perfect chair onto the wall, just to name a few.