Teacher of NCEA

I teach NCEA….I am ashamed of what I do but it is the truth I am a NCEA teacher !!!

When I go to a party, which is not often enough !!!, and that I meet new people, they ask me the question that everybody asks when you meet someone “what’s your job?”. So far I have been lying to this question, too ashamed to admit what I actually do. I look straight and answer with my thick accent “ I teach French!”.

Do I ?? Do I really teach French???

I would say that 70% of the time I do. Unfortunately during the remaining 30% of my teaching time I teach NCEA.

Let’s start for the beginning: I teach geeks,I know I should not use that word but it is true, they are geeks and they only want to get Excellence at NCEA, a Merit being a failure. And knowing that NCEA French requires students to know and use weird grammar structures that French native speakers would never use I have to teach kids tips on how to introduce those structures onto their writing.

NCEA is not about communication, it is not about if you can share opinions or understand other people’s ideas. It is about creating sentences with some “pourtant, mais, cependant, où, qui, que, dont etc….” (however, but, where, who, which etc..).

I have a Belgian student in my class this year who is a French native speaker. I had to teach her how to pass the exams as she was not writing the required structures. She was failing although she speaks fluently French. Thank god I was here to tell her to produce strange sentences that nobody would say !!!!

In NZ we are SO lucky to have a very good curriculum, but at the same time we have NCEA which does not allow us to actually teach the curriculum. Because my students want an Excellence, I actually spend time in class teaching them how to pass the exam. If I don’t they will fail for sure. If a French native speaker cannot achieve, how can a kiwi pass???!!!!

So yes I teach NCEA

Pam Hook changed my life

Last week I was lucky enough to participate to a 2 day PD with Pam Hook and Julie Mills about SOLO taxonomy.

Sometimes you go to a PD and while the presenter makes his show, you think to yourself “right mate, what you say is very good but I don’t want to end up with 18 cats because my husband left me after I spend 10 hours to do one of your activity!!!!”

It’s true it happens heaps. You go to a course and it was a waste of money and a waste of your precious time. I become very tight with my time as it seems to run away from me.

Last week was not like that at all. Sometimes you meet someone who transforms your life, and this person for me is Pam Hook. Not only she has transformed my life but she has also transformed my students’ life.

My year 9 are working on “clothes and description”. After this fantastic PD, this week they wrote a piece or work on their uniform. They had to first describe their uniform, say why they like it or not (explain), imagine their ideal uniform and explain why they chose each item (e.g. mon uniforme idéal aurait un pantalon car c’est confortable). I gave them “serait” and “aurait” (would be and would have) as it is a Year 12 grammar structure. I was very impressed by the quality of their work.

What was the best thing about this activity is that the kids could express what they wanted, they were not stopped in one year. I mean that the time when they had to wait to be in Year 12 to do/learn something interesting is over. They used their brain and they produced something of an extraordinary quality

Teacher's job

For the last week, my Year 10 and I have been studying French school system.

After the first “I want to go to school in France coz they don’t have uniform”, we actually start to look a bit deeper. We looked at the value of education here and in France, chances given and respect that teachers have or do not have. The usual thing.

The class I teach is mainly made out of students coming from an accelerate class. They are very nice, clever and mature students....but very lazy.

I told them that when I was in high school ( I am French you see, nothing is perfect !!!), I was working very hard every night although homework was not compulsory. And here came their surprising comments. Students told me that if they were lazy it was our fault (teachers’ faults of course) because we were not asking enough of them. Kids said that in one hour lesson, they only actually work 15 minutes max. As for homework, they cannot be bothered because it is too easy and they can do it in 20 minutes, so it is not the point to waste time.

My reactions to those comments are first that as teachers we obviously need to cater for those kids, and be sure that the work which is set is challenging enough to be rewarding and engaging and second I find very strange that we still haven’t managed to teach our students to be independent.

I remember that when I was 17 (3 year sago !!!) my German teacher was crap. It didn’t matter to me because I knew how to work independently, and so I worked every night in order to speak German very well.

In conclusion, we are not doing a very good job: not only we don’t manage to engage students but also we are not capable of teaching our kids how to be independent learners.

censure et autres at school

I am very annoyed !!!! For the last 2 weeks, I cannot print at school, I cannot receive school email and twitter and Gmail are blocked !!!!!

sometimes I wonder if we are really in 2010. Maybe I am in a fourth dimension where I thought that computers had been invented but in fact I am in 1767 and electricity is still a mystery !!!!

You could ask now “ but Froggieflo why is Gmail blocked at your school??”, and this I couldn’t answer because I have been thinking about it and I couldn’t find any plausible answer. I have been told that I should use my “school email” address, which by the way I cannot access via my apple mail. I have to go online to check my email. Which would not be a problem if I could access it outside of school, because, who knows why, we can only access our email box only at school. Gmail is much reliable and I can access it everywhere even on my Itouch !!!

Do you want to laugh??? I hope you are sitting because this one is quite funny. As of yesterday, students at school are given a gmail address. They had NO email address until yesterday !!!! so students can access their gmail but not the teachers.

And now you would want to ask me “but Froggieflo it is now 2010 (but os it?), I am sure you can work with teachers using Twitter, for sure it would be in the interests of your students that you communicate with other teachers. So Froggieflo tell me why is Twitter blocked?”. Well once again I cannot answer. I have been thinking about it for the last month, and I don’t seem to find a good reason why you would not want teachers to be connected with others.

HA it is SO good to laugh sometimes !!!!

"There are only two reasons to learn something. Either because you need it or because you love it."

Yesterday @Johnpnz asked me what were my thoughts on this quote

"There are only two reasons to learn something. Either because you need it or because you love it."

He asked me on Twitter but I couldn’t answer in only 140 characters . So here is my answer to him.

I wanted to write something about it for a while anyway but I couldn’t face to put my thoughts on a page as I was still fuming.

I was lucky enough to go to Learning At School Conference in Rotorua last February. Like a lot of teachers, I thought this conference was fantastic, but (there is always a BUT!!) I went to a workshop which made me very angry. I went to see this lady who I had seen before and thought she was amazing. Well since L@S I have changed my mind. This lady said we should be able to see in the future and see what we need to learn. According to her, it is unnecessary to learn French (she actually took this example in her workshop) if we are not going to use French in our professional life later.

As you can imagine as French teacher and as a lover of languages I was bloody pissed off !! She could have taken any other examples and it would have been the same thing as I think you shouldn't learn things just because you will need it.

Here comes my answer to @Johnpnz :

I think of course we need to learn things because we need them. If I were living in a forest I would need to learn how to hunt efficiently- and very quickly- in order to survive, no doubt about it !!

I have learned heaps of things just because I like them. I have learned how to sign (French sign language) just because I like it, I don’t need it, I didn’t want to get a job where it could be necessary, I have learned Latin (although I was very bad at it!!!) just because it is interesting.

So I would say that of course we learn things either because we need or because we love them.


What makes me sad in NZ is the fact that we don’t give the opportunity to students to do something just for the pleasure or just for the pleasure of culture. We ask our year 9s or Year 10s to choose their options according to which job they are thinking doing later ( maybe in 10 years or more). It seems that we consider that knowledge which is not needed is obsolete. Why would you learn French or biology if you are not going to use them later???
I am a learner, and proud of it. You know when we play the game “What would you do if you were winning the Lotto?” , I would answer that I would pay my mortgage and install double glazing of course, but it would also give me the opportunity to learn even more. To be honest, I love my job, I think it is the best job in the whole world, but after teaching, marking, doing duty at lunch time, looking after my baby in the evening, carry on work at night at home etc.. I am very tired and I cannot find the time and the energy to learn what I would love to. I always wanted to learn pottery, Russian, Arabic...not because I need them, but because I would be very happy to go to bed thinking I can create a vase (not only I want to, not by need) and I could have a conversation with people in Egypt and/or in Algeria. Exactly like now when I am happy to go to bed knowing a bit of biology and geology although I don’t need to.


Sometimes it feels like Education is seen by Schools and Governments like a water tap which has been set to only have a few drops of water running. Why can we not open the tap full and let kids learn just for pleasure ???

Hannibal in Lebanon

This morning I was watching the news on Aljazeera - thank you Stratos for broadcasting it on your channel. Today the accent was on how history is taught in Lebanon. It was of course very interesting as it always is on Aljazeera.

I thought the most surprising bit as a teacher was when teenagers were asked which History character they admired. I have heard Hitler, Napoleon, Hannibal and some Lebanese men.

While I was watching I asked myself what would the kids I teach answer. I am sure they would say Dan Carter, you know the guy half naked on our billboards with tight buttocks! Don’t take me wrong it is nice to have men with tight buttocks, but I am not sure if my students have ever heard about Hannibal and even Napoleon. I remember that once when I asked my students what they knew about Hitler, they told that “he was a very nasty man”.

Although I teach in NZ, I know this is happening in other countries as I used to teach in England. So it is not the usual excuse that we live on an isolated island in the middle of the ocean.

On the Aljazeera news, the students were capable of discussing their opinions and their point of view on History in their country. I would love to see that in my class (although I don’t teach social sciences) and not hear that Hitler was a nasty man.

The classroom seemed bare, they had a black or white board and students seemed engaged and passi

Solo taxonomy and a Year 10 French

Today I couldn’t believe what I was seeing when I was looking at my Year 10 French. I saw engaged kids who used their brains although we are studying daily routine which is not very exciting!

When my students leave school I want them to speak French, of course !!!, but I want above all that they open their mind to the rest of the world.
Since Learning At School Conference, I make sure that my students do activities which are high order thinking.

After looking at the life of a child from a 1/3 world country, students wrote a text about their own life, their own daily routine. Today they had to find the consequences of their daily routines on both their life and the 1/3 world country child’s life. What will/could be the impacts of their daily routine on their future lives?

I divided the class in small groups with a “French expert” in each group. I am aware that this activity was extremely challenging as my students have been studying French for only 1 year. After a few minutes, each group was working very hard.

I was of course very proud of each student’s effort but I have to admit that I was even prouder of a struggling student who could help in her group. Although this student has learning difficulties, she was able to contribute in her group with her strength. It was also very interesting to see that each group came up with a different point of view on the consequences of their daily routine. Students who are usually very good did not extend themselves as much as I thought they would, whereas students who are less capable shined during this activity even if their level of language was lower than better students.

Most groups came up with the idea that education takes a major place in life. According to them, one of the massive difference between them and a child from a 1/3 world country would be access to a good education. Students reckon that if you do not have access to a good education, you do not get a good job. If you do not get a good job, you won’t make good money. If you don’t get money you won’t eat good food which will lead to malnutrition and disease.

Overall it was a very good and engaging activity. I will definitely do another activity like this one. What is amazing about this type of activity is that children do not need to be fluent in the language they are using.