EPTFirst things first, you might have noticed that I am no native English speaker. I hope the expressions, word usage and all will be understandable at least, and it might even make you laugh. Please feel free to do so at home. Like you need my permission.
Back to delicious topic now. In now 1 hours and 55 minutes I'll be standing in front of a dangerous pack of savage beasts. For some centuries now, Humanity tried to tame them ; many (many, many) have fallen, there were victories, there were defeats, epic battles did happen but never ever did a feeble Human success in this somewhat mystic task. As I am advertising for my job and hopefully get you a bit more interested, I feel obligated to tell you more about it.
I am a high-school teacher.
Well, not quite yet. The first trial is now in 1 hours and 51 minutes. This will be my first class, my first pupils, and I get a feeling that I never never never never never got before, no no, it's not a good feeling yeaaaah. Before you can mock my fear, stress, nervousness, and so on, I'll give you some details on how you become a teacher in France.
The usual road is to obtain your "Baccalauréat", which is the exit exam from high-school, then obtain at least a master in a specific field. Congratulation, you can now try a "concours", which is I think specific to France ; basically it's a national exam where you have 2K (sometimes more) competitors and between 10 and 300 admitted : for example Stephano will have to pass one if he wants to get in the second year of medical studies. In the case of teachers, you have two possibilities : the "CAPES" is totally teacher-oriented ; you have two written exams (6 hours each) and if you got good enough grades you have 3 oral exams in June-July. Then again, if you're good enough, you're in the proportion of admitted guys. Keep in mind that good grades are sometimes not enough : on some "concours" there are people who get a mean of 15/20, and aren't accepted (because 250 guys got more than 15,1/20). If you succeed nonetheless : congrat, you are now part of the French administration and will get assigned to a place somewhere in France to teach (in middle school or high-school, the first is more likely).
The second way is the way I get there. It is another concours, called "Agregation" and which was in the older times a way to prove you can become a scientist. Nowadays it is also a teacher-recruting exam. In term of pure mathematics (and it is true in every field), the skill needed is far superior ; often it is "easy" to get 16-17/20 at the written part of the CAPES, while the same persons will get 5-6/20 at the agregation. Then again you have a oral part, it is like the hardest metal known to man for human mathematicians (I won't talk about superhuman ones, we have special schools for them in France where they breed and continue the line). The year I succeed we were 2K at the beginning, and 288 to get accepted. Needless to say I was quite the happy guy that day.
The conclusion is the same as the CAPES, but you have now more choices, and are preferentially assigned to a high-school. Now in term of actual skills, CAPESians are more than capable of teaching even at the best level of high-school. In fact, nobody really understands why the required skill is so high, when the best you can hope for is high-school teaching. For agregationist, it's like a complete joke : you are nearly as skilled as a grad student on some parts of maths (your favorite), and it is considered you can teach to master's degree students. Theoretically, you can then even become a scientist-teacher in university.
STILL, you 95% of the time end up in high-school, like me. And that is where the fun part begin. I will have in now 1 hours and 25 minutes 35 (or more) pupils in front of me, who often cannot even properly resolve "2x + 1 = 3" at the start of the year. I fail to understand why I bothered so much with Operator Algebras and Functional analysis for the concours. I may now mention that the maximum experience a guy in my situation have is like 4 months as a spectator in a high-school class (personnaly I have none). You can now understand how I feel : I am terrified. I don't even think about undisciplined students and all the bullshit you can come across as a teacher in highschool. I am simply terrified to be launched in front of kids who don't give a fuck, with skillz enough to (I tend to exagerate a bit) understand the very meaning of the universe, but absolutely no fucking idea on how to properly deal with kids. You see, I got agregation to (hopefully) teach to post-highschool students. Often, they are motivated and have already understoof that you have to work a bit in your life to obtain what you want, which is the opposite of first year students in highchool. I am completely clueless and I can just hope that they won't eat me alive.
Now I so would like to continue writing (as it calms me) but I may end up being late for the first day, so this will be for a next blog entry. Yeah, I will take a slot in the blog list from now on, telling stories on how the life of a teacher is. Feel free to ask questions, participate, trolling ; after all, it will be my job to manage this kind of behaviour
Sincerely yours, a terrified and stressed brand new teacher.
