Has anyone here ever taught English in France?

[francopopfille]

As part of my degree I have to go to France for a year and so I applied to the British Council to be an English Language assistant. Yesterday I found out I got a job- yay. Today I found out where I'm going- I'm going to Créteil. This is near Paris and Versailles but has as it says in the email I was sent "a slightly scary reputation". I applied for either Strasbourg (no chance, because i don't speak German) Poitiers or Versailles. Since Créteil is so close to Versailles and they needed to fill the jobs there (ie no-one applied for it) they've posted me. I'm quite miffed because I asked for my tutor to make clear in my reference that I absolutely did not want to go there.
Trying to think of positives: It's 7 miles from Paris. It's on a Metro line. It's got nearly 90,000 people, surely it can't be all bad? In terms of population and distance from a major city, they've sent me to the French equivalent of my home town. I don't know if this was deliberate.

Has anyone else any experience of the place (quite unlikely I know) or has anyone else ever been a Language assistant in France or anywhere else? I don't really have a clue what I'm letting myself in for...

[scallywagxx1]

I spent a year in France as part of my degree, not as an assistante though and I loved it. A few of my friends were assistants and from what I could gather its fairly hard work but ultimately really rewarding when you start to bond with the kids and realised that you have actually helped them. I was an assistant of sorts on a college exchange trip and even after a week I was really sad to leave the children as they had become quite attached. And im really not a children person!

In terms of where you are, it might help to do some research on the place see if there are any blogs from people living there etc, might give you a bit of an idea? You could always ask the school you're going to if they can put you in touch with past or current assistants as well to see what their experiences were.

My friend was sent to a tiny town an hour from Bordeaux and there were only about 6 other assistants there and the only common language was French so her French became amazing because of it (another plus side for you!). As you're so close to Paris, I would imagine that there'll be several other assistants in the same area and obviously there will be loads in Paris itself.

The only piece of advice I can really give you is sort out your accommodation before you go (me and my housemate left it until we went and ended up being homeless for 5 days - not good!) and try not to give up if things are difficult at first. You will get homesick at points and sometimes things will seem a bit overwhelming but I really cannot recommend a year abroad enough, mine was without a doubt the best year of my life, and I would do it all again in a flash!