School in Norfolk helps French kids keep up studies

Sylvie Autellet lives in Virginia Beach, but she's enrolled her two teenagers at Norfolk's Granby High to be part of something no other Hampton Roads division offers: a French-American school.

Hosted by the Norfolk division but independently run, the French-American School of Norfolk debuted this year.

It follows the French national education curriculum and caters to families of French military personnel stationed at the NATO headquarters in Norfolk.

Students attend regular public school classes during the day but stay afterward for instruction, in French, by teachers from France. The French defense ministry covers all expenses.

"It's a little France," said Autellet, whose husband, Eric, is a French air force colonel serving NATO. The Francophone classes are held at Granby, Northside Middle and Crossroads Elementary.

Apart from a couple of French Impressionist paintings on the wall, the French school's Granby High classroom is unremarkable.

But not the students' daily schedule. After Granby dismisses at 2 p.m., they put in two hours of French studies, except on Mondays, when they don't leave before 6 p.m.

That could be why Constance Tuset-Anres, 15, says she has too much work. Still, the Parisian teen prefers being here with her family over her other option: staying in France at boarding school. The French-American school also provides a welcome opportunity to be with other French-speakers, she said.

For Norfolk, hosting the school costs nothing and gives the estimated 100 French military families in the area an incentive to enroll their children in the division, Assistant Superintendent for Academics Christine Harris said. Norfolk leaders and a group that represents the families forged the school arrangement in the spring.

Having French classmates exposes Norfolk students to another culture and eventually some American students might want to enroll in the school as well, she said.

For the NATO families, the new school is a godsend, Autellet said. French military families are posted here for three-year stints, then return to France, where American school credits don't qualify children for a high school diploma.

Until now, the French families laboriously tutored their children according to France's curriculum, using Internet and self-study materials to teach math, history and other subjects.

"I can tell you, it's not very easy to do that every weekend," Autellet said. "We are parents, not teachers."

The new school will make Norfolk more attractive for French families who may fear that accepting the deployment could handicap their children's education later, she said.

The French school's four teachers include Kim Vo Hoang, a Parisian who taught previously at French schools in Qatar and Uzbekistan. She teaches pre-K through second grade and also is director of the school, which has 37 students. All but about five students live in Norfolk.

The teachers take a one-room-schoolhouse approach. Fred Nortes, for example, has 10 students in his high school section, spread across different grade levels.

To meet their needs, he teaches five different math and science courses, each of which may be pertinent to only a few of the students or even a single teen.

As a result, students get highly individualized instruction, but they must also be able to work independently when Nortes is focused on other classmates.

"This is something maybe hard for them to know: the autonomy of learning," Nortes said.

Nortes' students include Autellet's children, Alexandre, 16, and Caroline, 15. Both attended First Colonial High in Virginia Beach last year.

While he doesn't enjoy his double load of American and French schoolwork, Alexandre said it's better than returning to France and having to catch up in school.

He said that compared with France, schools in America feel more like communities, with sports and clubs cementing student affinity. "In France, you just go to school and then you leave."

What's strangest to him about American schools? "Multiple-choice quizzes and tests," Alexandre said. French schools, including the one in Norfolk, require students to explain in writing each answer they give on tests.

Yet Alexandre's become so familiar with American ways of schooling that he's not sure whether he'll choose to attend university in France or the United States.

He's not sure his mother would vote for the latter. "I don't know if she'd really want me to," Alexandre said, "because then I would stay here, and they'd go back to France."

Steven G. Vegh, (757) 446-2417, steven.vegh@pilotonline.com