“Focus, be ready and do your best!” » (“Focus, be ready and give the best of yourself!”) CE1 students from the Ecole des Vertus (3rd arrondissement) play sack racing. Everything looks like a classic sports activity for children except that here, the teachers and facilitators speak in English. Here we are, this Tuesday, at the Academy of Languagesrue Cambon in Paris, for an exclusive preview visit, in the middle of an immersive week, as promised by the establishment which opened its doors in September, and will be inaugurated on Friday by Anne Hidalgo.
“It’s great to offer the opportunity to Paris to students who cannot afford to leave,” enthuses the director of the Vertus school. “The idea is, in one of the most segregated academies [socialement] of France, to advance social and educational diversity, and to offer all students the best conditions for success whatever their social origins and their history”, explains Patrick Bloche, deputy for Education to the mayor of Paris . The system, developed by the Paris City Hall and the rectorate, is completely free.
Here, we learn by doing
The students affected by the initiative come from CP, CE1, CM1, CM2 and even 6th grade and are welcomed for a week, during school time. Internships for high school students are also organized during short school holidays and over shorter periods. Academy teachers speak to children only in English, with some forays into French only if necessary. For the moment only the language of Shakespeare is on the program, but the idea is to eventually organize immersive weeks in German, Spanish or Italian. Adults also have access to evening classes and local residents will be invited to activities in English, such as bicycle repair workshops.
“Children don’t come to do English lessons, they come to do things in English,” explains Marie Automne Thepot, co-director of the Language Academy, who has worked on the notion of third places and is interested in to popular education. Because the Academy of Languages is not really an academic place in the high-sounding sense of the term. Here we favor play, a “relaxed and emancipatory” mix, hopes the manager, where the main thing is to make people want to be interested in another culture, another language.
New York atmosphere
Going upstairs, still occupied by two classes from a traditional primary school which will leave in July, we come across middle classes singing “ You put your right foot in » (“Put your right foot inside”…), in front of drawings inspired by Keith Harring. Here the atmosphere is New York, and the children are very proud to show their production, faithful to the painter imbued with pop art and graffiti who died in the 1990s. Even higher up, we find the CE1, this time drawing bagpipes. To the question, “And you, have you learned any words in English?” ”, everyone nods their heads in a big “yes”. “Bagpipe [cornemuse]flower [fleur] », Quotes Maxime, 7 years old. He continues: “It gives me little quizzes and I really like hearing English spoken. » «Floor [sol] », Mathilde seems to say, before being taken back by her comrades. “Uh, throw [jeter] », tries the little girl.
“What we are doing with the Language Academy is to show that public schools are capable of having places of innovation and of taking initiatives to renew themselves,” believes Patrick Bloche, curious about also experiment where school and extracurricular times no longer have boundaries since the activities are carried out and designed together.
Teachers pocket ideas
At the end of the week, the children receive a diploma similar in every way to a “real” one as well as a passport, during a ceremony during which they will be able to eat the “shortbreads” (Scottish shortbread biscuits) which they will have produced, and will show their productions, dances and songs learned to their classmates from other schools. “After a week, the little wolves have relaxed on the tongue and they dare! », remarks Marie Automne Thepot.
For adults too, the experience is intended to be enriching, since the idea of the Language Academy is that teachers return to their establishment “with motivation and method”, in the words of Patrick Bloche, and above all with ideas of activities to do throughout the year in English. A resource center should soon flourish in the middle of the Academy, which will thus also become a place of training.