Last Wednesday was just the best day. The BEST! It was Hannah Day. I feel so absolutely blessed and proud and humbled all at once to have taught this kid, and now she's not a kid anymore. So, back in the summer (after I returned from my awesome whirlwind of PD and travel), I got this message via G-chat: Hannah Koeppl
Salut Mlle G!
Erin Gibbons
Salut!
Ça va?
Hannah Koeppl
Bad news... I have been removed from Guinea for sometime a cause d'ebola. :(
Erin Gibbons
Oh! Where are you?
In the States?
Hannah Koeppl
Just arrived in the States this afternoon.
My parents' house.
Erin Gibbons
Ah. Does that mean that you finish the remainder of your PC service later, or are you done?
Hannah Koeppl
It depends. After 60 days if ebola is gone and good I go back and finish service. If not Idk.
Erin Gibbons
Gotcha. Well, Imma go ahead an profiter of that window....
Any interest in coming in to talk to my classes?
School starts on the 20th, so...I can work around your schedule from there.
Hannah Koeppl
Absolutely! I'm very free. Just give me a few days in advance. Anything I should bring? Pics? Art?
So last week, Hannah came in for her visit. If I could pick what my last day of teaching would look like, it would that: a former student who exceeded my wildest expectations about what any student of mine would ever do, and then was so willing to come in and share all day long about her experience with my current classes. Seeing this young person coming around the corner of the foreign language hallway in her exotic clothes with a smile on her face and a book full of Peace Corps literature was just about the best way to start a school day ever.
Her mini-lesson on malinké was delightful (A douma feuw!!!), and the pictures and video she shared were well chosen and really seemed to engage the classes.
Hannah tells us about her host family during training
Hannah was such a neat student when she was at RB, so a fair number of teachers stopped by to say hello and check out her presentation. Even my classes who weren't too chatty listened with rapt attention, and (oh joy of joys!) Hannah was even able to do most of her presentation in French to my 3 Honors and AP classes...and they understood.
Although I wanted to be a good little teacher-blogger and get this posted sooner, I'm glad I waited. I've had a number of students express interest in her story already, but today I actually had someone specifically ask for Hannah's email because she's seriously considering the Peace Corps. Teachers, can I get a ¨hallelujah¨? Taylor Mali, please write a poem for me about this!!! Because even better than me making a difference, I taught this person who is making a difference herself.
I hope for Hannah's sake and certainly for all those in Guinea at risk of this horrible disease, that things get under control and she'll be able to go back and complete her 2 years of service. If not, though, I know this one is still going to have a fabulously interesting life.
As some of my readers know (because that's how you became my readers!), I gave my first presentation to a national audience of French teachers this summer at the AATF Annual Convention. One week after returning from France, and I was off to La Nouvelle Orléans!
Those who are interested in the presentation itself can refer to my blog page created just for that reason.
This was a great experience for me, personally as well as professionally.
Safe space...right, Internet? I'm kind of a professional development junkie. I have gone to more French teaching workshops than would probably be considered normal. And it's not a chore to me. I love it. I've presented at ICTFL twice now, and I was able to test out my flipped class presentation on my classmates at the CAVILAM earlier in the summer, but this summer's AATF convention was the big show.
The feedback on my presentation was great. I've discovered that I really get a lot out of helping other teachers to realize their abilities, problem-solve, and incorporate technology and other nouveautés in meaningful ways. It's something I enjoy and hope to continue doing for the rest of my career. I just really love to teach, whether I'm teaching my students or colleagues.
Some of my favorite topics/workshops/encounters at the 2014 Convention were:
Sarah Smith's presentation "First, You Start With a Roux" on teaching Cajun culture and really any of the presentations I attended on French in North America.
Deanna Scheffer's workshop on this year's AP French exam results. So helpful!
I was honestly pleased with and impressed by every session I attended. Just like my CAVILAM experience, though, I'm probably looking forward to a lot of extra-long work days just because I can't NOT use these great new ideas. #frenchteacherproblems
Meeting up with Julie Baker from the University of Richmond (VA) (Ha! It's funny because I teach in Richmond, too. That's why it's funny.) She shared with me some great approaches to culture: not just Products-Practice-Perspectives, but also Describe-Interpret-DON'T Evaluate.
Having food and fun with some old and new French teacher friends. Emeril's restaurant NOLA is totally worth a visit. Basically, the tour de food did not stop. But I didn't get around to crawfish étouffée.
The walking tour was pretty neat. Rather than the "Here's a building. This is why it's interesting." model, we learned about one particular well-to-do family while exploring the French Quarter. Pretty neat.
After my first full year of flipped classroom and a wonderful summer of professional development, I feel it's time to transition this blog to dealing with a greater variety of topics. So, to start, I'd like to share a bit about what's changed between Year 1 and Year 2 of the flip.
Back in February of this year, I learned about the stages pédagogiques offered by the French Embassy and decided to go for it, and I was one of 5 U.S. K-12 teachers awarded a scholarship through the AATF! This was an all-expenses-paid-except-for-airfare program to one of 3 language teaching centers, and I chose the CAVILAM in Vichy, mainly because it had the reputation of being the most "techy".
What the other American teachers and I were in for was a 2-week intensive program in the teaching of French as a foreign language, taught by some of the best FLE teachers I have ever met, at a school that specializes in doing just that (It's almost the only thing they do!). "CAVILAM" is a name that appears in the credits on some of the best pedagogical materials in print or online. Just look at TV5 Monde or Le plaisir d'apprendre.
I could go on and on about this trip, but I'll limit myself to a few highlights:
1. Colleagues, now friends The people I met on this trip were amazing; the American group, in particular, were all scholarship winners as well, so it was a pretty accomplished, enthusiastic group of teachers. In addition to the 10 Americans, I met French teachers from all over the world: South Sudan, Turkey, Ireland , Czech Republic, Russia, Spain, Norway, Brazil, Mexico, Lithuania, and Italy. One of the beautiful things about this particular experience is that because we were all there for the right reasons, but also because we're all from different countries, French was our lingua franca (LITERALLY!), so I really didn't speak English at all, even though more than half my class was made up of English-speakers. That much immersion and the combination of hearing all the teacher jargon from native speakers helped me come out of the summer with a timely tune-up on my own French proficiency.
Mes amis profs!
2.ClassesOur instructors were wonderful, too. I absolutely felt refreshed by the approaches they presented. A lot of what we did was to re-ground ourselves in solid teaching philosophy. I know for some teachers that doesn't always seem practical, but for me, at this point in my teaching, it was absolutely key. Simple concepts like, "Learners can't produce a sound that they aren't able to hear" and "As foreign language teachers, we are all guilty of taking a wonderful song and chopping it up into pieces or filling it with holes! Sometimes we just have to let a song be a song!" have made a huge difference already in the way I've started the year.
"Monsieur Lexique"
In our first week, all the Americans followed the same program, with one major focus throughout: creating lessons based on authentic documents. "Didactiser" is my new favorite verb.
In the second week, we could choose from several programs. I wound up being the only American in "Teaching vocabulary and grammar in a communicative context", but it was a great class with some very strong instructors. It was all about getting at grammar and vocab through--of course--authentic documents, but in particular, creative writing, song, games, etc. Lo-o-o-o-o-oved it!
The only problem now is how I fit everything I've learned into my classes! I can't use my oldy, moldy stuff anymore!!
3. MY HOST FAMILY! That's right: FIFTEEN years since I started studying French, and this summer was my first real host family experience! I absolutely loved them. Valéry and Magali were pretty close to my age, and we had wonderful conversations. Their 3 small children were not only adorable, but it was a fantastic opportunity for me to play anthropologist and see if Raymonde Carroll and Pamela Druckerman were telling me the truth about French parenting. (They were.) Most Francophiles will probably remember the viral video of "Miss Capucine" who told the crazy fairy tale about the hippopotames a few years back. Well, it's not a video, and it's not an original fairy tale, but I did get a little language sample from the 4-year-old (I can't wait to use this during our "contes et légendes" unit in French 3!):
One of my favorite adventures with my host family was opening my big mouth about how great and how different Chicago-style pizza is, and then being met with, "Alors, tu peux nous en faire une???" It took me quite a bit of Internet research to pull that off, especially since, as I explained after we had eaten, that even Chicagoans normally just go to a restaurant for those. So...yes, I made my first deep dish pizza ever in a French oven!
4. The FRANCE of it allI love to explore parts of France I've never seen, and I had so many chances to do just that! The Service Culturel at CAVILAM does a great job of organizing excursions and evening activities, since pretty much the entire student body is from out-of-country. I got to climb a volcano (le Puy de Dôme); it was not easy. We also went to the village of Moulins, near Vichy, which has retained its medieval look, including the jacquemart on the belltower. (Quick sassy tour guide story: I asked how to spell "jacquemart". He was all " 'Jacques' comme...'Jacques' et 'mart' comme...ben...'mart'." Thanks, Guillaume. Thanks a lot.)
Puy de Dôme
Le jacquemart de Moulins
The Service Culturel also decided that the first week we were there would be a great time to show BOTH OSS 117 movies. That was a mistake. This did not stop for two weeks as an inside joke:
Overall, I probably had way more fun than should be allowed. I continue to love France: the pace of life, the way of being, the sights, the sounds, and that only spurs me on to encourage my students to travel, to find themselves in another country in a way they never would if they stayed put their whole lives. As G. K. Chesterton said, “The whole object of travel is not to set foot on foreign land; it is at last to set foot on one’s own country as a foreign land.” Ain't it the truth. P. S. Guess who has two thumbs and spent her 30th birthday in France...
