Shawna Sache is a high school French teacher and a Language Education Advocate with the BC Association of Teachers of Modern Languages in British Columbia, Canada. She also shares insights about her Comprehensible Input (CI) teaching journey on Instagram @pourquetusaches. I invited Shawna to share her approach to making challenging topics accessible for her students, especially through the integration of classroom novel studies with current events, music, and poetry. This is a post you’ll want to bookmark and revisit often—I know I will!

Teaching from a Place of Vulnerability

Let me preface this by acknowledging that I am a cishet white woman. In this position of privilege, I grapple with how I can best approach topics such as racism and discrimination in my classroom in a way that does not come across as white saviorism. Many times, I have feared “doing it wrong” or unintentionally harming someone in the process. To be honest, even sharing here feels vulnerable, but authenticity and progress require vulnerability, so here we go! I am ultimately still learning, and willing to sit in my own discomfort in approaching some of these challenging topics in my classroom in an effort to work toward a more equitable society.

So far, I have found that the best avenue for approaching these difficult conversations in my French classroom is through story. Using whole class novel studies alongside “Le Petit Journal Francophone,” music, and poetry is one of my favorite ways to approach hard and complex subject matter in a comprehensible way. I use this method across grade levels in the high school where I teach, varying the novels and articles by grade.

The Role of Comprehensible Input (CI)

Of course, prior to shifting my classroom to a CI approach, none of this would have been possible to accomplish in the target language. Teaching through Comprehensible Input means that instead of teaching “about” the language, I am able to instead “use” the language to teach about compelling and relevant topics. 

It can be intimidating to know how to engage language students on complex issues such as colonialism, racism, and gender inequality when they do not yet have the sophisticated language that many of these conversations seem to require in order to be conducted in the target language. But as I have continued to learn and implement more and more CI strategies in my classroom, I have discovered that it really is possible (and necessary!) to present these topics in a comprehensible way while helping students acquire the language they need to communicate their thoughts, feelings, and experiences.

Novel Studies as the Launching Pad

Thankfully in recent years, the vast array of CI novels available on a variety of topics and at a variety of levels has provided the perfect tool for starting many important conversations. Many of these books are rich in history, culture, current events, and social justice topics. “Alice: La liste” by Cécile Lainé is exactly such a book!

Here is a recent example of how I approached the issues of racism and immigration with my French 11 class in the content of our whole class novel study of “Alice: La liste.” (For context, this is a class of “Core French” students who are roughly Level 2 in their language acquisition.)

Step by Step

I teach in eighty minute periods daily, in a semestered system, so the lessons and activities outlined here spanned approximately four class periods.

DAY ONE: SETTING THE TONE AND CONTEXTUALIZING

After finishing “Alice” Chapter 7, I told my students explicitly that the next chapter would be on a serious topic, I explained to them that although we have had lots of fun and some laughs through the first part of the book (they all think it is so funny that Alice loves Bilal’s teeth so much!), that the next chapter would be a shift in tone and would require great maturity and respect from us all in our conversations.

Next, before reading Chapter 8, I wanted to provide some additional context prior to Bilal’s encounter with the man who verbally attacks him with racist comments. Contextualizing the act of racism depicted in the novel by using current events means that students who might be inclined to “blow off” the incident as irrelevant or not current are less likely to do so because they see through current events that racism is still a very real and ongoing issue, and one that can be both overt and pervasive.

So, we read an article from the April 2024 issue of Le Petit Journal Francophone by Cécile Lainé called “Aya Nakamura chantera-t-elle aux Jeux olympiques?” This article explains how French president, Emmanuel Macron, invited Aya Nakamura to sing at the opening ceremonies for the Olympic Games, and a survey has indicated that nearly half of the population of France opposes her doing so. The article also describes the reaction of a far right group who has protested Aya Nakamura, even though she is the most streamed artist in France. 

Before reading the article, I wrote some key words onto the board (chanteuse, franco-malienne, la plus streamée, l’ouverture, des Jeux olympiques, née à Bamako, des mots, comme elle parle, ses identités), and gave a slow explanation of the gist of the article. I circled some of the key vocabulary through PQA (personalized questions and answers) as we went (for example, Quel.les artistes canadien.nes sont les plus streamé.es? Préfères-tu les Jeux olympiques d’hiver où d’été? Préfères-tu les cérémonies d’ouverture ou de clôture?).

Then, I handed out the article and had students read silently to themselves, highlighting any words they did not understand as they went. I often have them do this in pairs as they ping pong or volleyball read, but because of the sensitive nature of the topic in the article, I wanted to allow them the opportunity to take in the information and process it individually.

As they read, I circulated with my own copy of the article on a clipboard and highlighted on it the words that I saw them highlighting on theirs. This is a strategy I use quite often, and it always amazes me how the students consistently highlight the same words as each other. After they finished reading, I displayed my copy of the article on the projector and clarified the highlighted vocabulary by writing in translations, followed by circling and questioning to reinforce the new language.

The last step with this article was for students to complete a 5-4-3-2-1 activity. On one page, they wrote 5 key vocabulary words, 4 main ideas, 3 surprises or conclusions, 2 sentences to summarize, and 1 personal connection. I collected these to read through at the end of class as an “exit ticket” to check for student understanding, and I could see that everyone had learned a lot from the article. If there had been misunderstandings or gaps that I had noticed when reading through these, I would have taken time for clarification before proceeding onto Chapter 8.

DAY TWO: READING CHAPTER 8 AND CONNECTING TO MUSIC

The next day, we read Chapter 8 of “Alice: La liste” where, while walking hand in hand with Alice on their date, Bilal is verbally assaulted by a stranger passing by. The stranger shouts racial slurs at Bilal and tells him to “go back to (his) own country.” Bilal and Alice go on to discuss how Bilal identifies as both French (born in France) and Algerian (his parents’ country of origin), and that, in spite of the man’s hateful comments, France is his country.

I approached the reading of this chapter in the same way that I approach all chapters, using pre-reading strategies (PQA, picture talk, and predictions) and post-reading strategies (students write a five sentence summary to share with a partner and discuss as a class, then we think-pair-share a couple of reflection questions) to help students acquire language and understand the chapter along the way.

After reading the chapter, we listened to the song “Je suis chez moi” by Black M. The song parallels the experiences of Bilal in Chapter 8 in many ways. Before listening, I gave background information on the singer and song (although students were already familiar with Black M thanks to Manie Musicale!). I circled the vocabulary as we went. Then, we listened to the song twice. The first time, without watching the music video, students completed a fill-in-the-blanks lyrics activity from Cécile’s “Alice” free resources. We went over the answers together before listening a second time and watching the music video.

DAY THREE AND FOUR: MAKING CONNECTIONS THROUGH FURTHER READING

After Chapter 8 and the song, I gave students three additional documents.

The first was a poem from Diego Ojeda’s “Nostalgie Migrante” poetry collection called “Ne dis plus rien.” This poem addresses the myths that can spur anti-immigration discrimination. (Sidenote: I have a couple of copies of this book, along with Diego Ojeda’s other poetry collections, in my free voluntary reading library, and teaching this poem is a perfect opportunity for me to draw students’ attention to the book should they want to read more).

The second document was an article from Le Petit Journal Francophone, October 2020, called “Discrimination contre les accents régionaux: Faut-il cacher ses origines?” by Anna Gilcher. This article addresses glottophobia and recounts the experience of one woman in particular who encountered linguistic discrimination in her job in Paris because of her accent.

The third document was another article from Le Petit Journal Francophone, December 2023, called “Les Africains font évoluer la langue français” by Anna Gilcher and Cécile Lainé. This article discusses the ways in which African languages are influencing the French language. 

Together as a class, we read the documents. I displayed them on my projector and read them out loud as students followed along on their own copies. I highlighted and circled what I predicted would be new or challenging vocabulary for my students as we went. Something I truly appreciate about teaching with CI is that it gives me a very solid understanding of what will be new or challenging vocabulary for my students.

Once we finished reading, my students completed a reading comprehension task where they identified the key vocabulary, main ideas, an important quote (with translation), and connections to Alice Chapter 8. I anticipated only spending one class period on this, but as we approached the bell, I could see that students still had a lot more they wanted to write, so I gave them an additional period to finish re-reading the documents and writing about them in connection to “Alice.”

As I read the students’ reading responses, I was impressed with the sophisticated connections they were able to draw between the poem, the articles, the song, and the chapter using comprehensible (though not perfect!) French. I think that it is worth noting that the students wrote these responses spontaneously, without access to computers or online translators. What you see here is not carefully constructed grammatical perfection, but rather authentic and spontaneous communication using language they have truly acquired.

The Power of Story

At the core of all of these tools, whether novel, article, poem, or song, is story. Story sensitizes us to the experiences of others. We cannot live all of each other’s experiences, but we can certainly hear each other’s stories. And as we hear more stories, we can draw connections between others and ourselves. It is through the power of story, telling our own and listening to others, that we gain understanding, grow in compassion, embrace our humanity, and advocate for each other.