Pros
The kids were nice, on the whole.
Cons
I had a truly horrendous experience as an English Language Assistant. I was placed at two schools in the suburbs of Paris and was given no support whatsoever. Considering that these jobs are aimed towards either undergraduates or recent graduates you would expect some kind of communication - yet I had none. Very little help was given to find accommodation and I lived in a youth hostel for weeks. My "responsable" was as useless as a chocolate teapot and shouldn't have been given this title. I met her once. The teachers at the school were vile and expected me to have the same skills and knowledge as a qualified teacher, which is ridiculous, as I had received 3 days' training. They did things such as changed the days the school was open without informing me and organised a strike without informing me, so that I turned up at the school and only a few supply teachers were there and barely any of the kids. The headmistress of one school yelled at me in front of her class. I wrote a 2000-word complaint to the British Council detailing all of my experiences but received no reply. Having worked in the Civil Service since then, I now know that there is no accountability in any of the public sector so I imagine my letter was ignored as nobody wanted to deal with it. These schools aren't checked to see whether they are suitable for young assistants - the staff didn't want me there, and made this extremely clear.
