News & Weekly Letters

Yesterday, I was John Travolta in Pulp Fiction. I danced – with the confidence that comes with having long hair and being married to Andria / Uma Thurman – amidst manga pirates, cowboys, zombies, Kens, Barbies, Cruellas, witches, and many others. I don’t know what the desire to dress up occasionally says about grown-ups – our psychologist, Stéphanie, is better placed than me to comment on the phenomenon – but I do know that children do it all the time. As it says in the French Ministry of Education’s curriculum documents, children love costumes.

The World of Work is back for its tenth season at The École in 2023-2024! We are delighted to be welcoming a variety of industry experts to meet our 8th Grade students in their classroom—either virtually or in person—and share their professional experience, values, background, and knowledge with them.

This week at The École, we all made a long paper chain of unity. Inspired by the House Captains, our students decorated the links with a word, a sentence, a drawing, or stickers expressing their love for kindness, acceptance, and inclusion. On Wednesday, we all wore a touch of orange to show how much these values mean to us. Thank you to everyone for your participation – Unity Day is becoming quite the tradition at The École.

Those who follow our Facebook page will have spotted that yesterday’s Throwback Thursday was dedicated to last year’s kindergarteners when they met the 1st graders for a preview of life in the Elementary and Middle School Building. It was a timely throwback because those same students – now in 1st Grade – had just won the Best Falcons award at the October assembly. In reality, only a few school weeks have passed between those two moments – when the shy, uncertain students who were our kindergarteners in June first discovered their future classrooms and when our confident, brilliant 1st graders won the award for their excellent adaptation to Elementary life yesterday.

I’m writing to you this week from Chicago,* where Benoît and I are attending the annual AEFE (French Government Agency for French Schools Abroad) seminar in the company of heads of schools and directors from the other 61 AEFE-accredited schools in the USA and Canada. Some highlights include a speech by the French consul, a progress report on the joint strategic plan, and a wide range of workshops, particularly one about keeping a network like ours relevant when its schools have such diverse backgrounds and identities.