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Outbyte PC Repair FREEClear out junk files and repair common Windows errorsFree Scan →Outbyte Driver Updater FREEScan for outdated or missing drivers - takes under a minuteDriver Scan →Brianna Di Monda’s essay recounts her first year teaching English in Alès, southern France, and argues that the experience unsettled the way teachers talk about equality. She arrived in August 2018, as the gilets jaunes protests began, and taught at Lycée Jean-Baptiste Dumas.
What the essay is about
“The Year I Taught in a Former Coal Mining Town” is a personal essay by Brianna Di Monda, not a general history of French mining or a guide to teaching in France. Its focus is her first year teaching English in Alès and the tension between teachers’ ideals about equality and the realities she encountered in the classroom.
The essay’s deck states its central critique directly: “Teaching in the South of France, I learned that equality was just a story teachers told about themselves.” The line frames the piece as a reflection on educators’ self-understanding, rather than a claim that the town’s mining past alone explains inequality.
Where and when Di Monda taught
Di Monda says she arrived in France in August 2018, during the first year of the gilets jaunes protests. Her assignment was Lycée Jean-Baptiste Dumas in Alès, a town in southern France described in the essay as a former coal-mining center.
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How Alès’s mining past enters the story
Di Monda reports that Alès produced 3.3 million tons of coal in 1958 and that the last mine closed in 2001. Those are figures and dates reported in her essay; the accessible text does not name an underlying statistical source, so they should be understood as the essay’s account rather than independently verified historical data.
The essay connects that industrial history to the people still living in the town. Di Monda writes: “The last mine closed in 2001, but the families stayed, and many of their descendants were my students.” In her telling, mining is not simply background history: its legacy is present in the families she came to teach.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.What teaching there taught her about equality
The essay’s stated takeaway is a challenge to teachers’ assumptions about their own fairness. Di Monda’s deck describes equality as “just a story teachers told about themselves,” suggesting that good intentions and professional ideals do not by themselves guarantee equal treatment or equal experience.
The available account establishes the essay’s setting and its central framing, but not the full sequence of classroom episodes or the detailed argument behind that conclusion. It is best read as Di Monda’s personal reckoning with teaching in a particular place and moment, rather than as a comprehensive assessment of Alès, French schools, or teachers generally.
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