By Marisa Iati, Staff Writer
ROBBINSVILLE — Robbinsville High School teacher Guy Dippolito will engage in a culture permeated by soccer, high fashion and wine and cheese when he uses a Fulbright Classroom Teacher Exchange grant to travel to France in August to teach English for a year.
Mr. Dippolito, who teaches French and English as a second language, will work at a high school called Lycée le Corbusier in the town of Saint-Etienne-du-Rouvray, a suburb of the city of Rouen. He will remain in France until July 2012.
Approximately 60 United States citizens will travel abroad through the Fulbright Classroom Teacher Exchange Program in 2011-2012. Mr. Dippolito said nine of those grants will enable Americans to travel to France.
”The Fulbright Program is the flagship international educational exchange program sponsored by the U.S. government and is designed to increase mutual understanding between people of the United States and the people of other countries,” according to a State Department press release. “Recipients of Fulbright grants are selected on the basis of academic or professional achievement, as well as demonstrated leadership potential in their fields.”
Mr. Dippolito said he discovered the Fulbright Program while surfing the Internet last summer and was interested in the opportunity to use resources in France to benefit Robbinsville’s French program. He learned that he had received the grant in late April.
Mr. Dippolito credited the award to the quality of his work in Robbinsville.
”I started with 30 kids (in the French program) six years ago and built it up to the program there is now,” he said. “I’ve set up a blog for students to communicate with pen pals from France, I’ve taken kids on various field trips in the area, we cook a lot (and) I brought a teaching assistant from Belgium. She came in and taught French for two weeks.”
Mr. Dippolito said he has also purchased website subscriptions for his students to practice speaking.
”One is called VoiceThread, which is cutting edge technology,” he said. “Kids upload pictures, and they use a microphone and headset and record their narration on the website. When other kids click on their icon, they can listen to the students’ narration, and then the kids can leave voice comments on that particular picture.”
One of Mr. Dippolito’s goals for his time in France is to enable his students in Robbinsville and his students in France to communicate with each other.
”I hope to create a Facebook page so that my students in France and my students in the United States can communicate via a medium that is familiar to them, fun for them and instructional as well,” he said.
Mr. Dippolito said he believes he will be able to provide his students in Robbinsville with “a deeper understanding of the French educational and cultural system” when he returns for the 2012-2013 school year. He added that he hopes eventually to implement a student exchange program in which Robbinsville students live in France for two weeks while students from France live in Robbinsville.
While Mr. Dippolito teaches in France, Marilyne Serres from Lycée le Corbusier will teach the Robbinsville students.
”I’m most excited about the chance for both the French students to have an American teacher and for my American students to have a French teacher,” Mr. Dippolito said. “They’re very excited to meet her, and she’ll bring a lot to the classroom and vice versa for me in France. To shrink the world is basically what we try to do, breaking down stereotypes and instilling communication between cultures and countries.”
Mr. Dippolito said he is slightly nervous about some aspects of his voyage.
”There’s always nervous excitement about meeting new students and living in a new culture in a city where you know no one — and meeting students that perhaps have never met an American or only know American culture through media like music or TV,” he said.
Mr. Dippolito, who studied French at Nottingham High School in Hamilton and Rider University in Lawrenceville, became interested in teaching in 2000 when he traveled to Montélimar, France to work as an English teaching assistant for a year.
”I became fluent in French and came back and wanted to share that with students and somehow create an exchange between the two countries,” he said.
Mr. Dippolito expressed concern about Robbinsville’s decreasing emphasis on its French program. He said both French and Italian classes have been eliminated from Pond Road Middle School, and the high school will not offer French I next school year.
When he isn’t teaching, Mr. Dippolito can be found playing or coaching tennis, or playing the piano and singing in a jazz quartet.
