Teaching Assistant Program in France: Regional Placements

Receiving the Arrêté de Nomination

Once you receive your arrêté, you will know exactly where your work will be located. Now you can get your plane ticket if you haven't already and start looking for housing. However, you might not receive your arrêté until August. (And don't worry if you notice that British and Irish assistants receive theirs much earlier than you - this is because they are EU citizens and do not need special authorization to work in France, unlike non-EU citizens). Most French schools are closed in July and August, and you cannot get your visa until you have your arrêté, so be prepared to wait for months, and then rush to get your paperwork done at the last minute before leaving.

If you still have not received your arrêté by the end of August, contact Carolyn Collins and she will track it down for you. And in some cases, your school will e-mail you first before sending your arrêté in the mail. Make copies of your arrêté as soon as you get it. This is the most important piece of information for getting your visa. The French Embassy in the US does not receive a copy of the arrêté, so if you lose it, the Embassy cannot replace it. However, some consulates will allow you to use a faxed copy of your arrêté when you apply for your visa.

If you are a primary assistant, you may just have the address of the Inspection Académique (IA) and/or the Inspecteur d'Education Nationale (IEN) on your arrêté instead of an actual school (and the IA/IEN may be in a different city than the schools you are assigned to). The IEN's cover the larger cities, while the IA's cover entire départements. A lot of primary assistants don't find out what schools they will be teaching at until just before they need to start work, so the IA or IEN is listed on your arrêté just so you can get your visa. In general, you will placed in the town that is listed under "rattachée administrativement" so you can at least start looking for housing.

I received my arrêté on July 8. I also received information about the required orientation (which may take place before October 1 depending on your académie), general information about my académie, and the Carnet de Route (guidelines booklet) for language assistants (in English). You can download the Carnet from the CIEP website but I've scanned all of the other documents and you can view them here:

Letter from Recteur	Orientation Info	Arrêté de Nomination	ANAEM Form
Grenoble Info 1	Grenoble Info 2	Grenoble Info 3	Grenoble Info 4

Grenoble's website also included the updated informational documents for premier degré and second degré last year. I have also written another page specifically about the académie de Grenoble and/or ville d'Annecy if you are placed nearby.

If you don't receive any information about when your académie's orientation will take place, check the CIEP's site for dates and locations. There is one list for primary assistants and one list for secondary assistants, but you should check them both regardless of which level you are teaching.

The ANAEM form (also called OMI) might or might not be included with your arrêté. This is the form you will need to mail once you arrive in France so that your medical checkup will be scheduled (you must get a medical clearance before you can stay legally in France). The Embassy suggests making a copy of the form and mailing one to France a few weeks before you arrive and mailing the other as soon as you arrive in France, so that your appointment will be scheduled earlier. Do not worry if you did not receive this form before you arrive in France! Sometimes the académie will e-mail you the form anyway.

The first thing you should do now is write letters or send e-mails to your school(s). I sent both and you can view my letter here. However, since most schools are closed until the 3rd week of August, it may be a while before you hear anything from them. The Carnet gives information about what questions to ask. You should definitely ask if housing is available. If you received a general packet from the académie and not from the actual school (like I did), you can look on your académie's website to find more information about your school (and probably its website and email addresses.) Each académie in France has their own website using the address www.ac-nameofacadémie.fr so mine was www.ac-grenoble.fr

You can start gathering information about your city now too. Most cities in France have their own website and many use the address www.ville-nameofcity.fr so if you wanted to find out information about any city in France, just fill in the name. (Some of the larger cities just use their names in the URL, such as Paris, which is www.paris.fr and available in English too) These city websites are very comprehensive and you can probably find maps and public transportation routes and schedules as well. You can also look up your city on itransports.com and see what type of public transportation is available.

You really need to be patient in waiting for your arrêté to arrive. Each académie, and sometimes the individual départements, mail out the arrêtés at different times. However, if you are really impatient you can try e-mailing the person in charge of the assistants in your académie to see if they will give you any information. Search on your académie's website for assistants étrangers and see if anything comes up. Do not e-mail your local French embassy (that you sent your application to) asking for information about your placement. They do not know where you have been placed and they have nothing to do with you anymore once you are accepted.