Franco-American Culture From the Outside: Identity and Education In Reflection
By Emma Auer
Last fall, the Vermont Folklife Center launched a limited term engagement with five educators with music and intercultural teaching expertise to develop approaches for integrating Franco-American music for K–12 students in classroom learning and across content areas. Based on past curriculum development such as the New Neighbors Project, we recognize the role that music plays as a conduit for expressing and cultivating ideas about cultural heritage, identity and belonging. To be able to continue to add to our educational resources, we believe it is critical to establish advisory roles with elementary, middle and high school educators to build stronger links between our Archive, home to over 6,000 audio interviews, and learning opportunities for school-aged students.
The VFC Educators Advisory Committee brought together five Vermont educators: Hannah Assefa (Milton Elementary School), Lucas Dunn (Winooski High School), Ian Drury (Saxon Hill School), Jonah Ibson (Harwood Union High School), and Elizabeth Nolan (Edmunds Elementary School). The group reviewed and discussed archival recordings of songs, instrumental music, performances, song lyrics and interviews produced by Franco-American performers of the past 30 years. The review sessions were anchored by this guiding question: How can students’ and teachers’ lived experience be positioned to intersect with the collection as cultural artifacts? Going forward, the VFC aims to contribute to the growing need for culturally-relevant pedagogy and improving modes of presenting and engaging with primary sources, particularly for young people.
Emma Auer, VFC Fall 2021 intern who participated in these meetings that concluded in early December, offers her perspective on this experience as shaped by her own educational journey in New England.
~ Sasha Antohin, Director of Education
As an intern at the Vermont Folklife Center, I have been privileged to attend meetings of the VFC Educator’s Committee. Last fall, a passionate group of educators focused on how to bring Franco-American song recordings from the VFC Archive into classrooms. I lived in Maine for six years, where history class contained a unit on French-Canadian immigration, and several of our closest family friends were Franco-Americans and shared often about their heritage. As someone who has also been learning the French language for many years, I expected to learn from the Educator’s Committee, but I wasn’t sure exactly where the holes in my Franco-American education would be. By the end of my journey with the committee, I have come away with a deeper understanding of how cultural practices were impacted by immigration, particularly la survivance, and gained new insights into what it means to learn French and to form a relationship with an identity that is not my own.
From my young adulthood in Maine, I had already learned quite a bit about la survivance—the movement in the 19th and 20th centuries that aimed to preserve the French-Canadian way of life—but mostly by way of institutions. French-Canadian immigrants transported hospitals, schools, and churches with them across the border, creating Petits Canadas, particularly in urban areas. Winooski, Vermont, received one such community; as Joe Perron, descendant of French-Canadian immigrants, describes in a podcast produced by “Brave Little State,” French-speaking institutions made it possible for immigrants to not “have to sacrifice their culture” by moving to the United States. Patrick Lacroix, who runs Query the Past, a blog focused on Franco-American history, describes the challenges French-Canadian immigrants promoting la survivance faced in New England, such as laws banning French from being taught or spoken in schools. Notably, the Educator’s Committee is focusing on Franco-American music, not necessarily “French-Canadian” culture. The term Franco-American has only been adopted as an identity term by recent generations of people of French-Canadian descent; its usage sparked discussion in educator meetings about the very slipperiness of identity. What qualifies someone to be Franco-American—is it speaking the French language? Or having ancestors from Québec? Or is the meaning of this identity, like all identities, the very debates that its members have among themselves?
[Pellerin Songbook Manuscript Page of Manuscript page rom Martha Pellerin’s song book - Lyrics, “Rame Donc”
Attending the VFC Educator’s Committee meetings and listening to the archived recordings of music has made clear that the French-Canadian experience consists not merely of institutions transported across the border, but also of joyous celebrations of art, family, and music. Notably, music and art has become a way to make Franco-American heritage visible and dynamic even today, while French-Canadian institutions like churches, street names, and store fronts appear more as reminders of the way vibrant immigrant communities established themselves in New England. The vision of la survivance pushed by ordinary French-Canadian immigrants, clergy, and community leaders has in many ways diminished as French-Canadian immigrants have assimilated into US society over the past several centuries. Yet soirées, raucous parties in which Franco-American music is performed by all in attendance, persist in the home of educator Ian Drury and others. This perspective has allowed me to see the ways in which Franco-American culture is constantly being created as it is shared with others outside that identity group.
I have been fascinated by the process of the Educators’ Committee. I expected to witness the planning and production of a tangible curriculum ready to enter classrooms, but for the most part, I have instead seen a group of passionate educators who are themselves learning about Franco-American music with an eye toward the classroom. Much of the hour to hour-and-a-half-long Zoom meetings were dedicated to the educators’ responses to recordings from soirées. The educators listen closely to one another, recognizing commonalities and differences in their personal experiences and pedagogical styles. I’ve learned through these meetings that listening to Franco-American music (“Rame Donc” performed by Martha Pellerin is my particular favorite) is an experience of one’s personal life intersecting with the themes and sounds of the pieces. Hannah Asseffa, a violin player and kindergarten teacher in Westford, Vermont, discussed the embodied response she experienced when listening to a piece performed as part of a competition, opening up a fascinating discussion about the difference between performing and creating (or co-creating) Franco-American music.
I found one teacher’s responses particularly interesting. Lucas Dunn is a French teacher at Winooski schools and a native of northern Vermont. Lucas graduated from Middlebury College after studying French, an academic path almost identical to my own. As someone who also grew up as a non-Franco person in a Franco space, I was intrigued by his questions about identity and in-groups and out-groups of people. How can one respectfully create a relationship with an identity different from one’s own? To further explore this question, I caught up with him for a phone interview, a discussion which allowed me to finally find an answer to a question that has always seemed elusive—why am I learning French? I began French because I went to a small middle school where only French was offered as a second language, which made sense because of its location in a Franco-American urban center in Maine. But why have I stuck with French for these past eight years, long after leaving that school? I suppose my answer connects with Lucas’s insight about coming into contact with identities other than one’s own. He asks: “What does it mean to be Franco-American and what does it mean to be part of that club? And what does it mean to not be part of that club? And is it about being in the club or out of the club? Or is it about if you're out of the club, you learn something from them, from that culture?”
His words reminded me of my first year of French class, when I was taught Parisian French by a Franco-American woman. The Parisian French textbook contained words and phrases that were entirely irrelevant to her use of the language. Instead, as if she couldn’t help it, she would share the French-Canadian versions of words, though we were never tested on those, and thus were not expected to really “learn” them. I distinctly remember her describing her family’s recipe for poutine, a Québequois dish of French fries, cheese curds, and gravy—though the gravy was concocted from packets of powder bought at American supermarkets. My understanding of French is completely tied to the Franco-American sense of the world, how the North American landscape and the process of immigration shaped the way French is spoken in New England. At the same time, I was fascinated as a young adult by this experience of living in two worlds, French Canada and central Maine, and how language and identity are in many ways inseparable. I have come to form my own identity as I have learned French, inspired by the humility and honesty that is required by speaking a second language. One must be more vulnerable and open to making mistakes, to experimenting and dealing with the insecurity of not being able to express oneself fully. The combination of language and music seems perfect for this uncomfortable, beautiful state: music teacher Betsy Nolan says “making loud mistakes” is an important feature of her classroom. She hopes the curriculum developed using VFC materials will offer a chance for youth to break out of the constant need for perfection that seems to pervade schools.
Emma Auer
These realizations may not directly relate to the content of the music itself, but they address one of the questions that the curriculum hopes to highlight—that Franco-American music (or any cultural music) means different things in different social contexts.
Author Bio: Emma Auer is a student at Middlebury College studying anthropology, sociology, and French and is the Fall 2021 education intern at the VFC.
Are you an educator who would like to learn more about Franco-American music and history for K-12 learning? Reach out to us at education@vermontfolklifecenter.org.
Explore Franco-American history and culture with the VFC:
Learn more about Franco-American musician, archivist, and activist Martha Pellerin in this episode of the VFC podcast VT Untapped
Learn about the VFC’s efforts to revitalize Franco-American song in the Champlain Valley: