One of the many valuable services that the Northern Nevada International Center (NNIC) offers to our local community is its After-School Language Program, at the crossroads between the Language Bank and Educational Outreach. In collaboration with the Washoe County School District, this program has opened up the world of new languages and cultures to children in the region for several years, offering Spanish, French, Arabic, and other languages as enrollment allows. This year, despite the economic recession and the unfortunate cancellation of after-school language classes in several schools due to lack of enrollment, the program pulled through and saw some exciting new additions.

Mrs. Aurélie Delaissez Forstall taught the 12-week NNIC French class at Ted Hunsberger Elementary School in Reno during the first half of the academic year. A mother of three, liaison to the French Consulate in San Francisco, and recently featured on France’s TF1 channel in a segment about the gratitude train that the French sent the Americans after World War II (a gift-filled train wagon for each of the fifty states, one of which is still stored in Carson City), Mrs. Forstall pioneered a pen pal exchange between her class of eighteen American students and a class about twice that size of French students in her native city of Toulouse, France, taught by Ms. Odette Toneatti. The French and American students learning each other’s languages sent each other packages containing candy, postcards, and cultural information about their regions and countries.

The 12-week French course offered in the second half of the school year was taught by Ms. Jessica Escobar, a former anthropology instructor at Truckee Meadows Community College who lived and worked in France for two years and has published in the French archaeology magazine “Archéologia.” She was assisted by Ms. Lindsay Peterson, NNIC intern and international affairs student at the University of Nevada, Reno. Ms. Escobar’s class numbered only eight students and established correspondence with a class over three times that size! Although some of the students in this second French class had also been in the first one, several were new, and the pen pal exchange established by Ms. Escobar was independent of the one established by Mrs. Forstall. In this second class, the eight Reno students exchanged letters, cards, postcards, candy, and cultural information with a class of students taught by Mr. Joël Ladrat in Angoulême, France at l’École Mario Roustan, one of the schools in which Ms. Escobar had worked as an English teacher.

The reactions of the students were unmistakable: Clearly, the pen pal exchanges were the highlight of the two French classes for them – the thing not soon to be forgotten. This is not surprising when one considers that the entire purpose of learning another language is to be able to actually communicate with other people and understand a different way of life. Sometimes, these people and these different cultures are right under our noses, sometimes they are far away, but being able to communicate directly with them – at ANY age – puts a face on the “foreign” and turns strangers into friends. Ultimately, this is the mission and purpose of the NNIC through each and every one of its programs, and those ones of its programs that deal with children are arguably the most important. It is these programs that have the potential to stem future problems before they start and will foster from an early age an awareness of and sense of belonging to a much larger community: that of the world.

It is the hope of the Northern Nevada International Center and a longtime dream of its Educational Outreach Coordinator, Ms. Natasha Majewski, to eventually be able to establish an ongoing International Pen Pal Program with children in many more parts of the world and in many more of our local schools. Whether or not we are able to do this anytime soon will depend entirely on support from the community, but these first two small steps in that direction have indelibly reaffirmed for children, parents, and schools on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean the incredible power of direct communication and the timeless value of learning another’s language.

– Jessica Escobar, French teacher, NNIC After-School Language Program

Posted: Friday, June 19th, 2009 at 8:50 am. Filed under: Educational Programs, News & Announcements.
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