Earning my Middlebury MAT while Working in France with TAPIF

All of a sudden, I had booked up one of the most vigorous, hectic and rewarding 18 months of my life. As an aspiring public school French teacher, I recommend anyone with similar goals to do the same. 

The MAT program consists of two summers at the Language Schools for your target language. During the intervening academic year, you take four online, asynchronous classes in English. After the second summer, you finish with a student teaching practicum semester. TAPIF runs from October 1-April 30th, slotting very neatly in between the two summers. So after my first summer at the School of French, I moved out to Fécamp, a small but beautiful town on the coast of Normandy to start TAPIF!

I lived in a small apartment on the campus of the high school, Lycées Maupassant et Déscartes. I worked with seven different English teachers and saw a huge variety of teaching styles and proficiency levels. For example, one teacher asked me to create an hour-long presentation about the connection between the Handmaid’s Tale and the history of feminism in the United States. With another, all he ever asked was “Just get them talking!”

The sequence of programs built upon each other perfectly. The summer at the School of French before TAPIF got my language skills France-ready, and 7 months in France kept me sharp and prepared for my second summer. All of that experience together has made me more than prepared for student teaching.

Beyond just language skills, my colleagues at TAPIF invited me to all sorts of unforgettable experiences—helping at a school-wide Halloween hide-and-seek zombie game, a dance class at the local senior center, the annual “Fête du Hareng” (herring festival), a “bring-your-own-bowl” soup festival, and even a concert of American gospel music in an old church. I tried to say “yes” to things as much as possible, and I have no regrets. 

Workload was never an issue. With TAPIF, you work 12 hours a week, and MAT courses are designed to take 19 hours a week. Because the courses were asynchronous, I never had to worry about the time difference. I had ample time to do schoolwork, assist in English classes, as well as go on long walks around the rocky beaches and chalk cliffs of Fécamp, go into town to get an éclair at my favorite bakery, and haul my groceries up the hill I lived on. The first online MAT course started a few weeks before I left, and the final course finished up right before I returned home. I had the chance to demonstrate what I was learning in the courses, by trying out teaching practices with my English students. I also got to see how certain French teaching practices differed from what I was used to in the US. Like verbal, individual feedback in front of the whole class—shocking!

I only encountered a few hiccups, first with completing my 60 hours of classroom observation. Since Maupassant/Descartes was very strict about the 12-hour limit, I could not do observation hours from October to April and had to cram them all in before and after. Not every school will be as strict, but I would have a plan in place in case you aren’t able to do any observation during TAPIF. Another thing to consider: make sure where you are staying has Wi-Fi! I didn’t know until I arrived that the apartment at the school didn’t have internet, and though I was able to work with my colleagues to get it installed, I ended up having to take most of the first MAT course in the teacher’s lounge. 

Now, I am back from my final summer at Middlebury and am a few weeks into student teaching and working on my Vermont Licensure Portfolio. When I finish in December, I will have my MAT and my teaching license. TAPIF and Language Schools have made teaching in French a breeze, and my mentor teacher has commented on how my accent and fluency have dramatically improved since doing those programs. Middlebury has given me the skills to teach, and TAPIF has given me the experiences to make French real for my students. Some of my colleagues back in Fécamp are interested in doing a pen-pal exchange, and it is because of TAPIF that I can give my students this opportunity. 

If you are thinking of getting your MAT in French with Middlebury, I could not think of a better program to pair it with than TAPIF.