Aroostook, Quebec students share cultures

PRESQUE ISLE – For Harold Foy and Barb Bartlett, living near an international border has its advantages.

Their geographical positioning made it possible for the two teachers – Foy teaches in Sully, Quebec, and Bartlett teaches in Presque Isle – to pull off a daylong cultural exchange between Foy’s French-speaking secondary 1 level students and Bartlett’s English-speaking seventh-graders.

The exchange, which gave students from both cultures a chance to understand each other better, began Friday when about 56 Quebec students and their teachers piled off a bus at Skyway Middle School and met their U.S. counterparts.

The visiting students participate in an English as a Second Language program at Ecole Polyvalente du Transcontinental (Transcontinental Secondary School), and, though teachers concede that the Quebec students’ ability to speak English is very limited, they’ve been getting good practice for the program by writing to pen pals at Skyway. Friday was the students’ first chance to meet their Maine pen pals.

“I’m very excited,” 12-year-old Jean-Sebastien Belanger said Friday as the Maine and Quebec pen pals broke the ice over lunch in the cafeteria.

In explaining why, he switched over to rapid French.

“He says he’s excited because he’s in contact with people his age who are not speaking the same language as him,” Foy translated for Belanger.

“He’s learning about what’s happening in another country and experiencing something different,” Foy said. “It’s unique at this age.”

Foy serves as an English monitor in the Quebec school’s ESL program, teaching English speaking skills. School officials decided to strengthen the program by giving students a real-life experience with the language, Foy said.

After looking online and corresponding with local school officials, Foy, Bartlett and their colleagues began work on the cultural exchange.

“This project is [for our students] to meet with other students and put them in touch with a second language. They will effectively be touched with this experience,” Foy said.

Bartlett, a seventh-grade math teacher, said she signed on for the project because of the opportunities it would give local pupils.

“This is cultural exposure for our students,” Bartlett said Friday. “We always try to broaden the horizons of our students.”

The school’s 82 seventh-graders partnered with their pen pals for an afternoon of activities, some of which required students to speak only English and while others allowed them to flex their French-speaking abilities.

For many, the language gaps were the toughest challenges to overcome.

“I am trying my English,” Jessy-James Belisle, 13, said Friday. “It is very hard.”

Many students resorted to exaggerated facial expressions and hand gestures as they tried to communicate with each other.

“It was hard to figure out what they were saying at first,” Skyway pupil Madelyn Carson said Friday, but she chalked that up to everyone’s initial shyness.

The 12-year-old said she believes the experience will help her not only when she takes French in high school, but also in developing “people skills” she can use as an adult.

“I think what I’ll remember most about this is how much fun I had and how we all tried so hard to understand each other.”