What Am I Doing in France?

I’m here in France for 8 months to be an English teaching assistant with the TAPIF program. This program is run by the French government and brings over native speakers of various foreign languages to help with language courses in schools. This provides French students with a native speaker of the language they are learning, which is valuable for learning about pronunciation, common usage of the language, and culture. I am going to create a page that will provide more details about the program (coming soon!), so look for that at the top of the page if you are interested.

I was placed in the Académie de Nice, which is in the south east of France, in the city of Grasse. Grasse is known as the perfume capital of the world (more on its history in another post). I’m going to be working at two different high schools: Lycée Amiral de Grasse and Lycée Professionnel Léon Chiris. As a teaching assistant, I am only going to be working at the schools 12 hours per week, and I’m going to alternate which school I’m at each week. The teaching contract runs from the beginning of October through the end of April. I arrived in France a few weeks early to have some time to open a French bank account, get a French phone plan, and find an apartment (or at least start those processes…more on that in another post) before I start working. Virginie, an English teacher at Lycée Amiral de Grasse, is kindly letting me stay at her house until I find an apartment.

I’m pretty nervous about teaching because I haven’t been given clear expectations yet, so I still don’t really know what to expect. However, I’m sure it will be a very valuable experience, and I’m very excited to be living in France again and practicing speaking French.