Just over 12 years ago, a group of New Westminster parents camped out overnight in front of the old school board offices at NWSS to register their kids in the district’s first-ever early French immersion classes.
Forty-nine youngsters were registered for Grade 1 that day – 24 at Herbert Spencer Elementary and 25 at Lord Tweedsmuir Elementary.
By last Thursday, 17 remained to walk the stage as New Westminster’s first homegrown early French immersion grads, eligible for the coveted bilingual “double Dogwood.”
The Record caught up with a few of these originals recently and asked what stood out to them about their experience looking back.
At the top of the list for most grads was a sense of community, developed over years together in the same small classes.
“I’ve grown up with them,” former Tweedsmuir student Elianna Buchan said of her fellow EFI grads.
“We were all so close because it was such a small group of people,” said Raquel Tjernagel, who started out at Tweedsmuir. “I liked that. We got to know everyone.”
“When I was in Grade 1 till like Grade 5, I remembered every single person’s birthday,” said Sophie Labrosse, a former Spencer student.
The togetherness often went beyond the classroom too, with EFI families at Herbert Spencer getting together for annual camping trips.
By the end of elementary school, however, some students were ready for a few new faces and were happy when the elementary classes from Spencer and Tweedsmuir merged with the late French immersion kids at Glenbrook Middle School.
“You’re always with the same people, so you get really close, but at the same time sometimes that’s hard,” said Madeleine Clarkson, who started out at Spencer.
The close relationships within the EFI classes were a double-edged sword for fellow Spencer grad Marcia Dheilly-Sturrock too – when students dropped out of the program.
“It made me sad,” she said, “because they were our family and we were so close.”
Parting ways with their original classmates was more common for Tweedsmuir students.
Only four of the original 25 who started there graduated from the NWSS program Friday, compared to 13 from Spencer.
Both schools lost the most students during transitions: from elementary to middle school and from middle to high school.
Spencer grad Josh Lauener said many of his friends in the program dropped out in the early high school years, and only a well-timed family trip to Quebec and his parents’ encouragement prevented him from following suit.
“It was definitely tough, for me at least,” he said, “and I’m definitely glad I finished it.”
Mostly, he said he stuck it out because he recognized the value of knowing a second language.
Other grads said the same.
“It really opens doors,” said Labrosse, who plans to attend Queen’s University in Ontario next year and go on an international exchange to hone her language skills even further.
Clarkson plans to join SFU’s French cohort program and teach elementary French immersion someday.
And most grads already use their second language in everyday life.
“I work at Sport Chek, and I’m able to translate there,” Buchan said.
“I go to Quebec sometimes for track meets and stuff,” said Tjernagel, a rising track star. “It’s interesting because I can speak in French there, which is cool, because most people don’t have that.”
Giving kids that kind of advantage is what motivated parents 15 years ago to start lobbying the school board to get an early French immersion program going, former Spencer parent Heidi Clarkson told the Record.
With an older daughter already in the district’s late French immersion program, Clarkson said she started looking into early French immersion when her younger daughter Madeleine was three.
Finding out there was no such thing in New West, she started pushing for the program.
She soon found out a couple of parents in the West End, Anne Tulloch and Susan Otto-Bain, were on a similar mission, and parents across the city combined forces to get a program in place.
“All of a sudden, we had 10, 20, 50, 100 parents wanting early French immersion,” Clarkson said.
Asked if they encountered any obstacles along the way, Clarkson laughed.
“Without getting too into it, it was a challenge in general,” she said. “The board was very willing to listen. They were interested, but they said, ‘Well, you know, we have LFI here; we don’t need EFI.’”
Besides the board, Clarkson said early French immersion advocates also had to convince a vocal group of other parents who saw the program as elitist and feared it would divert resources and space from regular programs.
After years of organizing and lobbying, however, and lots of help from Canadian Parents for French, B.C.-Yukon, EFI parents prevailed, and the district started the program in September 2003 with four classes: one kindergarten and one Grade 1 class at both Spencer and Tweedsmuir.
A third elementary program was added at John Robson Elementary (now Qayqayt) in 2007.
This year, there were 478 New West students registered in early French immersion.
