Story Photos
 Photo by Greg Ebersole R.A. Long High School French teacher Jane Ditewig tries to navigate through a maze of boxes and suitcases at her home earlier this week as she and her husband, Steve, pack for their year-long stay in northern France. |
A Cultural Exchange -- Longview's Jane Ditewig will swap jobs with Bethune, France, teacher in Fullbright exchange program
Thursday, July 28, 2005 11:16 PM PDT
By Hope Anderson
Printable version
E-mail this articleShe worries that her colleagues will notice her accent. Judge her mistakes.
She's uncertain how the students, who typically stand to attention when teachers enter the classroom and painstakingly apply whiteout to their notes, will respond to her laid-back approach.
She's never formerly taught English before.
And she hopes it will be the experience of a lifetime.
This coming school year, Jane Ditewig, a French teacher at R.A. Long High School, will trade teaching positions and homes with an English teacher from France.
"Living and working in a (foreign) country is an incredible opportunity," said Ditewig, who has taught French in the Longview School District since 1976. "I've been teaching about the (French) school system for the last 30 years, but I've never really experienced it."
Ditewig will be one of roughly 170 Americans traveling abroad through the prestigious Fulbright Teacher Exchange Program, which aims to increase mutual understanding among countries.
On Thursday, she and her husband, Steve, said good-bye to their home on Lake Sacajawea and their clan of friends here in Longview and left for Washington, D.C., where Ditewig will meet her exchange partner, Audrey Guilbaux, for the first time.
Next week, the Ditewigs will arrive in Bethune, France, a city of about 27,000 an hour's drive north of Paris. Later on, the Ditewigs hope to fly their shaggy golden retriever, Cannon, to join them.
Starting in September, Ditewig, 55, will teach English at Paul Verlaine, a middle school with 568 students and 60 teachers. The school has half the enrollment of R.A. Long's 1,000 students, but the schools employ the same number of teachers, Ditewig said.
The Longview School District will pay her salary; the French government will pay Guilbaux.
Ditewig has traveled to France many times, but besides studying abroad for a quarter in college, she's never had an extended stay. The school year will finish in July 2006, and the couple doesn't plan to return until then.
The idea of applying to the Fulbright program has been brewing for years, she said, but she didn't act on it until last year, after her husband retired from Georgia Pacific as a production planner.
"I would never do it on my own," Ditewig said. "I couldn't do it until the last couple of years."
She's the only Longview teacher in recent memory to apply for such an exchange.
For Steve Ditewig, 60, the time will offer him a chance to explore, read, ride his bike and pick up some of the French language, he said.
"There will be a lot of getting used to where we are," he said, adding that he may drop in on his wife's classes and look into volunteer opportunities.
Last spring, Ditewig braced her students for the change. Some lamented the loss their teacher and her absence from their graduation ceremony, she said.
But "my students are very curious," said Ditewig, a slender, stylish woman with cropped blonde hair. "They're kind of a part of it. ... Change is hard for everybody. But the neat thing about this is everybody profits. Teachers profit, the students, the community does ..."
"It's an exciting thing for R.A. Long High School and the student body," agreed Ken Hermanson, an R.A. Long assistant principal. "She'll just bring back more experience and knowledge to share with her kids when she gets back."
Ditewig said she's eager to delve into a new school system -- but she's also hesitant about the differences. For instance, students typically stay in a classroom and teachers rotate rooms.
She also suspects the teaching style is more reliant on textbooks rather than hands-on activities and cultivating pupil-teacher relationships, despite France's smaller class sizes.
Ditewig said she may hold off on introducing her typical teaching activities, at least at the start.
Her R.A. Long students, though, suggested she tweak her practice of "Musique Mercredi" -- Music Wednesdays, in which she plays French tunes for students. The students burned Ditewig a CD of American songs, such as Village People's "YMCA," to play for her students in France for "Music Monday."
"I certainly want to not rock any boats. ... but I'll have to see if that's accepted over there," she said. "I certainly don't want to give any ideas of what we do is superior. ... It will just be a different experience for me and the students on both sides."
Her exchange partner, Guilbaux, told her to expect to work about 18 hours a week, with Wednesday afternoon off and the choice of either Monday morning or Friday afternoon as well. Vacations come in two-week blocks four times a year, she said.
Ditewig, the only French instructor at the high school, teaches five 50-minute classes a day, five days a week, plus additional preparation time, she said.
"It's going to be an interesting exchange for both of us," Ditewig said.
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