District 5 ‘francisation'
Belledune - On Saturday, April 19 more than a hundred people met at the Belledune Community Center to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the Frenchifying or "francisation" program of school district 5 L'Étoile du Nord. Although Belledune itself has no schools in District 5, it is located in the center of the area covered by the school district, which allowed people from Campbellton, Atholville and Dalhousie to join those of Bathurst and its surrounding areas to join the festivities.
Families and students who have benefited from the program participated in many activities organized for the occasion.
During the event, a new logo and new slogan were revealed.
The slogan is "Chez- nous, le français grandit… ensemble, on s'enrichit."
"Chez-nous" represents the house, the school and the community. "Le français grandit" represents the importance the French language and culture has in the life of the child, his or her family, school and community. The student builds himself or herself an identity that is, also, French-speaking. "Ensemble" includes the student, the French-speaking parent, the English-speaking parent and the school community. "On s'enrichit", means taking advantage of everybody's resources (language and culture) to help the students grow as individuals.
As for the logo, the blue individual represents the parent of one of the spoken language. The yellow individual represents the parent of the other spoken language. The blue and the yellow join themselves to create the green which symbolizes the bilingual child. This combination represents the child who benefits from an education in both languages.
The star represents the French-speaking community of Acadia. The star also guided the first explorers who came from Europe. In this case, the star also represents the school and the parents, who together guide the child.
The movement towards the sky indicates high objectives and working together to achieve these goals.
During the celebration, a parent of a student who attends Académie Notre-Dame in Dalhousie, Renée Valdron, spoke of the challenges and the benefits of the program. Sophie Lacroix, from the Department of Education and Jacques Thériault, representing the Board of Education for School District 5, also addressed the crowd.
The services of the program have been offered to the children of exogamous couples (a French-speaking parent and a non French-speaking parent) for ten years now. The services have greatly improved since then and School District 5 believes that the changes have allowed them to give much better service to the children and to families. Several initiatives were taken during those ten years such as a welcoming kit for all the new families, cultural kits, and family evenings.
Ten years ago, only a dozen children received services at Cité de l'Amitié school in Bathurst. Now in 2008, there are close to 200 students in thirteen schools who take advantage of this program. During the last ten years, there are more than a thousand students who received francisation services and who are now proud of belonging to both official linguistic communities.
The team that guides these students is made up of a school district co-ordinator, an advisor in francisation, five teachers and seven language assistants. Thanks to this support system, several children speaking very little or no French at all on their arrival at the schools develop linguistic competence quickly enough to follow the regular curriculum within their class.
A parent who participated in the celebrations gave said: "We thank District 5 for this beautiful reception. We had a lot of fun. We are so happy and very proud to raise our children in both languages."
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