Work Experience in Normandy July 2006
Nine students of A-Level French enjoyed the opportunity to thoroughly immerse themselves in French life, completing work experience in Normandy. If you’ve been following the BBC series ‘Excuse My French’ then you will appreciate how demanding and, ultimately, enriching such an enterprise is. Staying in a family, often with quite different backgrounds, adapting to their way of life and being part of the World Cup frenzy being played out in seemingly every French home, all this is challenge enough. Add to this, coping in the work place, doing jobs they might never have tackled before, partaking of casual chats among the staff and sitting down to lunch with the French staff, and you get an idea of the personal challenges the students met. They worked in bars, hotels, crêperies, school and shops – a wide range of placements, with a wide range of people skills required. A lovely day in Granville – sea and shops – and a typically French meal for the whole group in a country ‘auberge’ gave us some respite at the weekend. We were very fortunate to be taken to visit some of the DDay Landing beaches and to see the procession of vintage American and British tanks set off from Saint Mère l’Eglise on their annual pilgrimage to Belgium, to the first town liberated by the Allies. A fitting cultural end to an enriching week.
My thanks go to Small Heath School, for inviting us to join in their Work Experience Project, and to the Maison Familiale School, near Coutances, for the time they devoted to making our visit happen. We are already looking forward to another visit next July!
Mrs M A Barrett