This project is a unique and innovative opportunity for students who wish to share their interests in French language and French-speaking cultures, and engage in a statewide outreach campaign among K-12 classes. Students will use their linguistic and cultural proficiencies, but also, and above all, their disciplinary expertise and their creativity to launch the first online magazine ever designed to inform, educate, and entertain K-12 students through a range of journalistic features such as news articles, interviews, photo reports, contests, etc. In doing so, students will enhance their communication skills, recycle the knowledge they have acquired over the years, keep up with current events and practice in an authentic situation by interacting with their readers.
My project is ,by definition, interdisciplinary inasmuch as it requires a group of students from different specializations to fill out the rubrics–or better: its very success relies entirely upon the diversity of majors and minors willing to engage in it. Following the template of major magazines of “general interest,” students will each be responsible for a rubric in which they will do research, linking their linguistics skills with their academic expertise. More importantly, and maybe for the first time in their cursus, students will be using French as a means of communication rather than an object of study in and of itself –thus, prioritizing their field of interest.
Concretely speaking, students will contribute to the magazine with three “research” entries each semester, following the sequences of the editorial process: selection of appropriate topics for K-12 levels, submission to the editorial board, comments, editing, revision and publication on our website (received from Sites@Rutgers). Or, to phrase it differently, this project echoes exactly the learning goals established by National Association of Colleges and Employers as listed on your page. Critical thinking is absolutely crucial to the general design of the magazine, as students will have to decide how to balance the rubrics, what will be of interest to K-12 students, as well as how to articulate their ideas towards a very specific audience. Collaboration and leadership will also be essential as each student in the team will be at the head of their own rubric while cooperating with their 9 peers on their individual projects.
I would like to add that this project is very dear to me, as it aims to participate in the general endeavor of sensitizing K-12 students around the state to the importance of making language acquisition a major asset of their education. As we all know, many world languages programs are collapsing, if not disappearing. In this context, my project seeks to build a much-needed bridge between K-12 Schools and the State University to help create a meaningful curriculum in which students will test the invaluable benefits, in the age of globalization, of combining their major(s) with a language.