Map Mates

Visiting a "Collége" (middle school) in Limoux, France was a great experience! Here are some pictures. Thank you SO much to my fantastic host and English teacher, Julie, and her work mates for having me! One very cool thing that stood out was the role of the CPE: this person (or sometimes people, as there are often 2 in larger schools) is in charge of following up on frequent absences and following up with the school social worker as necessary, communication between administration and teachers, mediation of minor conflicts between students, or parents/students/teachers, etc to attempt to avoid escalation, and cultural initiatives such as organizing field trips, bringing in artists and musicians, etc. She also heads up a group of employees who are essentially a positive version of discipline officers at the school - they do things like hall monitoring, lunch duty, bus duty, and even staying overnight with the kids in the dorm once a week as chaperone. Teachers in France are valued for their academic and pedagogic expertise and these sorts of tasks are relegated to a different employee who is trained for it specifically, thus freeing up teachers to focus on student progress and achievement, intervention and remediation.