My son and I are leaving our small town in southeastern United States to live for a year in a small town in southeastern France. It couldn't possibly be THAT different, right?

Sunday, November 13, 2011

rulers



I copied this post from my friend Erin Cleveland's blog because 
I really could not have said it any better.  
Erin is living in Quiberon, France this year with her husband, Dan,
 and she is attempting to teach English in a middle school just like me. 


"Every good little French student has at least one ruler in his/her trousse
The ruler is not just for math.
The ruler is used at any and all times that necessitate a line.  A STRAIGHT line.
 My students spend so much time using their rulers that
I think it is the main reason why we never get through what I had planned for the class.
 I quickly underline a word on the board, they get out their rulers.
I draw a quick box around a word, they draw four perfect lines around it.
Don't even consider having them do a matching or connect-the-dots activity...
yep, rulers required!
At one point, frustrated by the wasting of precious time,
I asked them why they had to use a ruler
and if they could just quickly draw a line (their notebooks ARE lined, after all...)
"Mais Madame, ce n'est pas joli comme ça!"
Yep, from their very first year of school, these kids are instructed to use rulers any time
that they are required to draw a line...
Besides making perfectly straight and joli lines, rulers make excellent swords.
But, of course!  I confiscate at least one ruler per day.
 It's not the embarrassment of having your ruler confiscated that teaches them a lesson,
it's the fact that they will have to spend the rest of the day without a ruler and, gasp!,
they will have lines that are pas joli in their notebooks!!
 Most students do not need to have their ruler confiscated twice!
 Once, after I took a ruler from a student,
he calmly took a new shiny one out of his backpack.
 Whew!  Uneven lines averted!  No, I took that one too :)"

1 comment:

  1. I find this funny, because American kids could really care less :P

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