It dawned on me the other day, and not for the first time I happily admit, that I must on occasion sound like quite the broken record! In the course of just a few weeks, when talking with one member of our community, I was surprised to hear my interlocutor quote me quoting a certain Greek poet, and then conversing with someone else I had no sooner mentioned the same Greek poet than this person interjected by quoting the same quotation. Which Greek poet? Pindar. Which quotation? “Become who you are.”*
And I do appreciate these words, above all because they encapsulate an essential dimension of our school mission: nurturing the personal development of our students. It is to help them fulfill their greatest potential that our educational team will encourage our students to read beyond our already rigorous academic program in subject areas they find particularly engaging, will push them to cultivate their musical, theatrical, athletic and other extracurricular interests, will express to them again and again how perhaps the most enduring happiness in life will come from putting their passions in the service of the world around them.
Advisory program
Our efforts to support our students in both recognizing and pursuing their personal gifts and aspirations are anything but accidental. To the contrary, we have adopted a structured approach to the important goal of helping our students “become who [they] are”, as you will have learned in detail if you were able to attend the APL meeting on Tuesday, October 29. The first of three “Breakfasts with the Head of School and the Lycée Team” scheduled for the 2013-14 academic year, this 90-minute rendez-vous focused on the “advisory” program we are building in our secondary school.
Director of Secondary Nicolas L’Hotellier and I introduced the theme, recalling how the advisory initiative had emerged from the pioneering work of the LFNY Student Well-Being Task Force in 2011-12 and outlining the program’s underlying principles. In sum, we explained how secondary school students are placed in sections of 10-12 classmates called advisory groups and how each of these advisory groups is guided by a trained adult known as an advisor who meets with them for 15 minutes every day and for a full period once every week.
Extended to all Secondary starting in 2014
What happens in these advisory sessions and why they are such central tenets of the education we envision was then the subject of a highly inspiring presentation by Sylvain Pappalardo and Joelle Reilly, secondary teachers at the LFNY and coordinators for our advisory initiative, respectively for middle and upper school. NB. This year, which is the second of three dedicated to its phase-in, advisory includes Sixième, Cinquième, Seconde and Première; in 2014-15, it will be extended to the three remaining secondary grades, incorporating all 700 of our middle and high school students.
Social and Emotional Learning Core Competencies (Source: CASEL.org)
As Mr. Pappalardo and Ms. Reilly passionately and eloquently explained, advisory equips our students with the social and emotional learning (SEL) they need in secondary school and beyond (please see the above diagram from the Collaborative for Academic, Social and Emotional Learning (CASEL)), as well as the academic competencies they require for navigating the educational landscape from sixth grade onwards.
Some aspects of advisory differ from one level to the next, our advisory coordinators also said, inasmuch as the demands of one grade vary from those in another. In Sixième, for instance, the advisory curriculum nurtures the life skills most critical for adolescence and the organizational methods which matter for success in middle and upper school, whereas in Seconde the program focuses more on teaching leadership and helping students find the most fitting Baccalaureate track.
A program that adapts to the students age and needs
In addition to knowing his or her advisees well enough to provide each one with tailored guidance, Sylvain Pappalardo and Joelle Reilly further explained that an advisor’s role involves acting as an advocate for what is best for his or her students, as a liaison among their teachers, and as a bridge between school and family. As one of our Seconde students shared at the end of the 2012-13 year, “we had no idea that the advisory program was probably going to be the best thing that happened to us this 10th grade.” It is our deepest hope that all Lycée Français advisees will value the advisory experience for how it allows them to become themselves, to be who they are, as a Greek poet called Pindar once famously said!
*The full quotation is “Become such as you are, having learned what that is” (Pythian II, line 72). Source: en.wikiquotes.org/pindar
About the Author :
Sean Lynch was Head of School at the Lycée Français de New York from 2011 to 2018, after having spent 15 years at another French bilingual school outside of Paris: the Lycée International de St. Germain-en-Laye. Holding both French and American nationalities, educated in France (Sciences Po Paris) and the United States (Yale), and as the proud husband of a French-American spouse and father of two French-American daughters, Sean Lynch has spent his entire professional and personal life at the junction between the languages, cultures and educational systems of France and the United States. In addition to being passionate about education, he loves everything related to the mountains, particularly the Parc National du Mercantour.