Local teacher brings summer experience in France to students.
By: John Dunphy
Never stop learning.
Or, you may want to say "ne jamais cesser d’apprendre."
Whatever language you speak, that mantra holds true for French teacher Mary Albert, who from July 16 to 30 took a trip to Paris, France for a two-
week graduate course offered through Rutgers University.
Today, she is utilizing what she learned from the adventure this summer in her classes at Lawrence Middle School.
Ms. Albert, of Princeton, was one of over a dozen French instructors from New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Vermont, Virginia and Washington D.C. who participated in the University’s second offering of the course.
Home base for the course was the Louvre museum, for which Rutgers has an educational connection to in the United States, she said.
"It’s a very, very old palace," Ms. Albert, 40, said. "It started out as a castle and was continuously built upon, through (the reign of) Napoleon then it stopped. It was once a residence of kings, until Louis XVI."
"It’s a very important piece of architecture," she added.
Ms. Albert said the goals of the course were to experience art, how to approach it, ask what one looks for and to discover how teachers can come up with lessons and ideas on how to integrate art into the teaching of the language.
Though immersed in the French language and culture most of her life her father was a French professor and the family often traveled there teaching the subject came relatively recently for Ms. Albert.
A multimedia developer for curriculum design for 15 years, she said she’d become "tired of sitting in front of a computer."
"I was lonely," said Ms. Albert, who has been teaching French language and culture at the Princeton Pike middle school for two years. "It’s against my character to be alone. And really, I missed French."
As a member of the Foreign Language Educators of New Jersey, she received notice of the class through the organization’s newsletter and decided to jump at the opportunity.
Ms. Albert called it "the trip of a lifetime."
"Paris itself is a work of art," she said. "There are buildings that are still standing that are 1,000 years old."
During the two-week adventure, the group not only studied art and culture at the Louvre, but also at other landmarks: the Paris catacombs, which was the headquarters of the French Resistance during World War II; at the Notre Dame cathedral, where the group climbed to the top as the sun set on the city; at the Georges Pompidou Center, a modern art museum; and at the Pantheon, where French luminaries of history are buried. Nobel-
prize winner Marie Curie, an early pioneer in radioactivity, is the only woman buried there, Ms. Albert said.
In record breaking summer heat, Ms. Albert said the group often took trips outside of class, on picnics, shopping expeditions, eating and in other ways of soaking up the culture.
"Your time is well spent in Paris simply walking," she said. "It’s so beautiful."
A visitor to the country on numerous occasions, Ms. Albert called the common stereotype that the French are rude "very unfortunate."
"It’s a stereotype that hasn’t been borne out by my experiences," she said. "My theory is, some people don’t recognize their culture is distinctly different from American culture. There’s different values, different ways of interacting, different expectations."
The trip is paying off. Ms. Albert said her eighth-grade class is currently doing a unit that directly comes out of her experience on the trip, using still life art to explore and express identities, something she acknowledges "is very important for a 13-year-old."
She said she hopes to return to France next summer, this time with her husband, Bill Sproule, and her two children, 13-year-old Benjamin and 10-year-old Ellen.
Ms. Albert voiced her strong belief in the value of educational travel.
"Everybody needs to travel," she said. "Learning is stimulating and joyful. For a teacher, it’s critical to renew yourself. Teaching requires constantly being asked to give and you have to fill up your reserves."

