January 31st, 2022 / µ

French Language Schools

20 years ago, English schools popped up all over France. The schools were more often than not desperate for teachers due to an increasing need for French professionals to learn English, combined with a quick turnover of teaching staff. All you needed to get a job was a university degree and speaking native or near-native English.

I took one of these jobs on a dare to prove that these schools would hire anybody—even me.

The quick turnover was due to the conditions: low wages, awful working conditions, and sometimes a severe attitude problem amongst the management team were the reality in most of these schools.

The low wages were the biggest problem. Once, I sat down and tried to figure out my actual hourly salary instead of the one on my payslip. Considering transportation and preparation, it came down to around 5 – 10 euros per hour. It was in the 2000s, so you have to consider price development. But it was still close to, and sometimes below, the French minimum wage.

My school had some of the biggest names in fashion, pharmaceuticals, construction, and banking as clients, and they paid well. However, the school did not see fit to pay its staff a decent wage, far from it. Low wages and no benefits, those were the conditions.

You Don’t Not It for the Money

However, most people I met back then had not taken these teaching jobs for the wages. Most had taken these jobs to enter the French labor market and access health care and universities, which these schools exploited to the fullest. Most teachers I knew back then were, objectively speaking, poor.

The young men and women I met teaching English in Paris didn’t do it for the money but for just about any other reason:

Live in Paris for a couple of years

Learn French the natural way

Attend a French university (almost free)

Gain work experience

Romantic notions

Dreaming of becoming writers/journalists

An inner Hemingway wanting to develop and breathe Left Bank air.

Put the experience on their CV

Personal reasons

Just passing through

I Dare You!

Me, I had, as mentioned, taken the job on a dare. It went something like this at The Frog & The Rosbif in the second arrondissement in the early fall of 2008:

" I dare you!" Ryan said (Let's call him Ryan. That wasn't his name).

"Seriously?"

"Yes, seriously. 500 €!" (I honestly don't remember the exact amount).

"500 € and all I have to do is get a contract?" I asked.

"Yep!"

"You’ve already lost! These places will hire anyone as long as you can spell your name!”

“Well, then it should be easy….”

“Challenge accepted!”‍ ‍

“Are you sure? I mean, these are shitty places?” Suzanne said (Her name was not Suzanne).

“How long do I have to stay?”

“Two months, trial period.”

“Okay, fine.”

“Seriously, that’s just stupid. There’s a reason everyone calls the contract in these schools noodle contracts: Bad contracts, no benefits, low pay. Only foreigners take these jobs.”

“And that’s the point. –2 months?”

“2 months. That’s it. Get in and get out again.”‍ ‍

“I will do it! How bad can it be?”‍ ‍

“Bad! Welcome to the salt mines à la française!” Suzanne stated.

And she was right.

Two weeks later, I had been through several job interviews and said no to all but one. I put aside my life for what I planned to be a couple of months – it turned into almost nine.

Hard Work When You Got It

Summing up, it was hard work. You were assured 500 working hours per year, though you were expected to be available for about 60 hours per week and were only paid per class. You were to be available from 8 in the morning to 8 in the evening, 5 days a week.

You spend a lot of unpaid time dragging your rear end all over Paris and beyond, and so, by necessity, learning all the alleys and shortcuts around the various neighborhoods.

Lunch breaks? On the metro, walking from client to client, whenever - you ate on your own time.

Holidays? If you could afford the time off.

Benefits? Not a chance.

Help if clients behaved like jerks? Nope.

The conditions were, objectively speaking, awful. But it was a great insight and way into every level of Parisian society. And that money cannot buy.

Hemingway and the Gang

In addition, this lifestyle had a romantic feel to it. And that is what many people look for when they relocate to Paris, or, as Nietzsche saw it, the only true home for artists in Europe. Every day, people arrived in Paris with a teeny tiny Picasso or Hemingway in their stomach, carrying A Moveable Feast as if it were a sacred text.

The schedules in these schools left you with lots of free time on your hands between classes to explore every corner of the city. You quickly got to know it by heart, every street and alley, and you could survive on the salary and just live, if you lived prudently. And when you are young, poverty is just another life experience that will most likely improve dramatically with age.

The fact was that working in one of these schools did open doors to the French healthcare and educational system. It also gave you that French work experience on your resume, which enabled you to apply for other jobs in France. It was a chance to live and work in Paris for a while, romantic poverty included.

Paris Is Romance, That’s It!

A friend and I decided to write about this life, and the above was the story we wanted to tell. However, nobody gave a damn about the truth about how young Anglos were exploited in Parisian language schools. Paris is beauty and romance, and that's it! The truth behind the Haussmannian facades? No interest! Tell your story walking! And for a while, that was it. The text became a desk-drawer project. And my friend and I also split ways.

However, over the years, I repeatedly changed the text until someone saw something in it. Then I went that way with the text until it had nothing to do with reality. And then, well, another person lost interest.

Today, the story is a romantic one, light-years away from the poverty-ridden reality I experienced in Paris when I worked as an English teacher. And that’s a bit sad, because it was a good story. It portrayed an international community of young people in Paris before social media took over every aspect of our lives; when you could actually wander about without selfie-ing yourself and not feel that you missed something; when privacy was still taken for granted; and when it was okay to arrive at the office in the morning and say:

Oh God, I am so poor!

Do I miss this world? Absolutely not. I see it as one more important life lesson I would not have wanted to be without, however awful it was at times, because it was also very good at times.

Thanks for reading! I hope you found it valuable and worth your time! Until next time, remember to get your facts straight and that whatever good times you have will never come back as bad times,