I say it often, but one of the most fascinating and challenging aspects of our work at The École is navigating intercultural issues. My international career helped prepare me somewhat–after seven years working in a French-British-German school in Taiwan, constantly having to bridge the gap when it came to understanding others and being understood, I thought that things would be simpler in a French-American school in New York.
I was mostly right, even though we don’t always talk about the same thing when we think we are talking about the same thing. When we describe an English word that looks like a French word but has a different meaning (“to cry,” which doesn’t mean crier, “eventually,” which doesn’t mean éventuellement), we call them false friends. It obviously doesn’t mean that the French and the Americans are false friends, but rather, they are friends who have to listen attentively to what the other is saying.
In terms of school language, it took me a long time to understand that when I talk about curriculum (for me, the translation of programme) what my American colleagues understand is méthode. For example, the Alphas are a method (a curriculum?) that we use to help children to read in French as part of the wider French programme (curriculum!)–the expectations established by the French Ministry of Education. The fuzziness in the equivalence of the different terms is reinforced by the fact that in French, we don’t use very many “methods “(in part because the teachers are trained to create their own pedagogical resources to support their lessons), whereas methods are an intrinsic component of the American approach–Reading and Writing Workshops are methods (curricula?) that help us meet the US standards expected of students at different grade levels.
I hope I haven’t lost you. And if I have, it illustrates a simple fact: we think based on what we know, we translate our realities, we break down and organize the world according to our own criteria, and we are often misguided in thinking that our criteria are universally shared. Sometimes, we find solutions thanks to language, but sometimes, language fails us. It’s no coincidence that there is no French word for “feedback” (a reality I struggle with on the French Expat podcast.) A French person might tell you that they intuitively understand what an American means by feedback, but is that really the case? Are we really talking about the same thing?
In the context of the parent-teacher conferences that took place last Friday and Monday, we constantly ask ourselves those questions. At times, we sense from parents’ reactions that it’s still up in the air–if the feedback is very positive, the joke is that we’re too American. If we are less effusive, we risk triggering parental concern even though the child is progressing at their own pace.
In the face of these questions and differences, our response will always be the same, and it is fueled by the strength of our two cultures: our professional expertise in supporting students’ learning and our unwavering commitment to seeing them thrive.