Going to Middle School In France as an American
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- čas přidán 29. 06. 2024
- What is it like an for an American to start middle school in France without knowing any French? Juliana talks about her school experience after moving across the world, starting a new school, learning a new language, making new friends and discovering that school lunch can be fantastic.
00:00 - Intro
00:19 - First Impression of French Middle School
01:23 - Comparing French school to American school
02:41 - Feeling out of place in French school
03:45 - Lunch at School in France
04:36 - FLE class (French as a foreign language class)
07:03 - Making new friends in France
08:56 - Advice for kids and parents
Book a 1:1 Consult: BookWithRaina.as.me/BaguetteB...
Follow our journey @ baguettebound.com/
About Us:
We are an American family of 3 who moved to France for an extended stay adventure in 2022.
We wanted to experience Europe as more than rushed tourists on a 10-day vacation. To dive into the culture, learn a new language, experience daily life, and truly know what it was like to work and live somewhere other than the US.
In France, we set up a business, enrolled in a middle school, found housing, and even got our cat a European passport!
While in the US preparing to leave, the information we found about staying in France for longer than a short vacation was directed at college students, young & single digital nomads, or retirees. Where was the useful information for families like us?
With a year under our belts in France, we created Baguette Bound to pass on what we have learned. We hope to make it easier and inspire other families who are interested in experiencing a long stay in France with their families. Stay tuned for more information on French culture, local travel ideas, and the logistics of moving across the world.
Follow our journey @ baguettebound.com/
Book a 1:1 Consult with us: BookWithRaina.as.me/BaguetteB...
What a great video. Jason, you ask great questions. Juliana is incredibly poised and intelligent and would likely succeed in any foreign language environment! I am sure her French is going to be exceptional. Good luck!
Thank you for these kind words and the encouragement @michellecbauer! ❤
Thank you for this great video! I am a French teacher in an American middle school and showed this to my kids. Of course, my kids could never imagine leaving the US in their current situations, so it was cool that they see this. Also, they couldn't care less about my own experiences when living in France, but they listen more to someone their own age.
Juliana literally thought this was the coolest thing she'd ever heard. Thanks so much for sharing this with us! 😊
I fell in love with French culture through a French middle school teacher. It was supposed to just be a French language class but the teacher went above and beyond to teach us about the culture. Now more than 15 years later I’m planning my move. So you never know!
Well, I wasn’t her age, I was 20 years old when I found myself in China, a country I didn’t know anything about and couldn’t read nor speak the language, but I find it very interesting as she said making friends that don’t speak your own language is as big help in these kind of situations. They drive you to speak/read the language and you find yourself being able to have a normal conversation after 6 months in the country. The secret is immersion and having to put out efforts to understand what’s going on.
When I was 14 I went to England to study English, I had only been learning English at school for two years but I found my two weeks in England being much more productive and helpful than my two years back home, because I had to make an effort to read signs, speak with the locals,etc. 24/7.
Such an awesome video. You will look back at this one day with so much fondness, Juliana! In another video, I mentioned that I also moved to France with 4 words at age 10, thrown into what they called "français spécial" but ended up doing my bac and masters here, traveling the world only to come back and become a French teacher to French collégiens. What I didn't mention is that our kids were born stateside and we did the same thing to them, they were part of our world travels and we decided we wanted them to be grounded here. The first few months of school were tough, my daughter understood French (I spoke it to her stateside) but responded in English. Culturally, not used to the hierarchy and kids being put back into their place. But today, they are all thriving. All still in the French system. Only low point being the grueling English lessons that are the same each year until collège pretty much.
I'm French and CZcams algorithm made me discover your videos. They are fun and interesting, seeing your outsider view on France.
I'm impressed by Julianna : she is obviously very smart and incredibly mature for her age. She will be bilingual very fast which is a great chance.
I know it well because I have 2 franco-british nephews.
Merci beaucoup.🥰 We appreciate your perspective! Thanks for stopping by our channel and sharing your thoughts.
Hi I just discovered your channel and find it interesting. I am 50 yrs old now but when exactly the same age as Juliana I had the reverse experience going from an EU country to the US for a year. I already spoke English thanks to English au pair girls but the cultural shock of arriving at a US middle school 2 weeks after the beginning of the school year was quite something. And I confirm I was quite flabbergasted by the lack of knowledge in geography and history and basic culture for anything other than American 😂 I was a great reader myself and books kept me company these first few months too !
Welcome in France! Keep up doing that great family experience review. Great content and very interesting and funny seeing that through your US point of view. Juliana is fabulous and very inspiring for many. Definitely not easy for a kid to arrive in a new country not even knowing the language. She will definitely be very fluent in French super fast. Juliana can be very proud of what she's doing and is definitely an example for many French or US kids and adults. It is also very interesting to have reviews on something else than Paris and the French Riviera. It's definitely not a common choice to choose the country side for such an adventure, it is a great opportunity to show the many regions of France that most tourist don't know. Also the pros and cons of many aspects of your experience in the French countryside.
Once again, hats off for that channel, you are a wonderful family, I wish you a very nice experience ahead. Bienvenue et bravo!👍
Merci beaucoup !
Yes, the French countryside has been wonderful to us, I'm very happy it's where we ended up. I feel like it's greatly underappreciated outside of France!
Thanks for the kind encouragement and for watching! 😊
I came to France in 1977 with 9 months of college French. I never found the hotel I had reserved in Paris and it took me three days to find the university in Montpellier. Several decades later I can speak French so that few people can detect that I'm a foreigner. I have also taught English to French university and Prépa students, which has forced me to improve my written French. Learning a language is such a paradoxical thing, where on the one side you do anything to be understood (flap your wings to show that you mean "chicken") and a more diligent effort to understand the intricacies of the grammar and idioms of your new culture.
I am glad that your experience of French schooling what ultimately a good one.
Once at the university she will be able to make a studies exchange program in the EU, which will be an additional cross cultural experience and that’s great
No Thursdays or Fridays?
Very impressed! Many (most) Americans more than twice Juliana’s wouldn’t get out of their comfort zone to even try!
Thank you! Jason and I are constantly in awe of what she does every day being completely immersed from day one. Honestly, while we (Jason and I) have to navigate all of the French administration, taxes, etc in French and work on our language skills every single day, we're still working in English (our own comfort zone!) so it's not the same.
Thanks for the kind words and watching!
Sooooooo helpful!!! As mentioned in an earlier comment, our 10 year-old daughter will be with us moving to France in the summer of 2024 - and the quality of schooling is by far our most important factor. I'll write more in a bit, but thanks for the wonderful interview, Juliana!
I've had some personal experience with what your daughter is going through with exchange students coming to French Canada; namely Quebec City, for a year of high school at the age of 16 or 17. I would tell them that when they start dreaming in French; then the French language is becoming a part of them. I think this is a turning point as it means that you are starting to think in French and not thinking in English and translating from English to French.
French school system being "free" do not allow schools to afford extra activities, you got slightly more in private schools but even then the budget still not compare with American school. French school system chose "education/academics for all" above everything else.
College in France…even primary school finishes at 5ish….so much later. Too bad for the extra curricular activities :( My kids felt the same as you did.
Congrats Juliana ! You’re probably the best ambassador of your country : open minded, smart, natural, adaptable. Your integration is both remarkable and commendable. I’m certain you make your parents so proud and deservedly so.
It reminds me of moving to Baltimore years ago, speaking English barely more than you spoke French initially, and how anxious and terrified I was. And the US school system was comparatively so much friendlier than the French one at the time. So again, congrats !
Juliana says thanks for the kind words! 🙂
Looking back, I'm curious, how do you think the experience of getting dropped onto school in a foreign country shaped you as a person? - Raina
@@BaguetteBound answer’s probably multifaceted : different times different places. This was back in the late seventies : the US were very very different then : modern, open, trusting, tolerant, free, optimistic, it felt like a liberation from France. I actually tried to stay for college,but my parents feared I’d never come back - probably true -, also the cost of college was already a factor.
Having to adapt to a new culture where I was alone, 16 year old, living with an American family, coping with the homesickness from time to time, having to navigate through the high school system, weeks end parties as a teenager, getting my drivers licenses, all these new things away from home probably prepared me for the rest of my life better than my school mates. Juliana will realize this later.
After college, I moved to Australia with much less apprehension than if I hadn’t had this experience at an early age, and later on to Greece with the same attitude : don’t know the langage, don’t know the culture, everything will seem odd, but we’ll figure it out.
Also, I had read a book by an American sociologist living in Europe, that said something like : « whenever you’re irked or schocked by something, realize that it tells more about your own cultural bias than about the thing that irks you ». That has helped a lot ever since.
One small piece of advice : if and when you’re going back, you’ll have the feeling of having lived ten times more than your American friends. And it’s true. But hide it : they would feel that you’re condescending, superior, whatever.
@Ellinillard the line about saying more about my own culture bias when I'm shocked, annoyed, suprised, ect (and I would add delighted!) rings so true.
I feel like I've learned more about my OWN culture living in someone else's than I could have imagined.
Your own culture is like being à fish in water, you don't even know it's there until you have something to contast it with, then voilà ! There it is, you can suddenly SEE it.
Thanks for sharing your experience from the US as a teenage, so interesting.
Juliana is wonderful. She seems to be so mature for her age !
Great and imformatibe videas as allways thank you
Good job Juliana!
Great job !
Merci!
So impressive! So poised and articulate! Great job navigating that first year in a French school! 🎉
I love watching your videos because it brings back childhood memories ! I am from Florida , and exactly like you I was an only child and my parents moved to Bordeaux when I was 11 years old ! So yes Juliana , I know what you are going through ! It's a great country to live in ! I will never regret that dicision ! Wish you the best in France ! Mike
Wow, so you never went back to the US?
@@BaguetteBound I went back many times on vacation and the last time was 8 years ago ! No reason to go back , they all passed away ! Iam 64
Courageuse et positive jeune fille 👍 bravo
Nice…
What year was Julianna in when she started? How did you find the school that had the FLE program? Thanks for this video! We are a family of 3 as well, our daughter will be 14 or 15 when/if we make a similar move. Worried the support won’t be there like you guys found.
Juliana started in what would be the American equivalent of 6th grade (the first year of middle school). She was 11.
Technically, because France is VERY strict about homeschooling, every school must provide FLE. The tricky part is if it's a school that doesn't usually have any students who need FLE, then they don't have a dedicated teacher and it's not familiar to the principal. So she will get FLE no matter where she goes, but how prepared for that the school is could vary a lot.
I think part of the reason the school Juliana went to her first year had an established program was because it was in an area that had a high immigrant population nearby.
You can look for a public school that has an "international section", which will include some subjects in English and some in French. Most major French cities have a few of these. I'm linking to the French webpages below that list them, you'll have to use your browser to translate.
If your daughter is 14 or 15 by the time you move though, I would definitely consider some of your English international school options too.
At 15, because of the way the French system works and depending on what she wants to do after high school, having to use a lot of her academic year to learn French could be tricky so close to graduation. But then, if mostly the point is to learn French, there's not much that beats immersion along with classes! We told Juliana not to even worry about grades the first year, just focus on French and settling in.
We have some local friends who moved from the UK with a 14-year-old. She had already been studying French for two years before they came. She loves the language and she's doing well, but she had some foundation to build when they arrived vs starting from scratch at that age and I think that was key.
This response got crazy long and I have more to say...I think that means this needs to be a video. 😂
Good luck, and thanks for watching!
LINKS:
List of public middle schools (middle school is called "college" in France) with International sections:
www.education.gouv.fr/les-sections-internationales-au-college-5135
French process for enrolling your child in school as a foreigner:
www.service-public.fr/particuliers/vosdroits/F21304
Thanks for the long reply! It could definitely be another topic to share in a video! I’ve been enjoying your videos- they are a great addition to the American expat in France genre. We hope to join you all soon! You are doing exactly what we’d like to do.
Thanks for the video! Good luck to Juliana, she’s doing great! I wanted to ask your opinion, since you’re living in a village, are French schools same in terms of let’s say quality of education? So that may be in a bigger city the schools are better and French themselves aim
to these city schools rather than village ones? We’re moving with a 9 year old this summer and also prefer village life but a little bit worried about schools
I am French I live in the north of France in Lille very beautiful city if one day you could spend in the region very beautiful region but I will want to have if your daughter this pleases in France now and if she is happy to live in our beautiful France thank you
Is school year round in France?
How long are the school days?
For example, does school start at 8:00 a.m. and get out at 4:00! P.m.?
Are students allowed to go home during the 2-hour lunch break or is it all in school only?
Hi! School in France is not year round, but summer break is a little shorter than in the US and there are more two week vacations throughout the school year (two weeks at the end of Oct, Christmas holidays, two week February winter break, two week April break, a long weekend in May, July and August off).
School hours vary from school to school usually, but usually 7:50 - 4 or 5pm.
Wednesdays are off in elementary school, half day in middle school, and it varies in high school. Most kids do any extracurricular activities on Wednesdays.
Yes, both kids and teachers can opt to go home for lunch, and some do.
Thanks for watching!
Is Juliana dreaming in French now?
French teens speak so quickly that even their parents dont understand... 😅😅