Madame Bettner goes to London!

I have survived my first official school trip as one of the responsible adults! I just spent a week in London with a group of 43 students from my high school. The students are taking extra English classes, so they are overall good students and we didn't have any problems with them during the trip, which was wonderful.

Visiting a city like London with a school group is so different from visiting it by yourself. We had a very tight schedule to keep, but still got to do/see a lot of things! We spent the first day in Canterbury, where we saw the cathedral and then had free time in the city for the afternoon (these kids LOVE to shop!!). Then in London, we saw...(deep breath)...Hyde Park, Buckingham Palace, St. Jame's Palace, the White Hall (the big avenue from the Palace to the Thames), Trafalgar Square, Houses of Parliament and Big Ben, Westminster Abbey, the Science Museum, Oxford Street, the Museum of London (the history of London), the Tate Modern Art Museum, the London Bridge Experience (a sort of horror museum), Shakespeare's Globe Theatre, Millennium Bridge, Tower Bridge, The City (financial district and oldest part of London), St. Paul's Cathedral, famous buildings like the Gherkin and the Shard, and the London Eye. Many of these things were simply seen from the outside. The royal palaces are only open 2 months of the year for visits and there is a hefty entrance fee for churches. I think entrance to Westminster was 18 pounds for an adult. However, most museums are free because they are subsidized through the lottery. So we did a lot of walking and museum visits.

Buckingham Palace. You can't tell because there wasn't any wind, but the flag was  on top of the
Palace, meaning that the Queen was in.

A few things really stuck out to me as the highlights of the trip. The first was getting from France to England by the Eurotunnel under the English Channel. I always knew that you could do that, but I didn't exactly know how it worked. You actually drive onto a train that does the journey for you. It takes 35 minutes to get from one side to the other. It's actually a very smooth ride, although it is strange to feel yourself descending and knowing that you are going under the water and then coming back up. But as you can see below, there are just small windows so you can't see anything.

The outside of the train we drove onto

The inside of the Eurotunnel train

My favorite museum, by far, was the Museum of London. It was the only history museum we went to, so it natural fell into my interests, but in addition, it was also just a really well done museum. Things were well explained, labeled clearly, and it was a pleasure to walk through. It described London from its prehistoric times with mammoths and small tribes of people, through the Roman era when it was called Londinium, the Middle Ages and Early Modern times with the plague and the Great London Fire of 1666, the Victorian Era (complete with a street recreation showing numerous shops), the World Wars and the Blitz, and finally Modern London, with its immense diversity and place on the global stage. The number of artifacts the museum has in each section is huge, but again, it is really well explained.

Remains of the Roman wall around Londinium

The last thing we did before we started the long journey home was a ride on the London Eye. It was really neat to have the aerial view of London and see all of the places we had visited during the week. In the pods, there were small tablets that enabled you to identify the buildings along the skyline. The Eye moves at a very slow rate, but it is constantly moving. In spite of that, it still took almost 30 minutes from the time we boarded to go all the way around. It was really a perfect way to end the week.

the London Eye

From the top, looking across the Thames to the Houses of Parliament, Big Ben,  and Westminster Abbey

One of the most important aspects of the trip, from an educational perspective, was that we all stayed with British families in the London suburb of Finchley. While this meant a long drive every morning and evening to get to our accommodations, the students were required to speak English with their families, which is fantastic practice for them. I was housed with the other 3 teachers with a woman from Mauritius. She was really nice and made up some Mauritian specialties for dinner, including a Mauritian style curry and a rougaille, a tomato paste that is often served with meat. Ours was served with eggs and lentils. It was fantastic!!

For me personally, the trip highlighted how English we are in America. Obviously the language was familiar, although it took me about 48 hours to switch my automatic responses to English, such as "Excuse me" from "Excusez moi" while walking on the street. It was fantastic to have some familiar foods, like an English breakfast with eggs and sausage, fish and chips, and even Pike Place at Starbucks. The Starbucks in France, at least the ones I have seen, don't have Pike Place on the menu. I saw squirrels finally, and the students' reaction to them was hilarious!! Squirrels are a rare sight to see in France, or at least in my region. But more than that, even just basic behaviors  like getting a coffee to go and drinking it as you are walking down the street. I wouldn't think twice about seeing someone do that or doing it myself, but our driver for the week commented on how strange that was for him to see. Unlike the big cities in France, where buildings are short and they try to keep similar architectural styles throughout the city, London is a random mix of old and new. There are still small, brick and stone buildings and churches that exist from 300 or 400 years ago, but they are right next to a skyscraper that was built 10 years ago. In this way, I really felt like I was just in Chicago. Old stone and brick buildings mixed with new glass and steel buildings and skyscrapers give the city such a different feel than the small, Haussmann-style cement buildings with terraces. 

The Shard

The Gherkin

These similarities did 2 things to me. First, it made London much less exciting to visit than Paris. Some of that is also my deeper knowledge of Parisian history, so I understand the significance of more places than I do in London. But overall, Paris just feels more exotic and different. Don't get me wrong, I had a wonderful time in London and I feel so lucky that I was invited to go on this trip, but the similarities made it less intriguing (although that could also be the constant concern of not losing students along the street!). Secondly, it made me homesick. For a little while, I felt like I was in the US and I realized just how different my life is in France from what I'm used, even if it's just little things like getting my coffee to go. The familiarity of everything was just refreshing. I did buy some doughnuts and cheddar cheese on the last day so I could bring some of it back to the France with me, but that will only last for a little while. By feeling like I was in the US, it made me realize how nice it will be to come home.


From London with love

Roses are red, violets are blue...

Happy Valentine's Day!!!

While the French do celebrate Valentine's Day, it's not nearly as popular as in the US, and is reserved for couples only. When I mentioned that we can give cards to friends and family, I got a lot of strange looks.

In one of my classes today, we wrote Valentine's Day poems and the kids did such  fantastic job, that I wanted to share some with you. We started with the basic poem Roses are red, violets are blue, sugar is sweet and so are you. Then they had to brainstorm more colors, and then words that rhymed with the colors. So they had lists of brown, down, town, clown, frown, and pink, think, stink, etc. Then they had to complete one poem that started Roses are red, daisies are white... And finally, they got to write one of their own. We did this for the whole hour and it was actually a very difficult exercise, but so much fun. Rhyming words in a foreign language is really hard. At the end, they started to take some creative liberties with the format of the poem. Some of the poems are just hilarious, and others are actually really thoughtful. You can decide for yourself which is your favorite.

Roses are white, I like you on my right

When we watch the city lights, In Los Angeles at night

Roses are white, Got your love in a fight

Your look is a light, Who shines in the night

These 2 were written by a 2 boys together and they were very proud of their "macho" poem (their words, not mine and they were being funny, not serious):

Roses are red, Daisies are white

You are beautiful when you say, I am right

Roses are green, Daisies are red

You are beautiful like a bean, And you are very beautiful when you make my bed

Some were violent (the kid does not have issues, but couldn't think of how to make it rhyme)

Roses are red, Suddenly a fight

I'm so dark, I killed you in the night

Roses are red, violets are blue

My heart know that you are only a dream, but I don't want to stop loving you (one of my favorites!)

Roses are yellow, Daisies are pink

White is the snow, and I do think...you are my valentine!

Roses are blue, You are my queen

Because I love beans, and I love you too

Roses are black, When I see you

I have an attack, because my heart beats for you

Roses are red, Daisies are white

And then I said, You are my light

Roses are pink, My head is green

When I needed to drink, because I need a bean

Today I feel gray, cause you walk away

I can't live without you, because I love you

In other news, I'm getting ready to do a lot of traveling. I leave for London Sunday and then will be going to Belgium and the Loire Valley (to see castles!!!) in the following weeks. I hope to keep you updated as I do cool stuff. Happy Valentine's Day!!

From Roussillon with love

Perspectives of History

Since Christmas vacation, I have gotten the chance to talk about US history in 2 of my classes for multiple weeks. It has been a wonderful opportunity to talk about something that interests me and to share a part of American culture. While many people think I'm crazy for studying history, my experience in these classrooms  only continued to reinforce the reasons why I think history is fantastic! Most people that don't like history think it's boring: history is simply a list of people and dates to be memorized and regurgitated for a test and not helpful at all in the real world. While I'm not necessarily a proponent of the idea that studying history keeps us from repeating it, I love history because it is so much richer than names and dates. It requires critical thinking and analyses and is a fantastic tool to understand why a person, idea, culture, or nation is the way it is. That being said, our personal culture, national identity, etc. is also a lens through which we see and interpret history.

History itself is culture specific. I took a Chinese history class during my undergrad and I learned a lot. When we were studying World War 2 (China was an ally during the war, although that fact is often forgotten in our Euro-American focus), our teacher mentioned that many Chinese saw the early 1930s as the beginning of World War 2. That's right, early 1930s. Not 1939, when Hitler invaded Poland (which is when it starts for Europe). And not 1941, when the US gets involved. China and Japan had continuous conflicts from that early date that continued into WW2. For the Chinese, nothing changed when Hitler came to power. They were still fighting the Japanese, so for them, the war started sooner. That story has nothing to do with me being in France, but it was the first time that I had really studied a non-Western nation and been given such a different perspective of a global event that I had studied multiple times. And I loved it! History, and how we tell the story, is directly linked to our culture and our experiences, which makes it really cool, in my opinion, to study other nations' history (or history from another nation's perspective).

So now, back to France. In one class of freshman age students, I did a 3-week unit on World War 2 from the American perspective.  I had 3 big themes: the start of the war and Pearl Harbor, the home front, the end of the war. I didn't want to go into detailed military stuff, and purposefully didn't include a day about the Holocaust because in every US history class I have ever taken, we completely separate WW2 and the Holocaust. We acknowledge that they happened simultaneously, but we study them separately. So here a few things that blew my kids minds.

1) They didn't know about Pearl Harbor, or the entire war in the Pacific. Those ideas were completely new to them. And they didn't know that we joined the war 2 years later than they did.

2) They couldn't believe that I didn't mention the Holocaust, or Hitler really, because that is almost all they talk about in France in regards to the war.

3) They finally learned who Uncle Sam was. They have a poster of him in the room, but without any context.

4) They learned who the Andrews Sister were, and all about USO shows and big band music, which they liked.

5) My husband's grandfather was at Omaha Beach on D-Day, and I shared some his memories with the class. They couldn't believe some of of the things that he saw and had to do.

I got even more historical and talked about some of the myths that Americans have about the war, showing that the American perspective isn't always right. It was difficult for them because of the language barrier, but I really think they liked hearing the American perspective. For some of them, it really opened their eyes to a world outside of France. Accomplishing a teaching goal achievement unlocked!!

In the other class, they are talking about segregation in the US from 1865 to the Civil Rights Movements. These are senior level students, and with them, I give them a document and they have 20 minutes to write an outline of a description of the document, its message, and their thoughts before they present and we talk about the documents. I only have up to 4 students each week. One of the documents was a collage of pictures showing the process of desegregation in schools, like black students being escorted into or out of a school building by military or police. In America, iconic pictures. I didn't give them any context for these pictures, and didn't even think twice about it until the first group of students went to describe the picture. They thought the blacks students were being expelled and were dangerous since there were so many military men surrounding them. (Although they were confused about the 6 year old girl in one picture and why she was dangerous.) Other possible explanations that I got were:

~the black students were illegal immigrants and being deported. (They just finished studying Mexican immigration to the US)
~the military was blocking the entrance to the school to keep the black students out

...and multiple other random ones. From then on, I always let the students share what they thought and then apologized for accidentally tricking them. It was good though, because we talked about how the reality of the picture changed our reaction to it.

The second document was even more interesting. It was a portion of an interview with Fannie Lou Hamer, (an often forgotten hero of the Civil Rights movement) with her recounting the first time she tried to register to vote in Mississippi in 1962. The students did a really good job of understanding that it was a group of blacks that was trying to register together and that she was forced to take an impossible literacy test, so was unable to vote. They also understood that the bus got pulled over on their way home.  From there, the story gets a little strange. The police arrest the driver, citing that the bus has too much yellow on it and fine him $100. To anyone who has studied this, or really any American who is told the date and place, it is just a good example of blatant racist behavior. The first time the students presented this, our conversation went like this.

Student: "The driver of the bus was arrested."
Me: "Why?"
S: "We don't know. We don't understand that part."
Me: "Well, what words don't you know?"
S: "It's not the words. We just don't understand. We must be reading it wrong."
Me: "Well, what does it say?"
S: "That the bus had too much yellow on it. (I'm nodding to confirm that they are correct.) But that can't be it. How is that possible? It doesn't make sense."
Me: "That's what the police said. Why do you really think they were pulled over and the driver was arrested? What's the real reason?"

It took about 15 or 20 seconds of awkward silence for someone to venture that they were pulled over and arrested because they were black. And this same conversation kept resurfacing each week. How could they arrest him because the bus was yellow?! Their incredulity at such a transparently (for me) racist action really struck me. France experiences racism, don't get me wrong, and I talked about that with my students, but they were unable to fathom the extent of segregation and racism in the US.

It was fascinating watching a first-time reaction to 2 topics that I have studied in-depth for several years. These days of teaching are some of the times I tell myself, "I would actually enjoy teaching at a level where I could have these discussions," and "I love history!" Those are the good days.

From France with love!