School portraits / Adult French learners
The École: the grown-ups have homework too
In 2019, parents and staff at a New York bilingual school became classmates for French.
In 2019, parents and staff at The École, a bilingual school in New York City, met on Wednesday evenings to prepare for a French diploma exam.
Parents are usually the ones asking whether the work is finished. A language class reverses the arrangement. You cannot tell a verb you are only here because of your child; it will still expect an answer.
I picture the small private shock of being the one with something to hand in. Staff and parents became classmates, which I suspect is hard to stay formal about when everyone needs the same verb.
Tara McAllister, another École parent, tells a French story from the pandemic, when her daughter was a baby. A linguist and speech-language researcher at NYU, she decided to relearn French so she could offer some at home.
She had studied French years earlier, and language is her field. Even so, she found raising a bilingual child far more complicated than she had assumed. She speaks French with her daughter but feels less confident with adults.
A small daughter, I imagine, is a forgiving audience; adults reply faster and may raise an eyebrow.
Next time I ask a child whether the work is finished, I hope I will remember how that question sounds from the other chair: someone waiting, a verb waiting, and "nearly" as the honest answer.