BHS Le Cercle Français

This fall the Cercle Français has already gotten off to a great start! This year, we are a group of 86 members – a new record! We have already held a car wash, a pancake breakfast at Applebee’s, and two butterfly cookie sales to raise money for Paige’s Butterfly Run. We also participated in the Homecoming parade, have walked the Labyrinth at the Syracuse Reformed Church, and travelled to Williamstown, Massachusetts to visit the Clark Gallery of Art.  We still have much planned for National French Week in November! We are beginning our celebration by taking a trip to the Everson Museum to view the amazing Turner to Cézanne exhibit, and by coloring our own “masterpieces!” In addition, each day you can hear French music before homeroom, see the French word of the day on the announcement board, and pick-up a French recipe outside of Madame Guillet’s room. Join in on the celebration by wearing your French-American flag pin and stopping in for crêpes after school on Tuesday, November 10!

Now in our third year, we are a group of almost 100 students — more than half of all French students at Baker! We can’t wait to see all our old members and greet all our new members at our first official meeting of the year on Thursday, October 8! Our beautiful new tee-shirts will be ready, so wear your old ones one final time on Thursday! After a group photo, we have planned some fun activities - cream puffs and éclairs with conversation and song!  We’ll also be sharing some of the exciting activities we have planned for you for the year. À bientôt!

We cannot wait to begin our third year of Cercle Français! You will be receiving information in your French classes the first week of school, but mark your calendars now for our first meeting: Wednesday, September 16, in the Large Group Room. Registration materials for returning students will be available, and we can take your $30 fee at that time. This includes your dues, a tee-shirt, and the $10 for our October candy sale. 

French Three students are warmly invited!

We will be holding a car wash on Saturday, September 12. Please plan on helping out and having a great time!

À bientôt!

Attention French Club Members…

As a final farewell we’re getting together for an authentic French diner at L’Adour in downtown Syracuse on Thursday, June 4th. Please see the sign-up sheet below:

L’Adour Form

Bonne fin de l’année scholiaire!

View photos of our Voyage en France!

(We will try to post photos each evening, however there are no guarantees… please check back frequently for updates!)

à dimanche !

Here we are in the last few months of school which means also the last few meetings of Le Cercle Français. However, we’ve got plenty of activities packed into the rest of this year. Below are some very important sheets you should have either received already, or will soon. Please feel free to check them out and get ready for all that’s coming up!

What an exciting January it has been, despite the cold and snow! It was so exciting to listen to President Obama’s inaugural address:

That we are in the midst of crisis is now well understood. Today I say to you that the challenges we face are real. They are serious and they are many. They will not be met easily or in a short span of time. But know this, America — they will be met. On this day, we gather because we have chosen hope over fear, unity of purpose over conflict and discord. Starting today, we must pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, and begin again the work of remaking America. For everywhere we look, there is work to be done. Now, there are some who question the scale of our ambitions — who suggest that our system cannot tolerate too many big plans. Their memories are short. For they have forgotten what this country has already done; what free men and women can achieve when imagination is joined to common purpose, and necessity to courage. For as much as government can do and must do, it is ultimately the faith and determination of the American people upon which this nation relies. It is the kindness to take in a stranger when the levees break, the selflessness of workers who would rather cut their hours than see a friend lose their job which sees us through our darkest hours. Our challenges may be new. The instruments with which we meet them may be new. But those values upon which our success depends — hard work and honesty, courage and fair play, tolerance and curiosity, loyalty and patriotism — these things are old. These things are true. They have been the quiet force of progress throughout our history. What is demanded then is a return to these truths. What is required of us now is a new era of responsibility — a recognition, on the part of every American, that we have duties to ourselves, our nation, and the world, duties that we do not grudgingly accept but rather seize gladly, firm in the knowledge that there is nothing so satisfying to the spirit, so defining of our character, than giving our all to a difficult task. This is the price and the promise of citizenship.

As I listened, I was reminded of the purpose of the Cercle Français as expressed in our constitution: to promote the study of French and foreign language as outlined in the state and national standards; to enhance language instruction of French at Baker High School; to unify students of French at Baker High School; to serve students of French at Baker High School and to serve the community of Baldwinsville, of Central New York, French communities in the United States, and people in need regardless of geography or the language they speak.

Let us therefore begin the year with a renewed enthusiasm for all that the Cercle Français does to help its members and others. Sell your bonbons and your cookies, come to our meetings, and practice kindness and generosity daily. We are all l’homme qui plantait des arbres.

Madame

It has been a great autumn for the Cercle Français! After our September introductory meeting, we registered 83 members! We held our first fundraiser for Paige’s Butterfly Run and sold out of the delicious butterfly cookies in less than a half an hour! 

Our beautiful tee-shirts arrived and were distributed at our October meeting, just in time to wear in the Homecoming parade! Twenty students prepared chicken Cordon Bleu for their families, fifteen students walked a replica of the Chartres Cathedral Labyrinth at the Reformed Church of Syracuse, and we held our bonbon sale for Paige’s Butterfly Run. 

In November, we played French games at the meeting, and launched our gratitude message campaign for soldiers killed during the D-Day invasion in 1944 and buried in Normandy. You can bring $2 to the December meeting and fill in your message. Students travelling to France in April will attach your message to an American flag and put it at the base of a headstone. We have been doing this since 2003 and have always received messages from grateful family members or visitors touched by our thoughtfulness. This is something you want to participate in! Your parents and grandparents may be interested as well!

We celebrated National French Week by decorating the walls outside of the French classrooms with posters and by wearing our American-French flag pins. We ate crêpes and watched “L’homme qui plantait des arbres”. Although we unfortunately had to cancel our movie night, we hope to reschedule it during the winter, a nice way to end a busy week! 

We have planned our December 4^th meeting to include French Christmas carols and the making of a Père Noël ornament. The cost of supplies is included in your membership. If a non-club member would like to join us, there is a small fee, but we would welcome your attendance! We are all looking forward to our trip to New York City to visit the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Cirque du Soleil, and dinner atToutvabien on December 6. On December 11, a half-day, we will once again be selling our butterfly cookies for $1. 

You can find out about what is going on in French Club by checking the calendar on this site and by consulting the announcements posted outside of your French class. We hope that you will be joining us for our activities, including our winter participation in the after-school enrichment programs, our March trip to see the opera Romeo & Juliette, our May garage sale, Volleyball tournament with Spanish, Latin and German students, and dinner at L’Adour. 

Meilleurs vœux de joyeuses fêtes de fin d’année et de bonheur dans la nouvelle année! 

Bravo! We would like to thank everyone for making our first meeting this year si formidable! We truly hope you enjoyed yourself and that you were able to learn a lot about Le Cercle Français and all of the activities planned for this year. The truth is, YOU, as students of the French program, are the ones that make this program possible, and you have in turn given us such enthusiasm to plan la meilleure année encore! 

The next step for you is to get in those registration forms! Remember that the $15 dollar membership fee includes a T-Shirt which you will hopefully receive at the next meeting. However, in order for that to be possible we need you to be aware of the deadline. Registration forms are due jeudi, le 25 septembre. One of the rules presented today was soyez punctuel which also goes for deadlines such as this, so please make a strong effort to get those in on time.

Once again, merci! Check back here for updates (we’ve added photos from the first meeting!) and we hope to see you in October!

à la prochaine…

Welcome to the new home of Le Cercle Français, the french club of C. W. Baker High School. We are so excited for this upcoming year and cannot wait to get started! Stay tuned for upcoming news!

Qui ne connaît pas de langues étrangères ne connaît pas la sienne.