French Club

This year, the school is having after-school activities twice a week for the elementary school students. The elementary school gets out 50 minutes earlier than the high school; last year, it started 50 minutes later, and kids who arrived early were watched by an assistant in the gym. This year, they can go home at 3:15, or they can go to Study Hall or an after-school activity.

Teachers are required to lead one activity every week; every 6 weeks or so the activities change. Unfortunately, we also have to come up with the activity ourselves, and this was hard for me to do. Some teachers are doing different arts and crafts, some are doing board games or outdoor games. One teacher is leading a very-popular cookie-making class; another teacher is leading a science club (also very popular).

I decided to do a French Club, partly expecting that no one would sign up and then I'd get relegated to helping someone else. After all, we're in an English-language school in a Russian-and-Kazakh-language country; what kid wants to add another language on top of all those?

But 6 kids did sign up for my club, which is a decent-sized number, considering we're such a small school. And their teachers say that they are talking excitedly about it in their classrooms.

It's turned out to be a lot of fun. I know many French children's songs, plus have tons on CD, so I've taught them a song every week. We also play Bingo (learning colors, numbers, and parts of the body along the way) and eat cheese and bread. They really aren't learning much; once a week for 50 minutes isn't really enough time to learn a language, but they seem to be having fun.

And I do enjoy talking in a foreign language that I actually know, rather than stumbling through Russian. I really need to work on my Russian, don't I?