Following my practicum, I completed a three week Community Experience (CFE) placement at L’Ecole Bilingue, a French Immersion elementary school in Vancouver, BC.  I approached my French Immersion placement with trepidation: raised in Ottawa, I am fluent in French, but have lacked practice since my departure over a decade ago.  My first day at L’Ecole Bilingue did little to allay these concern– I struggled to gain my linguistic footing and felt self-conscious, which further impeded my verbal expression.  I had reservations about whether or not I would be able to complete the placement.  Thankfully, my French rapidly returned– and my confidence, comfort, and willingness to take risks (mostly, the risk of being embarrassed and misunderstood) have improved.

Mother’s Day mobile completed by a second grade student.

While I participated in classes ranging from kindergarten to sixth grade, I spend the majority of my time at L’Ecole Bilingue in a second grade classroom.  During this time, I assisted in all subject areas, including math and reading groups, and led the class when the teacher on several occasions.  At the beginning of my placement, one of my fears had been teaching a craft project, because the lesson would require precise and sequential explanations.  With Mother’s Day around the corner, I was called upon to  lead the class in the creation of a gift; I chose a mobile.  Ultimately, the most challenging part of this project was the paper cutter, which has been my nemesis for decades now– foiled by old school technology!

Throughout my CFE, I was reminded that while the structure of schooling encourages a bifurcation between elementary and secondary, education is instead a continuum.  Participating in classes across all grade levels provided me with a greater understanding of students as individual learners, and not merely as producers of content to be assessed in discrete subjects and grades.  During my time at L’Ecole Bilingue, I was humbled by the attention teachers paid to the emotional, intellectual, and social temperature of their classrooms.  Creating a safe environment for learners requires not just building relationships with individual students, but being aware of the temperament of the class as a whole, and the realization of the nuanced malleability of this temperament.  These understandings will continue to inform my journey as an educator.

Returning to school and getting my B.Ed. has been an exercise in humility in general, and never more so than during the three weeks of my CFE.  I hope to carry with me the vulnerability, the floundering, and the need for support that defined those three weeks– these feelings, while discomfiting, have deepened my empathy for students.  In order to improve not only as a French speaker, but also as a placement student and as an educator, I had to humble myself and admit my own need to improve– in order to teach, I first needed to learn.

The students’ completed mobiles. And my triumph over the paper cutter.