Local educator Jeff Pageau will soon be featured at two national venues.
Pageau, French teacher at Roanoke Rapids High School, will be representing both the state and the school district at the upcoming Southern Conference on Language Teaching convention in Memphis in March.
Pageau was named World Language Teacher of the Year in October by the Foreign Language Association of North Carolina. While in Memphis, the candidates will undergo an interview by a panel of their peers and provide a mock press conference on a topic of their choice related to an issue facing world language education today. “I’ve chosen to speak on the elimination of language programs in our nation’s schools and universities. Many schools promote global education as part of the mission statements, yet language programs are routinely being cut. These cuts beg the question, how serious are we about global education if we are cutting and/or reducing language education opportunities for our students?”
The winner of the SCOLT contest will represent the region in San Antonio later this fall at the American Council for the Teaching of Foreign Languages. Pageau is a passionate advocate for language education.
He serves as the co-coordinator of Advocacy and the Promotion of French for the American Association of Teachers of French. He will be a presenter later this summer at the AATF national convention in New Orleans. “I have presented at our state conferences, so I’m really excited to have been selected to present on the national scene,” Pageau stated. He will be co-presenting with his colleague, Franca Gilbert of Franklin Academy in Wake Forest, on developing language immersion weekends for students.
Gilbert holds the same position as Pageau with the AATF. Together, they have recently organized a French immersion weekend as an advocacy project to promote French in the state. “We invited three other schools to participate for our first venture. We have a vision to expand this experience to make it accessible to all French students in North Carolina.”
