Rebecca, a British friend who taught theatre studies at a celebrated English public school before she was brutally sacked during the pandemic, moved to France and looked for a job. After putting out feelers, she got a phone call from the director of a lycée (high school) in a socially challenging neighbourhood of Béziers, a city in the Occitanie region of southern France. Would she be willing to teach English, replacing a prof who’d signed off sick with stress? Game for most things, she agreed, and quickly regretted it.
Her class of 40 included, she estimated, roughly 4 students who had any interest whatsoever in learning anything. The rest, when they bothered to show up, spent their time playing games and watching TikTok videos on their smartphones. Homework assignments were mostly ignored, although one young student did hand in a crude drawing vulgarly titled, ‘nique ta mère’. Translate it yourself. She asked the directrice what she could do to discipline her students.
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