About This Project

Bienvenue !

Glad to have you here. This project started in the spring of 2020 when I noticed that my French as a Second Language teacher-colleagues and I continue to struggle to include content in our FSL classes that authentically and respectfully feature French-speaking Black & Indigenous Peoples and People of Colour from around the world as well as here at home.

As my colleagues and I learn more about the effects of colonialism on BIPOC, and become more aware of how our curriculum upholds white supremacy, it becomes abundantly clear that we need to do more to take concrete action in our classrooms to teach both for diversity and for anti-racism. Currently, textbooks, films, books, and the majority of videos, podcasts and website resources available to FSL teachers still remain very white in FSL courses in Ontario. This can disillusion students to the value of learning French when they do not see themselves in the curriculum texts.

Today, the majority of daily French speakers globally are in fact, not white, and not from France, but many FSL students might not know this. It is important to recognize not only our colonial heritage in our Quebecois and Canadian Francophone communities across Canada, but also and perhaps especially its effects on Indigenous French speaking communities, immigrant & refugee French speaking communities, as well as French speaking communities globally from the countries and diasporas our students come from.

French has spread as a language due to practices of imperialism, colonization, enslavement, conquest and economic exploitation; this is why it is spoken so widely here and around the world. France continues to hold French Departments in the Caribbean, South America, and in the Indian Ocean off the coast of East Africa. Many West African and North African countries also speak French. Canada has several provinces that speak French.

According to the "Report by La Francophonie: The French Language Worldwide Overview 2018, EN translation: 2019" the number of daily French speakers around the world in 2018 were as follows:

• 44.4% in Sub-Saharan Africa and the Indian Ocean

• 14.9% in North Africa and the Near East (South-West Asia)

• 33.4% in Europe

• 7% in the Americas and the Caribbean

• 0.3% in Asia and Oceania

The possibility to learning a language of conquest is that languages like French (and English), act as a lingua franca, a language we can use to talk to many people from different language backgrounds and access media and perspectives from around the globe. Learning French to act as a lingua franca allows us to connect with peoples, cultures, and communities living on Turtle Island and from different parts of the world. This allows us to connect to places and peoples where we might not have connected with otherwise; this is especially true for areas where English is not as prevalent. It is imperative we reflect this reality in our learning in school. This is what makes learning French still relevant in Ontario today. However, we should not be forcing students to learn French, especially considering its colonial history.

My colleagues and I are constantly searching to include texts that feature BIPOC as well as creating new lessons, slideshows, and materials to use for the classroom. Summer 2020 has been a learning and brainstorm session for many of us. I felt it was necessary to create a place where FSL educators across school boards could come to look for content featuring BIPOC as well as work together to share lesson plans, slide decks or other learning materials on this platform. The wider our community -- the more we can share and learn together.

This project, however, is not possible without YOU. It is only as a community of educators who choose to freely share our work that we can grow this resource. I want to clarify that everybody who has worked on this does has done this work voluntarily. This is truly a grassroots effort on the part of caring FSL educators across Ontario.

Thank you to everyone who helped in the process of finding texts for the slideshow on the home page and contributing to lessons on this website.

Special thanks to:

Julius @LouisaJulius https://manifestequity.ca/ for designing the header image used on our website and on the title page of our slideshow.

Alexia Polito for proofreading the slides and for adding author bios and informative copy to better explain the resources.

Khorshid Gharaee-Kermani for designing the Accessibility Tips slides as well as providing many learning materials to start up the website.

Amanda Cloutier for setting up our account and helping with the website.

We have taken step one and now need help with step two.

Step 1) We've put together this website with a resource on the home page which houses a google slide with TEXTS (music videos - my fave, short interviews, films, books, and catalogues) that feature BIPOC. Please check it out.

Step 2) Our next step is to create learning materials (in the form of slides, worksheets, questions, or even complete lesson plans or other useful materials to use immediately in the classroom) for the texts in our slideshow.

This will be an ongoing project - so be sure to bookmark this website and please CONTRIBUTE! If you already have lessons for FSL that feature BIPOC, we would love to accept those too, and will then add links to any texts you have used to the slides.

Sincerely,

Natasha Faroogh

@natasha_faroogh

p.s. If you are on a mobile phone or tablet, please use the Menu button in the top left corner, indicated by three horizontal lines, to access the rest of the website.