One of the parts I really enjoy about my job is working with the English language assistants in our area. This year there are 75 of them and they began work on October 1st. I am proud to be part of their training programme and I enjoy accompanying them along this road they have chosen. It is indeed a road that is so very close to my heart because I started out at that very same point. October 1986 saw me starting out as a language assistant in a collège in the Vosges. Speaking very little French and with hardly any knowledge of French life and culture, I arrived on the ferry from Calais and set to work in the school in the middle of the Vosgian countryside. Within two weeks, I had met my future husband and life had changed forever !! But at the time, I didn’t know that, of course.

I am therefore always excited to meet the new intake every year and it is a challenge to tackle the blank canvases that they represent. Our language assistant for the year, Cherie, is in this photo – welcome to her – and a very good year to all language assistants everywhere in the world.