Living and Teaching in France

So here I am living in France again. This country that was a place I had pasted together from scraps of movies, French classes, and cultural stereotypes. About three years ago I was lucky enough to fall into this dream place and to find that romantic Amelie Poulain-style France existed, if incomplete. My study abroad time was all about utopia but of course, what I presumed France to be was still wrapped up in markets, lavender, checks from parents and boxes of new shoes. I was very eager to come back.

Working in France, or more precisely teaching English as a foreigner in the school systems of France, is a sort of unbelievable phenomenon. Work lasts twelve hours a week and when you do the math, it’s really well paid, too. (Let‘s just say that if I were working 40 hours a week I‘d be making 42,240 Euros a year - though I doubt they‘d pay me that much to do what I‘m doing, really.) If you legally work in France and you go sign up in a government building somewhere, you have free health coverage. And then it gets even better; there are around four vacations (PAID vacations) per school year and they usually last two weeks. The longest stretch of time between vacations is often broken with a nationwide strike during which the teachers and most of the students just don’t come. The trick is finding out what to do with yourself in the meantime.

Of course, if you’re a citizen in the European Union, you can easily go out and get another job at a private language school or in a café. If you aren’t, it all depends on the work visa. If you manage to get one of these, consider yourself lucky.