BOOTHVILLE - VENICE
HIGH		SCHOOL

My morning school,
posted firearms and drugs free zone,
but not "French teacher free zone"...

Click on the photo to see it bigger
(like any picture on this site) and to find me !

My morning school

Masterfully directed by Mrs. Lavern Duncan, who played a major role in my success over there and in my life, noticeably helped by way-too-much-people for me to name here, this rural school succeeds in giving quality education to kids for whom many others would give up.

Carol Roberts, Ellen Condry and many motivated teachers are the key to success of this school, despite its bad location, at the end of the Mississippi delta, land of the Oilers (from which we get the name of our football team), land of the poor and the hurricanes, where the School Board does everything it can to attract teachers (low rent housing, medical insurance...)

My job : 

There I was teaching French as a second language in 4 classes every morning :

The two 4th grade classes with the method "Spirale 2000" I et II (30 minutes per day for each class) ;

A group of voluntary students from the two 5th grade classes with the method "Spirale 2000" III (30 minutes per day) ;

A group of voluntary students from the 6th, 7th and 8th grade classes (Middle school) with the method "J'arrive vite et bien" (50 minutes per day)

Arriving at school in the morning.  It's the only place I know where the speed can be limited to 25mph on a highway, two times per day !  And don't you dare to try speeding...

The area is not French speaking at all anymore.  Most of my predecessors (and 2 out of 3 of my successors so far) broke their teeth on it and left.  Students are difficult from an American point of view, and look like monsters to the eyes of some Europeans.  Yes, but...

1-  I was decided to take up the challenge

2- Mrs Duncan is one of a Principal

3- When one's scratches the coat...

Behind the masks...

Are kids who just wait for a chance not to get bored 'til 3:00 pm.  And as for the learning thirst, it is hidden a few more coats under that one.

So I scratched, pulled, pushed, showed off, laughed, stormed, disciplined, rewarded, motivated...

Taught when I could and waited when I couldn't do anything else...

Invented, fabricated, made, invested...

Taken by some kind of work madness...

I got to re-establish in Boothville-Venice a real quality French program, as soon as the first year.

Not the best FFL program, far from that, but a teaching program that compares, motivating for those who can be motivated (about 60% of the students continue when the program is not mandatory anymore if they can) and giving those solid basics in French.

Years later, some students keep writing to me :o)

From the beginning, I started producing, producing...  Having bought a second hand computer (see the page "my computers") I began consuming dozens of paper rams.  Not without results nor traces : in addition to (about) 600 lesson plans, I used three printers producing additions to the methods, overhead transparencies, files, teaching charts and posters, ...  Ok, enough.

All that stayed in BVHS when I left, but that's not quite all : anyone, I think, likes to prepares his / her succession so that everything "at the worst continues like before", right ?  So I left in Boothville  full closet of teaching materials, in the office I finally got after 2 years of persuasion.  A big guide to the schools and the Parish.  And an apartment.  With all the furniture.  The dishes.  Books, tapes, etc.  And an inventory of all these assets at the School Board, I'm not so naïve ;o)

Michael : quite a temper, but with no doubts one of the most gifted...

What else can be said ?

Boothville-Venice stays in my heart and I may go back there one day, knowing the difficulties and the joy waiting for me.  And knowing that if I want so, I will not be alone there : B.V.H.S. has a staff, a faculty.

Knowing that it is a school that resemble no other, and I'm not talking about the "anti-hurricane" building on piles. 

Knowing that "The end of the world" is also "Where the road begins"...

Eggs throw...

And one of its results, on Amber...

With the 4th graders at the swimming pool

One of my all times best student...