The Circumference of O

My nine year old and I learned a lot about each other’s quirks on our way to school this past year. Making our daily roundtrips on the Paris metro we went from the Parmentier station in the 11th Arrondissement to Barbès-Rochechouart near Sacre Coeur in the 9th. Olivia didn’t like touching the poles with her bare hands and usually hung onto me. The route we took to school was not the shortest way. We had once been advised by someone how to maximize our efficiency by taking a different route to school. Yes, their route cut five minutes from the commute, but it wasn’t our route. In a year of so much change where we didn’t call a lot of the shots we began to cling to routines we could control. Having our familiar routes and comforting routines made us feel just a little more secure.

Why did we need reassurance? For my nine year old that was easy. She missed home; she’d never done this kind of thing. As for us, what we came to Paris to do began to feel a little risky as the year progressed: we had pulled our soon-to-be fourth grader out of the ‘flow’ of the California public school curriculum for our short, Paris-based work assignment. And when our day-to-day existence got bumpy it made us realize that we--not our daughter--were the ones meant to get a little French education this year.

When the plan to have Olivia spend a year in a mainstream French classroom got derailed, we found ourselves creators of a mash-up curriculum, neither French- nor California-branded. During this year of learning à la carte we confronted unique social, emotional and academic challenges. It took us awhile, but we finally got comfortable straddling multiple languages and academic philosophies. Or, you might put it: we got re-educated. We learned that we didn’t really know what we were getting into when we signed our daughter up for French public school. We’d so romanticized what daily life would be like it left little room for fact.

We were happy that by taking this trip Olivia would get a break from California and its teaching-to-the-test variety of academics. We were not the only people with doubts about standardized testing, the hallmark of a public education in her era. Taking a brief change of air from the California curriculum though meant worrying about keeping Olivia on track with the standards of a curriculum she’d return to in a year.

We realized it was going to be an academic year unlike any other when the rentrée—France’s back-to-school period—started, and we were not done with her paperwork. Lots of blue ink later, we managed to get her enrolled. But, it wasn’t what we had in mind when we pictured French public school. We had thought Olivia would go straight to a regular classroom with children in her grade level. Like a picture coming into focus, by mid-year she would understand enough French to do the work. She would enter French grade CM1 and would have a pleasant year completing what would be more or less equivalent—if not superior—to American fourth grade. We were heading to the birthplace of the Cartesian grid. We had faith. But we still wondered whether this French Education, a big E, for all its centuries of grandeur would get in the way of Olivia’s education, with a small e.

Our visa gave us only three months to move. This is where some of the trouble began. It was late spring by the time our visa was approved, and the normal enrollment period was over. Like tourists trying to get in at a hot hotel, we kept at it. Many school offices were too busy to respond, and the popular and desirable bilingual schools had no room. Some were clearly out of our budget while others seemed too far from our Oberkampf neighborhood.

Eventually, Olivia was enrolled at École Keller, the largest primary school in central Paris. No, Olivia was not proficient in French, but it still came as a surprise to learn that she would have to attend a mandatory program they called the “CLIN” to learn the language. She would likely be there all year. Every day we passed École Pihet, the public school closest to us. It was just 50 meters from our living room. We could see the building from our sixth floor bedroom window and watch children going in and out the school’s double doors with the de rigeur French flag flying above. It made us wistful to contemplate how close we had come to this goal.

And this goal or dream was built on cherished myths and family history. Enrolling Olivia in a French school was like déjà vu all over again for me; it was an idea recycled and somewhat altered over time that originated in something I had tried to do when I was 16. I’d been venturing off to Paris ever since then and had built some of my life around trips to France. So this story of a trip to Paris is really a story of two trips to Paris—and many more in between. When I was 16 I’d convinced myself that despite the odds against it I could get into an elite school: Lycée Henri IV. Well it didn’t work out. But somehow, having met defeat, I was determined to face this mythical beast yet again, this time with my daughter by my side.

We thought we knew a lot about being in France; we’d come here so many times before. But we had to confront a different reality here on the ground. We did like Olivia’s teacher, Marie-Claude. She put a face on this behemoth French school system. But we were not sure that the CLIN curriculum was going to help Olivia master key fourth grade subject areas and skills. Marie-Claude was a veteran of the system. At the start of the school year her class held around a dozen non-French speaking children from all over the globe. By learning French chez Marie-Claude they would get promoted into a mainstream classroom.

By contrast, Olivia’s stint here would be over in no time, so we had to try our best to integrate our California curriculum as well. And we had to make the best of our time. But it was hard not to panic as we could not—it seemed-- get time off our minds. In particular, the kind of time carved into academic years with its scheduled agenda of expected accomplishments. The kind of time that told us if we did not stay on track Olivia would not be able to get home and be right there with her ‘pack,’ the group of kids she’d traveled with for the last three years. She might have to face what many French children faced as a consequence of falling behind: redoublement, being held back.

Our trip here had begun with a koan, and it was ‘what does a fourth grader need to learn?’ We looked within for answers, trying to come up with reasonable benchmarks and set milestones. If Olivia were going to return from this year and be ready for California fifth grade, she was going to need a second shift of teachers. And we would have to find those teachers or do it all ourselves. Suddenly we became good at finding academic resources around every corner.

One evening I heard a child speaking English in line at a shop called BioCoop on Boulevard Voltaire. I looked around to see a mom and daughter. We didn’t know it at the time, but we had just met Olivia’s tutor. Her name was Marianne Freire. Marianne taught at the International School of Paris (ISP) where her daughter went to school. She had taught expat children for years and brought a lot to the table. And every Tuesday we brought out fourth grade math books and put them on our dining room tables; we turned both our houses into improvised classrooms where Olivia and Marianne would go over ‘maths.’ We were layering curricula and cultures in a pastiche we hoped would pass the litmus test for so-called fourth grade. And we had gained more than a teacher. We also had found a good neighbor and friend, and Marianne’s daughter Ariana and Olivia became buddies who saw each other every week in our home-school “classroom.”

As Olivia progressed in her American fourth grade textbook and weekly tutoring sessions, (supplemented by the Kahn Academy) we did what our neighbor, the therapist who lived on the third floor suggested: we kept on keeping on. Then we had another meeting with unexpected luck when we discovered writing workshop leader, Cathy Nocquet. We’d called on her hoping to find someone to school Olivia in that academic mainstay: the five-paragraph essay. But we got pulled in a new direction. Getting off track was, it seemed, our natural tendency, but one that was not without its rewards.

That week, Olivia ended up in one of the seats in the Nocquet’s apartment having joined Cathy’s weekly writing workshop for expat pre-teens. Cathy had a talent for keeping the kids inspired and learning, but also entertained. Thus began a romance between Olivia and the written word. It was equally a romance between a mother and a city like Paris that attracts sophisticated individuals able to serve as stand-in educators.

Sitting at the long, white acrylic table instead of a school desk, Olivia began to express a little of her true, increasingly bilingual voice. Being in this writing class helped her feel part of a group. The need for a sense of belonging is big at this age. She now also had a playground for her creative and verbal abilities. Maybe fitting in for one hour and fifteen minutes a week would be enough to propel her to, say, the next week?

As we pursued these new routines, our minds were beginning to expand, like a circle stretching outward. Our circle of acquaintances was growing in circumference, too. And for the first time, the essence of fourth grade and what that meant was beginning to have diminished privileges in my mind. We were chancing ever so briefly to live in suspended time, forgetting the clock just for a little while to savor something better than fourth grade. Something that was in a class of its own.

I’ll admit we were naïve. We knew next to nothing about how to scale this monolith that is French public school. And it is a monolith: calcified. Sameness is its motto. And, because of its bureaucratic enormity and bows to tradition, it is known for being slow to reform.

The year we arrived, a book came out by veteran British journalist, Peter Gumbel, entitled On Achève Bien les Écoliers. In English, the title translates to They Shoot School Children, Don’t They? We learned the author was doing a book talk at the American Library and were eager to check it out. Ironically, we had arrived in Paris the same month the book was to show up on the shelves. It was the same month that we had placed our child in a schoolroom that according to this book would not be a very easy place for her to stomach. It was a place, the author said, with an approach to teaching based on humiliation. As Gumbel put it, three words summed up the classroom culture: ‘t’es nul’ or, in English, ‘you’re worthless.’

The French made getting through life harder on kids by regularly holding large percentages of them back to repeat a year. It was just one of the various practices he cited that might ensure kids mastered the curriculum assigned but at a price of doing damage to their self-esteem. Gumbel cites personal accounts and international studies as evidence of the system’s harsh effect on the mindset of its students and proposes his own roadmap for French educational reform. The system was clear about this: perfection is something no mere student can achieve. In French public schools, grades are assigned on a scale of 0 to 20. Because it’s a system of deduction, you might get a -7, but you could not earn 20.

American-bred mom that I was, my mind went tumbling too hearing this talk of numbers going backwards down the number line. And a picture came to mind: it was of Lewis Carroll’s Alice. Down the number line she fell, down through this tiny hole that sat there like a zero. Zero! I realized how alike it was to the letter o. Sometimes they could even be mistaken for each other. At once, this ‘null’ or ‘nul’ number seemed something vulnerable, darling, and miniscule. I would use the same glyph to write the first letter of my daughter’s name.

Listening to Gumbel go on, I felt I was peering into the hearts of all those kids. Of course, I was aware that the British author would clearly not appeal to all the French. His critique was just one more battle in the war of words and cultural skirmishes, said some, in the ages old battle between the Anglo Saxon and the Gauls. But many saw it differently. It had some anecdotal truth, and if that wasn’t enough, lots of metrics and statistics.

All these years I had thought pursuing an education in France was, to use California lingo, all good. The year we finally make it, along came Gumbel pointing out the ways the French school system failed to address one of my touchstones at school, at home, and in life: the fostering of self esteem. My own misadventures in early schooling had left me wary of the ‘feel bad’ brand of education wherever it appeared. It had sensitized me to be on the lookout for individuals whose classroom tactics killed the joy in learning. Was this the Way of the French? Yes, perhaps, but they had grown used to having things this way. Parents who were so accustomed raised them, and…if we were meant to stay here for longer…I suppose…we could get used to it, too. One could get used to anything. But this dissection of French education made me uncomfortable. We had skin in this game.

I also knew that school was a place to work towards excellence and self-mastery, but after reflection we decided that after 12 weeks at Olivia’s public school, we would find a different school. We found ourselves adding something new to our fourth grade à la carte. Our timing turned out to be good. When we contacted Wikids, Olivia’s soon-to- be-new school, they were having an open house that weekend. Our journey had taken this zig-zag path but it had led to this place. It was small, and could be more independent because it was a private school. It might not have been free but it was freer.

Wikids was run by a bunch of trailblazers and was only in its third year. As such, there were only 55 students, and this would give Olivia a better chance of fitting in. This French-inflected bilingual Montessori was following its own curriculum. By starting at this new place, Olivia got a second chance at a first day of school. It was rewarding that we would get to become a part of something that challenged the rigid standards we were learning characterized education à la Française. We had thought while we were here we’d give Olivia a taste of classical French academics. Instead we had built our own hybrid fourth grade.

The approach at Wikids was child-centered, and because the differences among children are a baseline of instruction, it was ideal for a child who was from a different culture. Mixed in with the Montessori was a list of other influences. Though I’d never heard of these teaching methods, I was pleased that here we’d find teachers who were warm, open, and experimental in their approach. We were reservedly delighted. It seemed we had fallen upon—quite by accident—something that was on the spectrum of emerging pedagogy. It was kind of hip, a progressive place. And maybe we were going to help out with this school reform ‘experiment’ ourselves. We’d like to think unique schools like this one and others might expand and become the basis for a future French child-centered education scene.

Every weekday we walk up Rue Oberkampf to the Parmentier metro station and take line 3 then transfer to the 4. Our new school route takes us from the Barbès-Rochechouart station down Rue du Faubourg Poissonière. Where it crosses Rue de Dunkerque that's where I can see the edge of the Gare du Nord facade. I left this city from this station when I was 16 to head back home after my failed attempt to get into a French school.

On this roundtrip from home to the new school and back again, we know we have set ourselves on a better course. Olivia is more comfortable and is making more friends. This has come as a lovely confirmation that she is adjusting. Changing course has engaged us with a new community. We became aware of our prejudice, which had led us to believe that in Paris one would be hard put to find something so divergent. We discovered that we were more at home with ‘divergent’ too.

Though Olivia was not enrolled in an alternative school in California, we are now more familiar with the ideas of the Nouvelle Education movement and have seen them in action. The special Wikids inflection of this pedagogical approach greatly differs from what we’re likely to get when we go back. It will not be easy to leave this place that has taken us in. We are aware that this school like every school is not without polemics; parents ready to sing its praises or proclaim its failings. Like all new things it has had its share of growing pains.

When she returns home knowing more about what lays on the periphery of our suburb, we will sift through what she knows and what she doesn’t know from the fallout of an ‘incomplete’ French education. And pro re nata, we’ll turn back and repeat the curriculum that we missed. We’ll turn on Kahn Academy and seek out help where we need it. And some of it we’ll do ourselves.

We’ll always have these daily journeys across a big city on our metro commute on which to look back. It’s these simple things that feed a central part of us: a friend, a familiar route, the routines at the beginning and the ending of each day. These roundtrips make up our lives and our children’s lives. One day, they will make these trips alone. And it will be for them to find their rhythm on their own. In repetition comes experience and confidence. To set and reset each new course: that becomes the story of their lives. 

We make our way past the Arabic pastry shop and its neighboring bridal bazaars before going right on Rue Pétrelle. And every day we do it again. For repetition is sometimes at the very heart of things.

Katherine dedicates the article to her mother: "For my mother, Connie Relf, whose love encircled us."

Katherine Relf-Canas runs Serentripity, a cultural workshop company, and works as a freelance writer. She recommends international travel to parents as a way to bond as a family. This was her family's second international living experience.