A La Francais

Here's Selah skipping at the zoo with her French teacher, Madame, and a classmate.

Recently, Selah's great and wonderful school, Waters of Life, was hit with a permit issue, and was consequently closed down. Thankfully, this occurred right as the children were about to have their spring hiatus, and gave the heads of the school some time to find an alternative space.

A new school site was secured, but won't be ready until next week. The new site is an arts performance center in a small beach community called Seaview. This performance center is run by a wonderful soul named Graham, who also coaches a team of acrobats and performers in a troupe called The Hiccup Circus. Now Selah will add stilt-walking, unicycle and gymnastics to her usual, amazing routine.

Until then, the students have been going on excursions like the zoo, the school's farm, and the beach. At each location, the specialty teachers join the students in between play activities. For instance, today, Selah had all of her classes at the zoo. She chased and marveled at the peacocks, wandering free on the pathways around the exhibits, and then she sat in the shade with her classmates and had French.

Madame is such a wonderful, expressive, passionate educator - she speaks to the children entirely in her native tongue. I cannot explain how amazing it is for me, as a mother, to watch my child understand and comprehend such a complex language. The only thing I understood was Bon Jour! But then, after that, it was a blur of Madame's wild hand movements, throated, whispery French words and giggling children, who all seemed to understand every word she said.

It warms us so deeply to experience a taste of this learning style. How lucky Selah and the other children are who have the opportunity to expand like the sponges they are in such a dynamic, exciting environment. What would our lives have been like if we were learning French in a zoo, on an island in the Pacific, with monkeys, parrots and cranes chirping in the background~!?

It's an amazing blessing and an honor to see Selah open and grow with such confident curiosity, to be exactly who she is, and celebrated for it.