ASMSA collaborates with French school

In the fall of 2019, ASMSA French Instructor of Excellence Bryan Ieamsang wanted to find a French school to partner with to give his students opportunities to interact with native language speakers.

Ieamsang had seen the success of ASMSA’s exchange programs with two Japanese high schools — Hanamaki Kita High School in Hanamaki, Japan, and Tennoji High School in Osaka, Japan.

“I wanted more collaboration with someone (in the same way) we have collaboration with Japanese schools. I wanted that for my language, too,” Ieamsang said. He began searching for programs that might work. “I didn’t know what existed. I just kept searching and looking and going to the embassy webpage. I kept doing Google searches for collaboration and French and American schools.”

He eventually found and applied to the French Embassy’s School Partnership Program. The program encourages partnerships to make it easier to establish pen-pal programs for students, organize travel exchange programs and encourage the exchange of ideas among students, teachers and administrators, according to the embassy’s website.

At the same time, Nathalie Laugier-Mattoug, an English instructor at Albert Lourdes High School in Vichy, France, also was looking for a partnership for her students. Vichy is located in the Auvergne Region near some natural hot springs. It didn’t take long after they both applied for the program that they were able to connect..

“In a way, it was a coincidence because it was COVID time,” Laugier-Mattoug said during a visit to ASMSA in April. “Bryan sent an email to the French Embassy looking for a partnership with a French high school. I think I was the only one to answer.”

Because of the seven-hour time difference between Hot Springs and

Vichy, live interaction between the students is hard to arrange. Instead, students exchange handwritten letters and emails while also using an educational platform called Flip to record videos.

“We started exploring (Flip), but some students are really shy and nervous,” Ieamsang said. “We also did a pen pal program. Flip gave us the idea maybe we need to find a way to get them in contact with each other at the same time. So even if that means that somebody has to stay awake or be awake at a particular time so that we can all be in class at the same time.”

Laugier-Mattoug said her students can be shy when they speak. While they are enthusiastic about learning English, it is sometimes difficult for them to be recorded speaking it.

Her students’ enthusiasm was evident during a session that Ieamsang and Laugier-Mattoug held for ASMSA’s campus during her April visit. During the presentation, Laugier-Mattoug shared information about her school, Vichy, the Auvergne Region and France in general. The session included some videos of her students sharing the information while speaking in English.

Laugier-Mattoug spoke about the differences between her school and education in general in France as compared to ASMSA and the United States. She said her students often leave home about 6:30 in the morning and may not return home until almost 7 at night. Students at the school also focus on preparing for professional careers. So while students may be learning English, they aren’t always putting a lot of focus on it, she said.

One aspect of ASMSA that surprised Laugier-Mattoug was the community spirit and excitement of the students. Because of the length of the school day, her students don’t participate in extracurriculars. The idea of school spirit is, for the lack of a better term, foreign to them. There are no clubs. Yearbooks aren’t common.

To try to keep her students motivated, Laugier-Mattoug has tried to find different partnerships to broaden their education. She participates in the Erasmus+ project, a European Union program supporting education, training, youth and sport. In addition to ASMSA, she participates in partnerships with schools in Estonia, Finland, Croatia, Greece and Hungary. The project also encourages study-abroad trips.

“So, I’m looking for partners everywhere in the world trying (help her students learn) English because I’m an English teacher and to discover other cultures because I think that’s the most important part of our job as teachers,” she said.

Ieamsang said his students were excited about Laugier-Mattoug visiting campus for a week, including her having an opportunity to attend ASMSA’s prom.

“They have asked her so many questions this week,” Ieamsang said. “They love it. They’re highly motivated, and they’re curious. Many of our students have never been to a different country. So, it kind of is like a mythical thing for them.” driven home more. The educators and curriculum are excellent at guiding you through the process with ease. I have learned so much this year,” Jessup said.

Ieamsang said Laugier-Mattoug’s visit was a big step in helping to find different ways the two schools could better their partnership. He plans to take a visit to her school eventually so “then we can learn more about how we can interact.” Both hope that they get to take students for visits to the schools as well.

“If they can’t experience French outside of this classroom, then how real is it to them, you know? I think as a teacher that’s probably my biggest job I have is to make it real. I have to make it relevant, and I have to show them where the language is spoken outside of this small room,” Ieamsang said.

Regardless of the contest or the medium, competitions provide students an opportunity to gain that validation by putting their works, and in a way themselves, out there for an audience to see.

“Creating anything new requires bravery and fortitude; it requires a reasonable hope that the effort and the anxiety involved will result in something good,” Katowich said. “For many students, a nice grade or compliment can be discounted, but winning a contest matters because students know for certain their work was judged impartially and on merit alone. It is a victory their nagging self-doubts find harder to explain away.”

Avery Binuya (’24) said having the opportunity to compete as a ceramic artist was important to her. Binuya won third place in the Visual Arts category and an $8,000 scholarship for her ceramic arts piece titled “Reflections” in the Thea Foundation Scholarship Competition. The piece is two identically intricate wheel-thrown teapots, but one is shattered. It was also selected for the Historic Cane Hill Arkansas High School Art Exhibition and was included in the Celebrating Art book.

“When I first began entering my ceramic pieces in competitions, I had very little faith that I would gain the same recognition as traditional art,” Binuya said. “In retrospect, the lack of representation of functional ceramics simply meant I had the opportunity to showcase the beauty of ceramics. Through ASMSA’s support and push for competitions, I went from a discouraged ceramicist surrounded by (traditional artists) to a recognized artist in a position to inspire other budding ceramicists.”

Warren said having the opportunities to compete in contests may be lucrative in terms of scholarships and cash prizes, but they also can help young artists build confidence in a world where the competition can be tough.

“They learn to fail and succeed, and both are important to their growth,” Warren said. “They learn to get back up and keep going if they don’t get into a competition or don’t win. Winning can be important, but so can learning to get back up and keep moving forward. They learn to be mature and composed young artists whether they win or lose.”

Warren said the maturity and sophistication of students’ work increases considerably over their time at ASMSA. When they graduate, they have a portfolio of work they can be proud to show off. She said many of the seniors who graduated this year and planned to pursue art in college had scholarships.

The same was true for students in other disciplines as well. Dempster said at least five music students from this year’s graduating class earned full-ride or other generous scholarships to colleges in Arkansas and across the country to study music. It was the same last year, and there are many students who are studying other subjects but benefit from music scholarships by performing in college music groups to help pay for their education.

The growing successes in various competitions and students choosing to follow creative passions as avenues for study and career paths reveals the upward direction of ASMSA’s overall arts and humanities program.

“We’re a strong school for competitive successes, and those successes are built on strong individual mentorship, built on faculty pushing students to go far beyond what they know, to experiment, to be imaginative and to follow their strengths as far as they can while developing and enriching their skills to take them even further,” Dempster said.