The Play Must Go On

Last June, several educators from the Lycée Français de New York, including myself, attended the annual conference of the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE). In addition to participating in many sessions related to ISTE’s mission of “advancing excellence in learning and teaching through the innovative and effective uses of

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Hands in the Dough

Elementary students trying to figure out how a salad spinner works.  It is not every day that one encounters three aspiring scientists sitting side by side in the school cafeteria, but that is exactly what happened to me the week before vacation. Overhearing a group of sixth graders talking about “sciences de

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Par amour des lettres

Now that spring has arrived, it is time to speak of love, no? I am not certain that such was the intention of New York Times columnist David Brooks last week when he penned his wonderful article about a 1945 encounter between the British intellectual Isaiah Berlin and the Russian poet

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It’s Complicated Indeed!

There is some debate as to who coined the terms “digital native”, but I can recall where I myself first came across them. It was some ten years ago, in an article by educational technology thinker Marc Prensky, entitled “Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants.” “Today’s students”, affirmed the author, “have not just

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Have You Ever Seen a Moose?

There are many ways to celebrate Earth Day, beginning with the manner in which our student-run Environmental Task Force (ETF) did so this past Tuesday, April 22. With tireless support from Director of Facilities Terrence Kennedy, the Lycée Français de New York ETF chose this date to launch a brilliantly

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Facing History and Ourselves

“Why study history?” is a question students ask, not because they lack passion for the subject, but because they seem to be naturally more focused on the present than on the past. The answers I myself would give are myriad, ranging from the importance of building collective memory to that

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Qu’est-ce que le bonheur?

Most often, I think back on growing up in Vienna as an extraordinarily happy period. For three years, between the ages of six and nine, my three siblings and I had the pleasure of playing for hours in the gardens around Schönbrunn Palace, taking the tramway, going to the opera, among

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Percival’s Question

Two thoughts kept coming to mind this past Thursday evening, as I listened to the remarkable discussion on social entrepreneurship taking place in the Lycée Français de New York Cultural Center. The first was one of gratitude to Pascale Richard for organizing such a brilliant event, which from the large

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