Fabrice Fresse received a teaching award at a ceremony Wednesday at Bailey Middle School.
By LAURIE DENNIS
DavidsonNews.net
Shortly after the new year, Fabrice Fresse pulled Bailey Middle School Principal Jennifer Dean aside to tell her about a student exchange program that could bring French kids to Bailey.
“This was a conversation between classes,” Ms. Dean recalled. She told Mr. Fresse the idea sounded like a good one, and gave the matter no more thought until a few weeks later, when Mr. Fresse sat down in her office to talk about the details. It would bring about two dozen students to Bailey from a school outside of Paris, he told her. And soon.
“I said, ‘Oh, oh, oh, – this is bigger than us!’” Ms. Dean recalled, still laughing at the memory. “Mr. Fresse is amazing. He is a visionary.”
Wednesday, the two-week exchange visit concluded with a goodbye banquet, at which Mr. Fresse’s sponsoring program also honored him as the North Carolina International Teacher of the Year.
THE FRENCH TEACHER
“I love teaching and I love the U.S.,” Mr. Fabrice told the audience after receiving his award from Bob McCarthy, regional director for Visiting International Faculty, or VIF.
Mr. Fresse was assigned to teach French at Bailey at the start of the current school year through Chapel Hill-based VIF, which matches international teachers to primary and secondary schools in America. VIF teachers serve up to three years in American classrooms, and Mr. Fresse is one of about 1,500 teachers from more than 50 countries teaching in U.S. schools this year. The VIF program was launched in North Carolina in the 1980s by the family of Dr. J. Fred Young, former president of Elon University. It has since spread to six other states, mostly in the South.
“This award is for being somebody who serves as a cultural ambassador,” Mr. McCarthy said during the presentation to Mr. Fresse. “(The VIF program teaches students that) the world is bigger than just their own country.”
Mr. Fresse, who is working on a Ph.D. in American literature, said he has always felt a special affection for America, fostered by his grandmother, who was “rescued by an American in World War II.”
“So here I am at Bailey,” he said, noting with a laugh that he is continually surprised at the ways his name can be mispronounced by English speakers. He recommended that it might be best to just refer to him as “the French teacher.”
Besides arranging the student exchange visit, Mr. Fresse also teaches French classes to all grades at Bailey Middle, and organized the school’s first International Festival in November.
BUILDING BRIDGES
The entire group of visitors from College Saint Augustin lined the stage at Bailey Middle during a farewell banquet Wednesday.
The student exchange visit brought 25 students and four staff members to Bailey from College Saint Augustin, a private school of about 300 located in a western suburb of Paris. In what Mr. Fresse dubbed “Building Bridges at Bailey” (click on the link to see photos of the visit) the exchange program matched students with host families at Bailey, immersing the students – most with only rudimentary English speaking skills – in American culture for a full two weeks. The visitors attended classes at Bailey and went on numerous group excursions, to Davidson College, the Asheboro Zoo, Latta Plantation, the Levine Museum of the New South, and even to catch a Charlotte Knights baseball game.
On weekends, the students were entertained by their host families, many of whom became experts at using “Google Translate” to communicate and learned all about the appetites of French 12-year-olds (American soda – a big hit; American turkey sandwiches – not so popular). Host families took their French guests out boating on Lake Norman and brought them to Sunday’s Concert on the Green in Davidson.
Visiting French student Julien Nowak played the guitar while his teacher, Jerome Tran Van helped with sound. Nearby were stacks of Bailey t-shirts for the French students and group photos for the host families.
At Wednesday’s farewell banquet, the French students returned the favor by performing music and dance numbers, handing out gifts to their host families, and offering a list of what they discovered about America.
“Everything is big.”
“You have a lot of space.”
“The color of the eggs are white and in France, the color is yellow.”
The students also improved their English skills.
“I enjoyed me self,” one boy told the audience.
“Myself,” his teacher gently corrected him.
“I enjoyed myself,” the boy repeated.
Ms. Dean said the visit “operated on a budget of about $2,000,” including contributions from Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools, the Bailey Middle PTA, the VIF, and Piedmont Links Inc. The farewell banquet dinner was donated and catered by Tenders Restaurant. The French government and the families of the French students paid for the airfare.
Ms. Dean and Bailey’s academic facilitator, Amy Diamond, both indicated that they would like to see the exchange program continue.
“I see this school as a sister school to us,” Ms. Dean said.
Both also said they tried their best to learn from their French guests the French trait of, as Ms. Dean put it, “being more laid back.”
“Their motto for me was, ‘Amy, don’t worry – relax,’” said Ms. Diamond. “Well, I have tried.”
For Mr. Fresse, the exchange visit symbolized his focus at Bailey: “Together, we have changed our school,” he said. “We have made it an international place.”
