February 1st, 2012

By Jennifer McFee

CELEBRATE FRENCH IMMERSION

French immersion students are getting ready to celebrate next week.

The governments of B.C. and the Yukon are recognizing Feb. 5 to 11 as French Immersion Celebration Week.

In B.C., more than 238,000 students are enrolled in French second language programs. Nearly eight per cent of B.C.'s students are in French immersion.

Canadian Parents for French will organize events across the province, with a focus on inclusion.

You don't need to speak French or be enrolled in immersion to enjoy the celebrations. For more information, visit www.cpf. bc.ca or contact Glyn Lewis at 778-329-9115 ext. 316 or This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .

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© Copyright (c) Coquitlam Now

by Barj S. Dhahan, Vancouver Sun

I was 10 years old when my family immigrated to Canada from Pun-jab, India. I was terrified about having to learn both of the official languages of my new country. Lucky for me, it turned out that in my new city of Port Alberni, French was not actually required or necessary. Although I had to take French at school, I never needed it in my day-to-day life.

But was that lucky for me?

Now, as I look back over my life as a Canadian, I regret not being fluent in French. I regret it for myself, personally wishing for the opportunities multilingualism might have provided, and I regret it for our country. True bilingualism across all of the provinces and territories would not only place Canadians in a more competitive position in the global economy, but it would also contribute to better cultural understandings among our citizens while strengthening national unity.

Canada has been officially English/ French bilingual since the passage of the 1969 Official Languages Act, yet today less than 20 per cent of Canadians can speak both languages. The numbers are varied across the provinces. In British Columbia, French is not even required in schools. All schools are required to teach a second language from Grades 5 to 11 but students have options, particularly from Grades 9 and up. Although French Immersion programs are also available, they are not the norm. It is no surprise then that here only seven per cent of people are English/French bilingual.

Should it matter? Some may argue that official bilingualism is a thing of the past. I argue otherwise, that instead it should be one of our main goals for the future.

In this globalized world, speaking multiple languages is a huge asset both on an individual and (inter) national level. The Canadian Council on Learning has outlined several advantages of bilingualism. There are cognitive benefits: bilingual children often exceed their peers in a variety of areas, knowledge of a second language facilitates learning additional languages, and bilingualism has shown to delay the onset of dementia in old age. There are also economic benefits: the 2006 census shows higher employment rates and income levels for bilinguals than for monolinguals and there are Canadian industries that prefer bilingualism such as administration, tourism, sales, and services. Further-more, many international companies, particularly in countries where French is an official language (29 countries), prefer partnerships with bilingual Canadians.

Today, global trade relationships are shifting and Canada would do well to ensure partnerships with French-speaking countries, most of them in resource-rich Africa and with growing populations.

In addition to all of the above benefits, speaking multiple languages allows for greater intercultural under-standing. By recognizing that there is more than one grammar, more than one way of getting ideas across, or more than one way to understand people and the world, it is natural for one to show greater empathy for those who do not share their same cultural background.

Many Canadians outside of Quebec do not have a deep understanding of the role of French culture in our history or in modern Canadian society. Claiming that our country is officially bilingual, but not actually ensuring that this is so only makes a mockery of our history. It also ensures a continued lack of understanding.

We need to look at innovative ways to highlight the importance of French in provinces outside of Quebec that go beyond bilingual signage and label-ling. We must have adequate funding for French education, teacher resources, and cultural programs. We must also ensure that there are post-secondary education and employment opportunities in French outside of the eastern provinces. If we do not invest in Canadian bilingualism, we run the risk of falling behind culturally and economically both nationally and globally. We also risk increased ghettoization by linguistic groups, as is already happening in Vancouver, Richmond, Surrey and other major Canadian urban centres.

Ensuring linguistic cohesion across the country can lead to a greater sense of national unity - one that I feel has been deteriorating over the last decades. In a world where most things that we want are only a mouse-click away, what unites us with our fellow human beings is shared experience, and language is the key to expressing our shared experience. By promoting official bilingualism while incorporating the growing cultural and linguistic diversity in our country, we are showing a dedication to intercultural understanding, greater collaboration, and a world of opportunity for our citizens. Some people also say when you learn another language, you get another soul!

Barj S. Dhahan is national chairman of the Canada-India Foundation, www.canadaindia.org.

© Copyright (c) The Vancouver Sun

Source: The Vancouver Sun

January 13, 2012

By Jennifer McFee

Parents can register online rather than in line this year for kindergarten French immersion classes in School District 43.

For the first time, the registration process will be available electronically for the popular program.

Assistant superintendent Sylvia Russell hopes parents will find this approach easier than lining up outside schools.

"For the last few years, we've had fairly big lineups of parents staying up late and coming in the middle of the night to get a French immersion spot at a couple of our schools," Russell said.

"We thought we would use electronic registration this year for French immersion so people don't have to line up overnight. So there's a process that's set up in the district now for people who are interested in kindergarten French immersion to go online and register their children that way rather than this lineup approach."

Online kindergarten French immersion registration runs from 9 a.m. on Thursday, Jan. 19 to 4 p.m. on Wednesday, Jan. 25.

This registration process is specifically for kindergarten students - not for kids who are already in French immersion in higher grades.

"Those kids are already accepted into their schools, so there's no problem there, and there's generally space to move around," Russell said.

"It's kindergarten where we have some hotspots at a few of our schools in terms of being able to fit everybody in that wants to go there."

French immersion programs tend to fill up quickly at Panorama, Glen and Glenayre elementaries. Some years, Porter and Rochester elementaries are also full to capacity.

"Parents are pretty interested in programs of choice at this particular time," Russell said. "So I'm expecting that parents need to probably pay a fair bit of attention to getting their applications in early for all programs of choice, but particularly for French immersion."

French immersion registrations will be processed on a first-come, first-served basis. Parents will be told by Feb. 3 whether their children made it into the program or not. For those who don't make the cut, they will still have time to apply for regular kindergarten classes during the registration period from Feb. 7 to 9.

Registration for other specialty classes - including Montessori, Mandarin bilingual and the new Reggioinfluenced program - will also run from Jan. 19 to 25.

However, Russell stressed, the registration process is different for each program.

"Each program of choice has a different way of doing it. French immersion is the only one that's online. Montessori does a random draw, and that's also what we use for Mandarin bilingual," she said.

"Each program has a slightly different history and a slightly different approach to this."

Early French immersion information sessions will be held on Monday, Jan. 16 at Kilmer Elementary and Wednesday, Jan. 18 at Nestor Elementary, with 7 p.m. start times.

As well, information sessions on the Montessori program will be held Jan. 16 at 4 p.m. and 7 p.m. in the Gallery Room at the Winslow campus.

On Jan. 17, an information session on the Reggio-influenced program will begin at 6: 30 p.m. in the Gallery Room at the Winslow campus. At the same time, a bilingual Mandarin program information session will run at Walton Elementary.

For more information on programs and registration, visit www.sd43.bc.ca.

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© Copyright (c) Coquitlam Now

Source: The Coquitlam Now

10 janvier 2012

Par Mike Murphy

Alors que le mandarin ou encore le panjabi figurent dans le top 5 des langues les plus couramment parlées en Colombie britannique, après l’anglais, la question de la place de choix accordée au français à l’école est de plus en plus discutée est remise en cause par ses détracteurs.

Selon le réseau national Canadian Parents for French (CPF), qui promeut la pratique et l’enseignement de la langue française, cette place privilégiée est légitime.

Réformes : vers une dévalorisation du français ?

En effet, le CPF avait réagi vivement, il y a un peu plus d’un an, à des changements proposés par le Ministère de l’Education qui, selon l’organisme, menaçait la position privilégiée du français dans le curriculum d’apprentissage de langue seconde.

« On voyait les changements proposés en 2010 comme un recul pour le français », commente Alex Hughes, coordonnatrice des projets à la CPF.

Elle précise que la CPF craignait que ces changements mènent la C.-B. vers un système d’éducation «plurilingue» en rétrogradant le français pour le mettre à pied d’égalité avec les cinq autres langues officiellement reconnues par le Ministère de l’Education, à savoir l’allemand, l’espagnol, le japonais, le mandarin, et le panjabi.

Une possibilité inquiétante pour la CPF. Car bien que l’organisme encourage l’apprentissage d’autres langues que l’anglais et le français, il maintient que les élèves doivent commencer par les deux langues officielles du Canada avant d’en apprendre d’autres à l’école.

« La décision demeure une décision du Conseil scolaire », selon le Ministère de l’Education

Au Ministère de l’Education, où on est toujours dans un processus de mise à jour de la politique sur les langues secondaires, les réformes ne sont pas considérées comme des menaces pour le français.

Selon Nicole Couture, porte-parole du Ministère, les changements proposés n’affecteraient pas les deux provisions de base de la politique du Ministère sur les langues secondes, en vigueur depuis 1997, à savoir que les étudiants doivent obligatoirement suivre des cours dans une langue seconde de la 5e à la 8e année et que ce sont les Conseils scolaires – et non le Ministère – qui décident de la langue seconde qui serait offerte aux élèves.

« La décision demeure une décision du Conseil scolaire » a-t-elle dit en référence au choix de la langue seconde à offrir.

De préciser que, même si la politique du Ministère permet aux Conseils scolaires d’offrir leurs cours de langue seconde dans d’autres langues que le français, il est extrêmement rare qu’un Conseil scolaire n’offre pas le français.

En fait, sur un total de 59 Conseils scolaires, il y en a seulement un ou deux, dans des communautés majoritairement autochtones du nord de la province, où le français n’est pas proposé comme langue seconde.

Bien que la CPF ne s’oppose pas à ce que les Conseils scolaires aient le droit d’offrir ou de ne pas offrir des cours de français langue seconde, selon Mme Hughes, l’organisme voyait dans ces réformes une menace même au statut du français. Soit l’idée proposée par le Ministère de regrouper le français et les cinq autres langues mentionnées ci-dessus dans un même et unique document pédagogique sous la rubrique langues secondaires.

Selon Mme Couture, le Ministère a revu cette décision en février 2011. Au lieu d’un document regroupant les six langues, le français et les cinq autres langues auront toutes leur propre document pédagogique.

La perspective d’une autre communauté linguistique

Si la CPF s’inquiète de l’avenir du français comme langue seconde dans le système d’éducation publique de la C.-B., Sadhu Binning, vice-président de la Punjabi Language Education Association (PLEA), lui, a des réserves quant à la place accordée au panjabi dans les écoles de la province.

« Personne, dans la communauté panjabi, n’a d’antipathie pour le français » a-t-il commenté, mais les membres de la PLEA se sentent souvent frustrés par le fait qu’il est difficile de convaincre les Conseils scolaires d’offrir des cours de panjabi comme langue seconde, même quand la population étudiante d’une école est en grande majorité issue de cette communauté.

—

Le top 10 des langues en Colombie-Britannique

   1. Anglais (70%)
   2. Chinois (8,5%) *
   3. Panjabi (4%)
   4. Allemand (2%)
   5. Français (1,5%)
   6. Tagalog (1%)
   7. Espagnol (0,8%)
   8. Italien (0,6%)
   9. Néerlandais (0,6%)
  10. Vietnamien (0,5%)

* Tous dialectes confondus

Source: Statistique Canada, Recensement 2006

Source: La Source

Attachments:

La Source Vol 12 No 21

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January 6, 2012

Are you planning to travel to Quebec or France, or had you always had the dream to learn French or to improve your French? Or maybe your children are attending the French Immersion program, or the Francophone school? These classes are for you!

The Francophone Association is offering French classes (multiple levels) starting the week of January 16. They will last 10 weeks, 2 hours/ week.

The cost is $175 for the 10 weeks, plus the Association membership, being $20/person or $30/family.

We will hold the classes in our community room at the new Francophone school, école au Courde-l'île, 566 Linshart road, Comox.

For more information and registration contact Edith by email at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it . Or by phone 250-338-9789.

© Copyright (c) Postmedia News

Source: Comox Valley Echo

January 5, 2012

Editor: I found the letter to the editor from B. McCloy (www.langleytimes.com, Nov. 17) lopsided in his perception of me. Perhaps it is because to date, he and I have not agreed on much, if anything.

He felt it was his obligation to clear up some misconceptions about me and my leadership abilities, which Hattie Hogeterp had commented on in an earlier letter to the editor.  McCloy states she was an outsider during the H.D. Stafford/Langley Secondary transition and French Immersion discussions at LSS.

She was a sitting board member at the time, and certainly not an outsider. Despite his interpretations of how I performed, I worked hard for LSS at creating a smooth transition between LSS and HDS. but it was not what some HDS parents wanted, and so the smooth transition did not happen.

He goes on to say that I did not support the LSS group that wanted to keep French Immersion there. He does not, however, mention that enrolment into our French Immersion program amounted to eight students. Nor did he mention that at the request of a larger number of parents, what I fought for and received was a grandfathering clause so that all students who were currently enrolled in French Immersion would be able to complete that program and graduate from LSS.

Two years prior, I was on the team that fought successfully to keep the program but we were told at the time, registration numbers would have to increase substantially for the program to survive. They did not increase.  As PAC president my obligations were to the parents and students who were already attending the school.

He says that I disappeared after that, “never to be seen again.”  Not true. I remained on the PAC as a member at large and past president, I ran the Haunted House, and I was co-chair of my daughter’s dry grad committee. I also continued to attend all school events, including the unveiling of the beautiful mural that adorns the west wall of the gym.

For years, parent volunteer Cindy Barwin doggedly raised funds for a school beautification project, and as her third child was about to graduate from LSS she finally had raised enough money to hire an artist to paint the mural. On the celebratory day of the unveiling, although all PAC members were invited to attend, only myself and one other former LSS PAC member were there to acknowledge her success and the culmination of all those years of hard work and effort.

My participation with LSS ended when my daughter graduated, except for my seeing through the completion of the display case that now sits in the main foyer.  I have continued to attend board meetings and have run for school board as an independent in the past two elections. I was not elected, as all the positions were either filled with incumbents or union-endorsed candidates.  I certainly have not disappeared.

He also mentions the endorsement from the last election, in which I was supported by Rich Coleman​ and Mary Polak​.  These are the people who have awarded us three new schools, in part because of the relationship with our previous board and with our superintendent. I for one am proud of this association, as it was one that also came without any ties or promises.

The job of trustees is to co-govern the district with the government, and we were a group of people who would work together to benefit students. Union endorsements benefit unions. I am very interested to see how the next three years unfold, now that five of our seven trustees were elected on a union slate.

My guess is that repayment of the deficit will run its full term. Rather than close the under-populated schools, they’ll cancel programs, which mean schools that are subsidizing the under-enrolled schools will be the ones paying the price. They will also be the ones to carry the larger class sizes, while the subsidized schools will not.

I will also be curious to see if there are any changes in our senior management team and in particular to our superintendent, based on the fact that Megan Dykeman and Candy Ashdown, while executive members of DPAC already tried challenging Cheryle Beaumont’s role in our district.

Mixed in with that are Wendy Johnson and Rob McFarlane, who fought the reconfiguration of H.D. Stafford; add Cecelia Reekie, the fifth union slate member, and you have the number of people required to oust our superintendent.

I truly hope that does not happen, for the sake of our district and our students. We will see what this new year brings.

Kari Medos,

Langley

Source: Langley Times

From the Peace Arch News: 2011: A look back at the issues

December 29, 2011

April:

• After low enrolment numbers prompted parents to move their children elsewhere, the Surrey School District announces Laronde Elementary will be French-immersion only starting in September.

December 27, 2011

June:

• Students from Salmon Arm Secondary’s first French immersion graduating class celebrate the program’s success at a May 25 gathering. All 44 students will graduate with a Dual Dogwood Diploma representing bilingual status.

Full article: Salmon Arm Observer

By Robert Barron

December 21, 2011

Parents hope that long lineups and overcrowded schools in the Nanaimo-Ladysmith district's increasingly popular French immersion program will soon be a thing of the past.

Skyrocketing enrolment, which has risen from just a few hundred students in the 1980s to 1,250 this year, means some parents must line up for hours to register their children in the program.

One dad even spent a few nights in his van last March to make sure his daughter would get a spot.

The school board tabled a long-anticipated report last week that makes 12 recommendations to improve the district's French immersion program.

Among them is a recommendation to end the present practice of offering preferential registration for new students who are siblings of children already in the program, which would help reduce the long lineups for registration each spring.

But recommendations that would see drastic changes to the delivery of the program in district schools, including creating a French immersion middle school at Nanaimo District Secondary School, are raising concerns among some parents.

However, newly elected trustee Kim Howland said the report's recommendations are just suggestions at this stage, and parents and the public will have the opportunity to provide input if the board decides to move forward with any of them.

"Many of these recommendations are short-term, Band-Aid solutions that won't suit the longterm needs of the program and its students," said Karen Fediuk, chairwoman of the parent advisory council at Davis Road Elementary School, a French immersion school in Ladysmith.

With limited space available to offer the French immersion program, district officials decided to look at ways to maximize student access.

Currently, Ladysmith's Davis Road Elementary School and Nanaimo's Hammond Bay, Pauline Haarer and Quarterway elementary schools offer the program, while secondary students continue their French immersion studies at Nanaimo District Secondary School. Approximately 125 kindergarten students register for the program each fall.

The spaces are filled on a firstcome, first-served basis, with the priority given to students who have a sibling already registered in the school of choice.

Nanaimo's Andrew Hope spent several nights sleeping in his van last March in a successful effort to enrol his daughter, Nicola, in the program at Hammond Bay Elementary School. He said that while the current policy of preferential treatment for new students with siblings already in the program severely limits the number of available placements each year, he is in favour of retaining the policy.

"I don't think the term 'fair' is a word that I would apply to the process, but the opportunity for parents to sacrifice their time to get in line to get their kids in the program beats having a lottery to decide, as some suggest," Hope said.

The district's report also recommends sweeping changes to a number of the district's schools, particularly in Ladysmith, to accommodate the growing needs of the program and utilize excess space in other schools.

They include changing the grade configurations for Ladysmith Secondary School to 6-12, converting Ladysmith Intermediate School to a K-5 elementary school, converting Ladysmith Primary School to a K-5 single-track French immersion school and Davis Road Elementary to a K-5 school offering regular programs. Some parents think that recommended changes to the French immersion program won't solve many of its problems.

Fediuk, along with the other parents at Davis Road French immersion school, have been lobbying hard, but unsuccessfully, for the past three years to have the replacement of the aging facility made a priority item in the district's capital plan.

She said the report's recommendations for Ladysmith's schools are based on the belief that student enrolment in the town is decreasing and will continue to decrease for several more years.

"It's a fact that there are more than 1,400 kids in Ladysmith, with about 700 of them being elementary students, and we're a growing community so these recommendations for reconfiguring our schools would do nothing to address our needs," Fediuk said.

"Extensive renovations of our facilities would be a much smarter move in Ladysmith. We're conducting our own survey and research in Ladysmith on this issue and we'll be prepared for the public consultation process if the district decided to move forward with this plan."

Howland encouraged parents to get involved in the process and said they don't have to wait for public consultations on the issue to have their voices heard.

The recommendations in the report, which assesses enrolment projections and its impact on classroom availability over the next five years, has been referred by the outgoing school board to the district's overall strategic planning process for further consideration. The full report is available on the district's website at www.sd68.bc.ca.

ENROLMENT NUMBERS

Enrolment for French immersion:

2011-12: 1,275

2010-11: 1,267

2009-10: 1,244

2008-09: 1,178

2007-08: 1,115

This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it 250-729-4234

© Copyright (c) Postmedia News

Source: Nanaimo Daily News / Canada.com

Beyond Words is the e-newsletter on official languages in Canada. It provides information on various issues related to official languages. Click here to read the December 21, 2011 edition.