Happy learners are good learners! A blog for and by LFM pupils in Moscow.

Do you see the sea? Stop being sad, I thought I taught you how to bring your happiness with you.

I perfectly remember this moment, it was in 2006, and I was in primary school. It was my first year at the international school of Lille, a place where I was supposed to learn English as if it were my first language. My parents sent me there because they thought it could be useful, something I cannot deny. I also remember that I didn’t knew a word of English and that I was, directly after my entrance in September, confronted to some strange people who were talking in a strange language. I was lost and alone until a tall man with a kind smile came to talk to me. I remember his smooth voice and his size that make him look like a teddy bear. The minute I saw him, I knew that I had found an ally in him, someone that I could trust. -Hi, my name’s mister Flower, I am your English teacher. What’s your name? He talked slowly in French, articulating every syllable, so I could understand him well. I was very shy during this period so I didn’t answer. He didn’t take offense of it and smiled me. He really loved children. During the next few weeks, I barely said a word in his class, just gulping down his words, trying my hardest to be the best one, just so he would be proud of me. I also wanted to understand everyone around me, to be able to communicate with them and to make friends from every nationality. With my determination as weapon, I progressed very fast but it wasn’t going as fast as I wanted. They were a few verbs who didn’t want to get in my head. Not much, just four verbs and a noun: see, sea, think, teach and bring. Not so complicated, will you tell me, but in the head of a seven year-old girl who was obsessed by the desire to be the best, it’s a world to cross. I passed months trying to learn them but, as the year moved forward, it became obvious to me that I will never be able to use them. It kind of depressed me. It wasn’t the worst thing ever but it makes me sad and I understood that his interest of mister Flower about me was getting lower. He still was the kindest teacher but it seems that the sparkle was gone. It had been already six months since I joined this school when we went on a  a school trip in a place called “la Baie de Somme”. The only thing I remember of this trip is a straight road following the sea. The sky looked pretty bad even if the temperature was warm. I was walking next to a friend, thinking about my biggest problems of the week. It was something I often did to think about solutions. Apart from a bad grade that I got in French and a few fights with a friend of mine, my number one problem was the same as the past week: the four cursed words. We were supposed to write a short essay about what we thought of the trip, what we saw, what does the trip taught us and what we were going to bring back to our families. It makes me very anxious. I was going to get a terrible grade. My English teacher already came to ask why I looked so sad and so nervous and when I told him, he gave me a very reassuring look and said: -It’s okay Capucine. I perfectly know that you have problems with those words; we’ll do it together if you want. I was astonished to see how much kindness he was able to put in a glance. Every single time he talked to me, I felt like he was just a bottomless well of generosity and kindness. During the last day, I was walking alone along the road, sad, so sad, when he called me: -Capucine! Capucine! (He arrived at my level) Do you see the sea? Stop being sad, I thought I taught you how to bring your happiness. Hearing this words, I stopped walking, glancing at him like he was God. He had found my solution. He found my way to remember my cursed words. Thinking about it now, I believe that this man was a great man, who loved his job and who loved kids. I still remember him because at the beginning, he came to see me when I was alone and he continued to help me all over the year to understand how English works. By finding these two sentences, he really helped me.