Saving Your French Program
What’s wrong?
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Not enough teachers
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No support for teachers we have
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Multi language teachers have several organizations to choose from
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Singleton French teachers feel alone and isolated.
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Teachers don’t see a point to joining till it’s too late
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We often see that the districts where French is in trouble have no ATTF members
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The media don’t stress the importance to the importance of French
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Most media don’t know the importance of trade with Canada/Québec
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French bashing is still going on
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We aren’t producing any French teachers
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We can’t bring in foreign teachers
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Can’t get around state teacher certification laws
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We don’t hear about sinking French programs until it’s too late
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We are in grave danger from the promotion of other languages
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Too many French teachers have their heads in the sand
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Too many French teachers need to update their skills and do not have a way to improve them at a reasonable expense of time and/or money
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We have no professional writers to answer newspaper editorials
We don’t know or speak to the power brokers
We should
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Emphasize New York’s historical connections in your area: Champlain’s explorations, French and Indian War, Revolutionary War, local historical forts and settlements, the Huguenot presence in New Paltz.
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Emphasize Québec Connections. Québec businesses in the area. Québec firms doing business in our state.
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Use and update our New York Needs French home page
Meet with students and parents before students choose their language and enter the curriculum?
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Send high school students to the elementary schools to give French lessons
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Set up teacher exchanges between Québec and France as they do in Louisiana for their FLES programs
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Consider it a challenge to our French departments. Analyze all that we are doing and try to make it even better.
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“Listen to the railroad tracks”. Put our heads against the rail? Did we hear this train coming when it was very far away? What did we do about the warning signs?

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Develop advocates for French from outside the profession. We could learn a lot form
Canadian Parents for French
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Mobilize pro French students, parents and school board members.
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Mobilize other local schools and colleges. Soon it might be their jobs also.
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Make sure all French teachers are AATF members. We have an advocacy and mentoring programs.
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Do a program evaluation every year. Are enrollments going up or down? Why?
What can be done to strengthen our program?
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See if there is a move to dump French? Who is behind it? Is there a hidden agenda?
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Make sure we emphasize la francophonie. French is more than France.
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Play them some Québécois music (Cowboys Fringants, Mes Aïeux, Kaïn, Boom
Désjardins, Eric Lapointe) and show some québécois films (Babine, Maurice Richard,
La grande séduction)
Answer these questions
1.
How are you promoting French in the district?
2.
Are you in the paper, on radio, TV?
3.
Does you school participate in the National French Essay Contest? In the
Grand Concours?
4.
Does the AP Exam help or hurt our programs?
5.
Do teachers do “fun” stuff in the classroom so that kids want to be there?
6.
Do the kids really like French?
AATF Advocacy http://www.utm.edu/staff/globeg/advofr.shtml
NYSAFLT French Advocacy SIG http://sig.nysaflt.org/index.php?PHPSESSID=33fd26231cd4bc8e67daff1552ec84bf&bo ard=3.0
New York Needs French http://www.utm.edu/staff/globeg/nyadvocat.html
The World Speaks French Web Site http://www.theworldspeaksfrench.org/