It’s been a whirlwind year for Ella Scholz-Bertram. She’s an 18-year-old from Edmonds, Washington who graduated from high school in the spring. Now she’s in France, spending a few months as a teaching intern, helping French students learn English.
This interview has been lightly edited for brevity and clarity.
Ella Scholz-Bertram: I wanted to take a bit of time after high school to figure out what direction I wanted to go with university or maybe even not university. And this seemed like a really good fit, especially to improve my French, spend a bit of time in Europe, closer to my German family as well.
DN: Scholz-Bertram lives in a small city named Poitiers. It’s about an hour from the French coast and a 90-minute train ride from Paris. I asked whether the unrest in Paris has reached her city. Sort of, she said. A protester apparently once set a trash can ablaze.
ESB: I personally haven't seen any of the protesting or any of that intensity. I actually had to hear from my host sister that there had been a garbage can that had been lit on fire in front of the school, but I hadn't even seen that. But it's definitely a very big topic amongst my colleagues, other teachers, also with the students and with my parents as well. So yeah, it's lots of buzz about it. But yeah, I haven't seen it with my own eyes.
DN: Much of the discontent among French students is with the state of the education system, including physical facilities they consider outdated. So I asked her to compare her home school in Edmonds with the school where teaches in France.
ESB: I think just in general, not even the building or the facilities, but just the system itself is so different.
Thinking about high school at home, it really is like a one program fits all type of thing where most people are expected to complete the same high school program as everyone else, unless you're taking special classes like AP classes, or I was in the IP program, and trying to wrap my head around the French school system, which is so much more complicated, with different types of high schools that you're able to go to, different programs. I mean, even alone inside the high school that I'm at, there's four different programs, and it's just one technical high school, and as well as like, there's general high schools. I feel like it's a mix of vocational school and what you would consider normal high school.
But I think that both have benefits and some things that are not super right for everyone.
I think in the French system, because there's so many options, it's easier for students to find a pathway that really fits them personally, or their goals for what they're trying, like, I guess, what job or what career they're trying to have later on. But it also makes it a lot harder to decide. And I would say in the U.S., it's a lot easier, you kind of just follow the path of kindergarten all the way to 12th grade.
DN: So from your talking with your colleagues there from consuming news, can you help us understand what is the situation? Why are students not necessarily happy about and why they're protesting?
ESB: Initially, when I found out that the protests were starting, I hadn't really talked to my colleagues yet. I'd done more of my own research online and when I researched a bit, what had come up was the school conditions that a lot of students, both in high school and in university, were unhappy with. Just I think inflation in general.
Then a week later, I had met a new class of kids in premier or in 11th grade and one of the first questions they had for me was, are you going to be participating in the protest on Saturday? And so I asked them, well, what is it really about? What are you guys protesting for in your own words? And that one specifically was for the gas prices. I think for students that age and older, it's especially important because that's when they're starting to drive.
But I think it's a wide range of things, but just overall them being discontent. I will say I do see some of the things I mentioned, I do see in my life as well when I'm teaching at Saint-Jacques, just with comparing it to my high school with the building itself, the school building is much simpler compared to my high school at home. It's a very stereotypical French thing as well of not having air conditioning in any buildings, if that's a school or hotels, anything. And so that was one other thing that they had told me was one of the reasons they were protesting.
DN: Robert Zenk was on the call with us. Zenk is the director of Andego Internships Abroad, the Oregon company that organized Bertram Scholz’s exchange program.
DN: You now have students over there that you have to, that are dealing with this. How do you communicate with them about what's going on over there?
Robert Zenk: One distinction to make is that all of the partner schools in our program with Andego are private schools, which there is a very different connotation between a private school in the U.S. versus France. In the United States, it can be relatively elitist, only to families that have pretty substantial financial means to attend private school in the United States. That's not the case in France. But there is a different calculation. It is still different than the public school.
For the most part, though, knowing France and knowing their culture around protests and strikes, we've largely encouraged our interns to be really observant to even to participate in a safe way. So we really ask them to lean into their local community that they're building, whether that's their host families, the teachers that they're working with for some guidance as to where to be and how to participate.
But you know, our program is all about that intercultural immersion, so the opportunity to see firsthand a strike or a protest in France and understand how quickly and willingly the French will for really a variety of reasons will protest and take to the streets and make their voices heard is, yeah, is a great opportunity to have insight into French culture, with also an understanding that they are visitors still in this country, that they need to be aware of their surroundings and who they're with to not engage in any activities that they, not even that they wouldn't at home, but even a step further, right? Because they won't have the same leeway that they might at home in the United States.
DN: So Ella, you were asked if you were going to be part of a some sort of protest. Did you go and do that?
ESB: I have not yet, no. And I think that's also specific to Poitiers as well, because I'd asked my host family if they knew of any that were going to happen, because usually they're pretty planned and people know when and where they're going to happen. And it seems like there was the one that my students had asked me about, as well as some girls that I'd been spending time with outside of school. And yeah, there weren't actually too many that were happening in Poitiers. There was one a few weeks ago, where I think about a thousand people attended. But I think it's really the big, major cities that give you also more opportunities to participate.
DN: So I assume you've talked with your parents about this situation? What have they said?
ESB: I was really more contacted by my dad. He's only been seeing the protests in American news, as well as in areas that I'm not in, and so he was really curious, as well as a bit worried about what my situation looked like. But I told him the same thing that I'm telling you guys, where it hasn't come face to face with it yet. But I definitely have also spoken to other interns who are in bigger cities like Marseille and stuff like that. And they have a way different experience that I'm having currently.
DN: Robert, have you had any worries about your students and their safety?
RZ: No, we haven't had any worries, and, by and large, the protests have, despite what we see on American television, have really been have really, you know, mostly been peaceful.
Of course, it's unfortunate that people take the opportunity to be out to let emotions run high and do other activities while they're engaged in these protests. But yeah, for the most part, they've been peaceful. We haven't heard any concerns from from any of our interns or gotten any panicked phone calls about areas that they've been in.