On terrible teachers

Mirrored from Oh Clementine. You can leave any comments there.

You may know that I love the French language. In fact, I have expressed an interest in learning it fluently. I planned to take French throughout high school. However, now that it's not mandatory, I have dropped it and will never take a (high school) course in it again.

This may come as a shock – it seemed like I was passionate about the language, right? Why on earth would I feel so differently about it?

It's because of my teacher.

A teacher really can make all the difference! I had excellent French teachers for my first four years taking the subject, but my teacher this year was just awful. At the beginning of last year, I thought both the course and the teacher were "super cool". I don't know when exactly I changed my mind, but, oh, I changed it.

First term, I put my hand up fairly often and answered questions when she asked me directly. By second term, I was bored with the course as I'd learned everything previously¹ – keep in mind that this was the enriched course². I also began to dislike my teacher, who I felt was trying too hard to be cool and not trying hard enough to teach me anything. I stopped putting up my hand, generally answered questions directed at me with nods or monosyllabic responses, and doodled in my agenda for most of the class³. Perhaps not the best behaviour, and it brought my mark down from a 90 (A+!) to an 86 (just A), but, hey – I was bored!

I also had a particularly bad experience in May. A theater group from Montréal came to my school and put on a play about bullying. The period directly following the play was French, and we had a discussion about bullying. My teacher wanted us to share personal experiences with bullying. I told her I didn't have anything to say. This was a lie – I have had plenty of experience with such things, but I (understandably) didn't want to talk about this in front of a bunch of people who I don't know very well. She kept pushing me to talk about it⁴, so I got a bit snappy and got in trouble. She's also been known to invade my personal space quite significantly (not in an "oh you got a bit too close" way).

Overall I just dislike my French teacher, and she has ruined my experience with French. I'd like to continue with the subject (and I could have skipped a year of it, which would have been nice), but there are only two French teachers at my school and there is no way that I'm taking that chance. I absolutely do not want another year of utter boredom when I could be taking an elective that actually interests me – like Anthropology.

Interestingly enough, I used to despise science. I've mentioned a few times that I dislike the subject, but I find myself looking forward to the two days a week when I have it! My teacher makes it a fun and interesting subject, and the period doesn't drag on like it always has in the past. I guess this is just proof that a good teacher can make a huge difference!

1. some things even 2-3 years previously! [↩]
2. AP for any Americans [↩]
3. I mentioned somewhere that I kept an I AM BORED chart in my agenda for the majority of the year; French won [↩]
4. Come on, Clementine, are you saying you've NEVER been bullied? [↩]

musicness

I listened to 3 albums yesterday. I'm going to write down my thoughts here, so that I remember what I think of them. :P

I listened to One Cell in the Sea by A Fine Frenzy. It was EXCELLENT. It's exactly the kind of music I love. I have no idea why I never listened to this album before! I didn't really have any ~favourites~ pop up yet, but I'll listen to it again later and see if there are any songs that really speak to me.

Then I listened to Anjulie's self-titled CD. It's kind of... I don't really know how to describe it, but totally not my usual thing. I really enjoyed it, though. Her voice is nice and it's really catchy stuff. I don't know if I'll listen to it regularly, but I'll definitely keep it on my iPod and recommend it to people. Songs that stood out to me were Boom, Colombia, and Jamba.

Lastly, I listened to Notes from the Underworld by Persephone's Bees. It was SO good! The first song reminded me soooo much of Tegan and Sara. I knew I was going to love them about thirty seconds into it. :P The first song (Way to Your Heart) was the best, imo, but the rest is really good. One song is in Russian (?), which is really cool.