last day of classes for the first week back

I was given a friendly reminder of camp today at one of my schools. Thought I would share. There is a little boy in one of my classes who has a father who is constantly in and out of jail, for various charges. I'm sure you can imagine his behavior. He's about 8 years old. I try to keep him up front with me, so that he stays engaged in class and all that.
The elementary schools in France do this thing for a couple months where the police come into the older kids classes and teach them about safety and road signs and blah blah blah. Some schools in the states do this too, i think. As we're walking the students in from recess, the two police officers are behind me, and my little boy with the troubled home life is in front. As we're walking, a teacher pokes her head out of her classroom with a little girl, and says to me 'where is his teacher? he hit her' so I called out to the teacher who was a short ways in front of me, and she came back, and they started asking what happened (still walking) and when his teacher found out she said "well, you can't do that. I mean look! the police came for you! you can't go hitting other students!" and so, to make some sort of impression or joke, the other teacher said "Yeah, you don't want it to end like this do you?" and put him in between the two police officers, told him the officers were going to take him away. And these were big fucking policemen. And he is a tiny little 8 year old boy with glasses and behavioral problems because his father's been in and out of jail more times than he can count.
I almost hit her. His face crumbled. He started crying so hard. But, instead of hitting her I told him to catch up to the rest of his class, which shocked the other two teachers. I glared at them. And then they started disciplining (which in France means yelling at) him for hitting the little girl in front of his entire class. It was awful.

Which brings to mind the shocking difference between the school system here and in the states. Here, the schools seem to function on public humiliation of classes. I hear a lot more personal attacks on students and yelling in my classes than I remember hearing when I was little, and seeing when I was thinking of becoming a teacher in the states. The semesters I student taught were in kindergarten and pre-k classrooms, so maybe that has to do with it. Well actually no, most places in the states encourage students to talk it out. Here, you tell on the other student and it's up to the teacher to talk it out for you. Maybe this is why my friends and I have found French men lack communication skills. Who knows?

But, other than that the week went pretty well. I get to spend the next couple days coming up with evaluations for my kids and all that stuff.

Also thought you all might enjoy the camp/summer work not involving being a teacher photos. They are fantastic. Especially the one where I'm getting beat by the other counselors, and my co-leader does nothing to stop it. And the campers were asleep in the back of the van. Sweet. The last one is me being official and on the phone in my bathing suit trying to make plans for us to have a sweet end of camp bash. Righto.