My school

Here is my classroom. It looks like any other classroom but I have to say I miss room 312 quite a bit (what I mean is, I miss you guys a LOT!!!).

As you already know, my school is called Boston Arts Academy. It is a public high school. High school starts with the ninth grade in the US (so if you lived here, you would already be in high school, and not in middle school).
Here are the names of the different grades in a high school (which are also those used in college):

• first year of high school, 9th grade: Freshman
  
• second year, 10th grade: Sophomore
  
• third year, 11th grade: Junior
  
• fourth year, 12th grade: Senior
  

Once you finish Senior year and pass all your subjects with at least a D- (D minus), you graduate from high school and may go to college. Of course, if you want to have a good college, you should have at least 2 As including one in your specialty subjects.

At BAA (Boston Arts Academy), I teach French 1 (French for beginners) to Juniors and Seniors.
I also teach Seminar (which is English reading and writing skills) to Freshmen.
And finally I share a class with an Arabic teacher: I thus have the opportunity to learn Arabic with Juniors and Seniors , and I also teach them Arab culture. I like teaching here a lot but there is a lot of work as you can imagine.

The students all have academic classes (math, science, world language, seminar...) but they also have an artistic major (specialty subject for arts). There are four majors: theater, music (vocal or instrument), dance and visual arts.


We spent our first day of school in the Red Sox stadium of Fenway, which is right opposite our school. The Red Sox is one of the most famous baseball teams in the US, and Bostonians are really crazy about them.



You can see the students here. The people wearing blue t.shirts are the faculty (=teachers) and staff (administration).



Hear the kind of cheerful greetings the students have for their teachers. Could you imagine that at Manet's?




You have a nice view of the Fenway Park here, and you can see how huge (=enormous) it is.




The school's t.shirt, Boston Arts Academy, school for the visual and performing arts.




Who is that girl? Is she a student or a teacher? I haven't got a clue, sorry... I think she doesn't know either.



Two days after school resumed (=started again), the students' parents were invited to meet with the staff and faculty, and before the meeting started, the arts teachers put up a show for the audience.



The students who did good last year receive a congratulations diploma, which is a bit like the ones you get at Manet's school for "encouragements", "tableau d'honneur" or "félicitations".

Boston public garden

This is Boston's Public Garden, a beautiful place to get some rest from Boston's busy life.


This is Harvard's church.


This is Harvard's campus, one of the most beautiful university campuses in the United States.




This is Copley T stop. Bostonians call their subway "the T", which is short for MBTA, the subway network. Notice the imposing church building.

Boston, MA

Hello again my favorite students,

I hope you are keeping great and that school is going well. I am sending you some photos of Boston and my school for you to have an idea of what it looks like. My American students are very, very eager to correspond with you and they have a lot of questions to ask you about France, Paris, French fashion, the museums, the music you listen to, the artists you like, so on and so forth. They are also looking forward to telling you about their school, how it works, the kinds of pastimes they have, etc. I am sure you will find this exchange very interesting and fulfilling, as it will definitely help open your horizons on a country most of you are very passionate about.

Enjoy, and tell me what you think.

This is downtown Boston, the center of the city. You can see modern and old buildings close to each other. The city is very beautiful and cozy. It is really nice to wander through the streets and Bostonians like to think that their city is the most European city of the United States.