An Open Letter to My French Teachers
Dear Monsieur Mathieu, Monsieur Roy, Monsieur Wallman and Madame Plaunt,
This is a letter of apology. And regret.
I don't regularly go down the Path of IF-ONLY, but these days, I've trudged down a few times.
If only I had listened in French class.
If only I had cared about the conjugation of 'les verbes'.
If only.
Monsieur Mathieu and Monsieur Roy, I was very young in your French classes and hadn't quite hit my full out rebellious-I'll-never-use-that-in-the-real-world phase, so to you, I only apologize for not quite giving my all.
But, for real. For REALLY real, I need to apologize to dear Monsieur Wallman and Madame Plaunt.
(Some background information: I went to a private Christian school and in my highschool French class, there were 4 students including myself.)
Wally Wallman (that's not his real name, just what we called him), I remember sadly how we would misbehave in your class and you would just tolerate us. I remember how we would beg you to take us to Galleria (the really cool shopping mall at the time) for class and that we would PROMISE to speak French while we shopped, and you would take us and when we got there, not only would we NOT speak a single solitary word of French but we would take off on you and go shopping in stores like Canary Island and Gap. I'm regretting those days right now.
Why didn't I think French would somehow be important in my future? My own words ring in my ears, deafeningly loud: "I'll never need to know how to speak French."
Wasted time. Wasted youth.
And dear Madame Plaunt who I kindly referred to as "Madam-eeee" the entire time you attempted to bring my grade 11 French class up from our grade 7 level of French to something even slightly closer to grade 8. But alas, your energy was wasted. I can recall very little from those classes other than your laughter (due completely to frustration, I'm sure.)
And here I am now. In a French speaking country. Attempting to drag out from the recesses of my brain any sort of French....a word, a phrase, a conjugation of a verb and I think back to YEARS of French lessons, somehow lost and wasted on me.
I bet you're all laughing now. I bet it feels really good, too.
I bet I would if I were you.
There is hope however. Today, alone, I negotiated the price of bananas with a woman and I don't think I embarrassed myself. My little French "professeur" is a 10 year old boy named Emmanuel who has agreed to help me with French if I will help him with English.
Perhaps he will have better luck.
Sweet teachers, I know you will all have extra stars on your crowns in heaven for dealing with the likes of me over the years. Thank you for your years of service and know that, even though it's a little late, I appreciate what you tried to teach me!
My lanta! How we all misbehaved for them so badly! :) (Even us younger ones!) too many memories! Lol
ReplyDeleteMy dear sweet Penny, Erin. I am not laughing at you at all, and although I was undoubtedly frustrated from time to time (okay often), that was never the reason for my laughter. You should know that you were one of my least rebellious students. I am more inclined to remember you for your cheerfulness, your sense of humour and your beautiful smile.
ReplyDeleteThat was my first year of teaching, and I had such idealistic goals. I actually wanted my students to learn something, and to be somewhat competent at their own grade level, in case they should ever transfer to a different school. I taught from grade 3 to 12 that year (grade 11 and 12 were combined as were 9 and 10), and after initial assessments I realized that all of my students were pretty much at the same place. The only difference was that grade 3s didn't do cursive writing yet. It was a very difficult and tiring year for me. I put in a lot of hours trying to help my students attain the level the provincial curriculum expected them to have. I don't regret any of that.
My deepest regret is in not finding a way to help my students to see that there was a life beyond high school and a world beyond London, Ontario. You were not the only one to ever say that you would never need French. I tried to convince a student once that he might actually want to cross the border into Quebec one day, if only to drive through to the east coast. He told me that he would never leave London. It saddened me to think that he had such a narrow perspective, and I wasn't able to convince him otherwise. Other students thought that if Quebec separated (remember the big referendum that year), they wouldn't have to learn French. I believed that they would need it all the more, but beyond that I knew that there was value in learning a second language even if you never had to speak it. It is not really about politics.
The saddest part is that because of the way the human brain develops, the time when it is easiest for a person to learn a foreign language is when they are young. That is also the time when they are least able to understand consequences, and so they live for whatever is most desirable in that moment. There are cliches like, "Hindsight is 20/20" and "Too soon old, too late smart" for a reason. This is life. We don't always make the best choices, but we have to live with the ones we make. I am sorry for your regret, but in the whole scheme of things, the seriousness of your bad choices is minimal. You have become a beautiful, caring young woman, and I think God will use you greatly.
The great news is that your kids have the opportunity to learn French in context. Perhaps they will be helping you to learn it before long. And other great news is that there are ways to communicate without being able to conjugate your verbs perfectly. As long as the person you are talking to has understood you, you have succeeded. Don't be too hard on yourself dear Erin. While you still have breath, it is not too late.
I wish you nothing but good things.
Madameeee
I love Madame's gracious comments! Yes, Erin, you can learn. My grandparents learned English when they were about our age. I learned Indonesian -- enough to barter for bananas. It can be done. And the beauty of it all is that a smile is universal. So are tears. A remnant, perhaps, of the time before humanity's sinful pride resulted in Babel and the confusion of the languages. A hint, perhaps, of paradise restored, when we will all understand each other once again. In the meantime, we carry on, one messy verb at a time.
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