Three Important Reasons We Didn’t Renew Our TAPIF Contracts

Jalen and I participated in the Teaching Assistant Program in France (TAPIF) during the 2019-2020 academic year. From placement and visa issues, to teaching in a classroom for the first time, to visiting cities all around France, to experiencing the COVID-19 outbreak, we had an interesting year as assistants to say the least! In general, we really liked our experience, but we decided not to renew our contracts for another year. Read on to find out why!

In our master plan for our future, we originally intended to apply for renewal in January as a back-up plan if our master’s degree hopes were dashed. We even went as far as downloading the PDF file and filling it out to send to our employers! However, one day, when the due date was drawing nearer, I asked Jalen whether we were sure that we wanted to submit the paperwork – and he said that he actually wasn’t. We discussed the pros and cons at length and decided that, despite our good experiences, we didn’t want to do the program over again.

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Teaching

While we loved living in France as assistants, we didn’t love teaching English. We never really considered teaching to be a long-term career option, and our aversion was only confirmed after giving it a try. Though we had plenty of fun times with our students and colleagues, our passions lie elsewhere, and we’ve determined that teaching just isn’t for us!

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Placement

If you read our article about our TAPIF placement fiasco, you know what a hard time Jalen and I had attempting to work in the same area of France. Though we succeeded in changing our placement and were both able to live together in Troyes, I worked locally while Jalen worked in a small town called Bar-sur-Aube, located about an hour drive or 30-minute train ride away. Given his teaching schedule, there were days that Jalen left home at 6:45 AM and didn’t return until 6:00 PM or later. Needless to say, it wasn’t an enjoyable work-life balance for a job that only requires and pays assistants to complete 12 hours per week of in-class instruction. Therefore, we knew that we wouldn’t want to teach another year in the same schools, but we didn’t want to go through the process of attempting to be placed together in another Académie either.

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Master’s Degrees

As I previously stated, our hope was to attend one of the French institutions to which we applied for our master’s degrees during the 2020-2021 academic year – which is exactly what we’ll be doing! However, at the time, we didn’t know whether we would be accepted or not. Nonetheless, we decided that no matter how much we wanted to stay in France, another year with TAPIF wasn’t the way to do it. We are thrilled to be getting our master’s degrees, but know that if it hadn’t worked out, we would have been happier occupying our year some other way.

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After thoroughly considering the above pros and cons, our choice was clear. We would stick to pursuing our master’s degrees and make TAPIF a one-year experience! Fellow assistants, are you planning to or have you already renewed your TAPIF contract? Let us know how you made your decision and what’s next for you in a comment!

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Check out our video to prepare to participate in TAPIF!

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