Headmistress comes late to French, starts school children early by Cynthia D. Stowell Jane Josselyn ('69) hated French at an early age. But on a Peace Corps assignment in French-speaking Ivory Coast, she quickly became Ouenl in spite of herself. Now, as headmistress of Portland's French-American Bilingual School, Josselyn sees to it thai 80 children are immersed in the language she eventually learned to love. For Josselyn, learning French was a matter of survival. " It was do or die," she said about her first six months in the African nation. But (or the mostly American students speaking French in her school, it is more a matter of choice. "Their parents want them to be exposed to another culture through the language, II explained Josselyn. "Children in this generation will do more traveling, not just physically but mentally, and the sooner they get to know the cuhural differences, the better," said Josselyn, whose school fosters pride in the "heritage of western civilization." The h""lIs of her school ring with the sounds of French-and not German, Spanish or Italian-because of a certain jean-Claude Paris, who founded the French-American School in 1979. But it is not only the French founder's language that is attractive to parents; it is also the school's rigorous French national curriculum, which emphasizes a traditional, structured classroom approach sanctioned by the government of france. Students in the worldwide French system are generally two years ahead of the average American public school student, noted Josselyn. Although the curriculum at the French-American School is somewhat modified for American appetites, the bilingual experience is intense. From the first day, preschoolers work and play entirely in French, understanding most of their teachers' instructions ~~:ri:h~~!~~;~;d·I~~tS~~~r::jns in first grade, but all other subjects continue to be taught in French. Bilingualism is an invaluable experience, according to the headmistress. "A bilingual child can make mental leaps with his own language that a monolingual child cannot," Josselyn explained. "It makes your own language richer and increases your vocabulary." The pre-school through third grade students at the French-American School have a great advantage over their headmistress, who didn't start learning French until junior high. A person's ability to absorb a new language diminishes after the grade school years when learning becomes more of an intellectual actiVity, said Josselyn . 8 ~ uturJEUSE pOOR If ,ROFESSfUR ! She knows this from her own difficulties with the French language as well as from teaching French to junior high students at the Catlin Gabel School in Portland for (ourteen years. like many other foreign language teachers, she knew her job could have been easier if the children had been exposed to the language earlier. Nevertheless, she chaired a lively foreign languages department at the private school, also directing an exchange program and accompanying students on three overseas tours to France and Switzerland. The French·American School was "an animal growing out of control" when Josselyn was selected to be its first headmistress last year. Run by comminee for its first four years, the rapidly growing school needed some strollg direction as it occupied the old Sylvan School building and established itself in the community. "This is a very young school that can go in any direction," said the enthusiastic administrator. As the only school of its kind in the Pacific Northwest, the French-American School is feeling its way along, adding a grade each year and refining its curriculum as it goes. Josselyn, who is the only female head of a French government-sanctioned school in the U.S., ;s ;n contact with bilingual programs in Canada and louisiana to share ideas and techniques. "We'll see a rise in bilingual schools," predicted Josselyn, who also expects to see currently "thin" foreign language programs in public Jane Josselyn ('69) schools given more emphasis as college requirements stiffen. "I was forced into taking two years of latin and French," Josselyn said about her public school years in Alaska and then at Grant High School' in Portland. This negative experience didn't stop her, as a girl scout, from spending the summer aher graduation in France, where she realized her "French was still lousy. I decided it wasn't my language." At Portland State, she was active in the International Club, but French still wasn't agreeing with her so she dropped it for Russian. Then, taking one of the "plunges" for which she is famous, she signed up (or the Peace Corps at the end of her sophomore year and went to IVOry Coast. Fqr the young woman who never intended to be a teacher, administrator or a speaker of French, life has been a series of such unexpected moves. "I had no real skills, so they trained me in home economics," she recalled about her Peace Corps experience. Seeing a need for ESl teachers, she began working in a middle school where only French and two native languages were spoken. The young volunteer also responded to the severe malnutrition problems of her village by learning the basics of nursing. another job she had always meant to avoid. Readjusting to American life when she finally came home was difficult. "I went to Kienow's (grocery store) and thought, 'Oh, myl' I couldn't buy chicken on the claw and I couldn't see where the milk came from!" She also noticed that American children were indulged to a degree that would be unthinkable in Ivory Coast, where "you didn't hear children crying much, and they were old by the age of five." Josselyn was further shocked by the loud. bragging, "me-oriented" and increasingly violent society of her nalive country. But she has slayed, more or less. As an ESl teacher and trainer of Peace Corps volunteers for three years through the Experiment for International living in Brattleboro, Vermont, Josselyn worked on in-country training projects in such places as Tunisia and Micronesia. later, she finished up her degree .at PSU ("It took me ten years"), where she enjoyed the mixture of people ;;f:~~~~ ~~cTti~oN~~~~~I~~~~n her home ever since. Now, at the bilingual school, she is acquiring such useful skills as how to unplug toilets, run an oil furnace, and be a sympathetic landlady to other programs renting space in the Sylvan School. "Thi5 school, I'm convinced, runs on miracles," said the frenzied headmistress, whose administrative staff consi5ts of a secretary and a custodian. As Josselyn tended a child's bleeding nose and worried about the French government's reaction to a sensitive personnel decision she had just made, her di~rse experience seemed to be coming together quite naturally. Just as naturally as "Ie fran>ais" now tumbles off her tongue.
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