French evolution: How Mme. Fortgang took Fall Mtn. program to new heights

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When Fall Mountain Regional High School students Grace St. Pierre and Kaleb Houle-Lawrence enrolled in French class in the spring of 2020, neither had ever written or spoken French, and they didn’t have the chance to learn vis-à-vis, or face-to-face.

Now, the two soon-to-be graduates have helped coordinate the online presence of the Manchester nonprofit Franco-American Centre through an internship, taught French to high-schoolers just beginning instruction, and also aim to flip the script and work with native speakers. But they give a lot of their credit to Rebecca Fortgang, often known by her nom de plume “Madame Fortgang,” their high-school French teacher.

Fortgang’s work with the two students and in building the school’s French program led to her being named the Franco-American Centre’s 2022 French Teacher of the Year, a national honor.

St. Pierre, 18, of Acworth, spoke from Fortgang’s car as the two were off to a FAC meeting earlier this week.

“The first day we walked in, and she just started yelling at us in French,” St. Pierre said earlier this week. “But it went way up from there, and we actually started to learn stuff. We could actually learn meaningful sentences in French.”

Houle-Lawrence, 18, of Alstead, developed an interest in learning French after he attempted a Spanish language and cultural studies course in middle school but said he didn’t enjoy it as much as he’d hoped.

“I decided to go with French, and ... I really fell in love with it,” he said. “I liked the people in the classroom, I liked Madame, obviously, and the different experiences we were able to have learning a language together.”

Fortgang’s own experience in French-language learning mirrors that of her students. A native of Center Harbor in the Lakes Region, Fortgang first studied under French teacher Meg Bedford at Inter-Lakes Middle High School in Meredith.

“She still teaches, so my students have actually gotten to meet her at state conferences in New Hampshire,” said Fortgang, 35, who has lived in Langdon since 2019. “... I studied a complicated four years, because [Inter-Lakes] breaks their level-one [French] into two classes.”

Fortgang took her foundational knowledge of French as well as three years of learning Spanish to Keene State College with plans to teach mathematics, but she kept up her French education as she sought a minor in the subject.

She opted to swap her math major for French and pursue teaching the language full-time. This led her to a study-abroad program at the Université de Sherbrooke in Quebec in spring 2009, which made her stand out from other students in the program.

“Everybody always went to France, but I was like, ‘I want to go to Canada,’ ” Fortgang said. “2009 was right after the economic crisis, so I’m thinking schools want to take their kids on trips, but families are not affording a $4,000-plus trip to go to Europe.”

Though it was a short three hours away from Keene, Fortgang’s program in Sherbrooke exposed her to students from a plethora of other countries, including Egypt, Colombia and Mexico, also learning French as a second language.

After graduating from Keene State in 2010, Fortgang found her first job at Manchester Memorial High School. In that time, she met her now-husband, James — whom she and others affectionately call “Bro,” having met him through his sister. James’ career shifted to Massachusetts, and the two moved to Plymouth, Mass., and later Middleborough, Mass.

The change in community also affected the age range of students she educated. Whereas she began in an environment teaching French to older teens, in the Bay State she took up a job in 2013 at Bay Farm Montessori Academy in Duxbury, Mass. There, she worked with children in preschool through eighth grade and later became a lead teacher after earning the proper state credentials.

“Language started with French and Spanish when they were 3, and I would go in their classrooms and teach a little lesson 15 minutes or so a week, but they would learn over 300 words in that 15 minutes,” Fortgang recalled. “We had a whole interactive lesson standing up and down and ... I also taught them salsa dancing.”

Fortgang didn’t let age be a barrier to how she taught the children. “The kids would go home, and they’d be like, ‘I’m ameliorating my French,’ and people knew they had class with me,” she said.

But the large age range of kids she taught wore down on her and she felt a calling to move back to the Granite State by 2019. It was then that she discovered Fall Mountain Regional High through a job listing seeking a French teacher who could also speak and teach introductory Spanish.

“I was what they were looking for because I had 10 years of experience, and when I taught at Bay Farm, I taught Spanish as well,” Fortgang said.

She began teaching at the Langdon high school in fall 2019, but the pandemic quickly upended her new position the following semester, as it did for instructors nationwide. However, the pandemic became a boon for students in growing their understanding of French when Fortgang invited them to join virtual events presented in the language. Grace St. Pierre and Kaleb Houle-Lawrence in particular took to the meetings.

“That led to them getting the internship at the Franco-American Centre, and [FAC was] really hesitant with high-school kids,” Fortgang said.

Other students also became drawn to Fortgang’s style of education through her encouragement that they regularly communicate in French.

“World language isn’t a requirement [at Fall Mountain], so most of my kids want to be in my class,” Fortgang said. “When we went remote, I would use Google Hangouts so we had a class chat ... and it wasn’t all in French, but it built that community of, ‘I want to be here.’ ”

Since her first semester in 2019, Fortgang has taken the program from two simple French classes and upgraded it to offering a maximum level of French 5 this year, an Advanced Placement course. She also introduced a French club for students run by the school’s members of Société Honoraire de Français — the French Honor Society. To join the society, students must have a minimum average grade of 90 percent in French and meet a certain grade point average.

Fortgang also has students take at least three field trips a month across the state to provide them opportunities to talk in French. Those trips have been as local as the Hancock Town Library, where a French-speaking group meets each month, and as far as Sherbrooke for the city’s Winter Carnival.

One class trip to Canada saw them put their knowledge of the language to the test. The trip became fatefully known as the “COVID Tea Party” as Fortgang’s students were separated from her when she had to stay with one who tested positive for the coronavirus and, for a short time, wasn’t allowed to re-enter the United States.

As for her other students, before they crossed the border back into the U.S., they stopped at a rest stop in Quebec where no one spoke English fluently. They were joined by another Fall Mountain teacher, but in Fortgang’s absence the students proved their proficiency.

“Kaleb and Grace were in charge, and they had to make sure everybody got food, got to the bathroom and followed all the sanitation laws because they had a lot of restrictions for COVID,” Fortgang said.

This summer, Fortgang, St. Pierre and Houle-Lawrence will attend an annual conference of the American Association of Teachers of French (AATF) in Trois-Rivières, Quebec, after the two students presented at the association’s summer conference last year in New Orleans. They’ve also presented at the N.H. Association of World Language Teachers, both organizations of which Fortgang is a member.

The Lakewood, Colo.-based AATF was founded in New York in 1927 and aims to promote French language and cultural education in schools, according to its website. It includes about 1,600 chapters. The world-language teachers association in Concord was established in 1967 and is a network for language educators in New Hampshire, issuing grants and naming Students and Teachers of Excellence.

The conference leads into both St. Pierre and Houle-Lawrence’s ambitions of pursuing higher education involving written and spoken French.

St. Pierre hopes to follow in Fortgang’s footsteps and become both a French teacher for English speakers and vice versa for French natives.

“I student-taught ESL [English as a Second Language] last year, and I loved it, and I would totally do that again professionally,” St. Pierre said.

She feels she does well with language learning and teaching because it’s not as formulaic as disciplines like mathematics.

Meanwhile Houle-Lawrence is the opposite: He’s exploring the idea of mixing his passion for math with speaking French, which he learned there are jobs for in language-immersion schools.

“In my brain, math makes sense — the concrete nature, the patterns and everything, it just clicks for me,” Houle-Lawrence said. “But then about two years ago, I started to consider the idea of integrating French because I feel like it’s been a big part of my high-school career.”

In his last semester of high school, he’s been a student teacher for Fall Mountain students in French 1 as Fortgang observes from the back of the classroom.

In March, AATF honored Fall Mountain’s French program, of which Fortgang is the sole instructor, with an “Exemplary with Distinction” award among 10 schools in the U.S.

“I think it’s the best award any program could win,” Fortgang said. “It’s not me as the teacher winning an award. The program is every facet: It is my teaching, but it’s also their field trips, it’s their Honor Society, their French club, it’s all of those things.”