Three Year Olds Speaking English...

The French education system...complicated to say the least and this week I received a very fast induction into it.  Despite what some of you may be thinking I did indeed come to France to work and my job began on October 1.
Some background information first: starting at the age of two or three, depending on the district, parents can begin to send their children to public school (unlike in the States where nursery schools are usually private).  This means that the majority of my students will be between the ages of two and four, so we will be doing a lot of singing and playing Duck Duck Goose.  The écoles maternelles have the choice to teach a langue vivante (English, Spanish, German etc), unlike the écoles élémentaires.  Starting this year the Ministry of Education has mandated that at écoles élémentaires students must learn a langue vivante for about 1.5 hour each week, which is why the assistant's role is so important.  I work only 12 hours a week, so I spent the past couple days trying to sort out a schedule between my three schools.
On Tuesday Marie Christine, my supervisor, brought myself and the other assistant to the six primary schools in Sainte Luce.  Luckily two of my schools are right next to each other and the third is only a five minute bus ride or a 15 minute walk outside the center of Sainte Luce.  Wednesday and Friday I went to each of these schools again to see when they wanted me to work, as of right now I will Wednesdays off.  This is not that surprising because Wednesdays are half days, until this year students in Sainte Luce didn't have any school on Wednesday.  (I'll get into the differences between American and French education in a later post)
Most of the students I met already had some level of English, whether it was three year olds singing a song or elementary students counting up to 100 and reciting the alphabet for me.  I was really impressed!  During recess at the elementary school a group of girls started talking to me in French (obviously in French, but I'm not allowed to speak anything but English to the students!), as soon as I responded in English some of the older ones started asking me questions in English and showing off the vocabulary that they knew.  Everyone was really excited to have me there! I consider myself lucky having been placed with younger kids because they are still so excited to learn, I can't wait to actually start teaching next week.
Until next time here is photo of my delicious dinner from last night.  A crêpe with goat cheese, honey, almonds, and salad. Bisous