“Des valises et des étoiles” (Suitcases and stars) – Jocelyne Texier
June 17, 2013
A French teacher at the Waldorf school since 1986, Jocelyne Texier has always loved writing and is passionate about everything to do with language teaching. Over the years she has taught classes from the 1st to the 13th grade, and it was through contact with her pupils that she wrote readers with exercises adapted to the Waldorf curriculum. She currently teaches at the Rudolf-Steiner-Schule in München-Schwabing.
In her latest publication, entitled “Des valises et des étoiles”, she has gathered, written or adapted texts. Here is what she says about it:
For teaching purposes, I introduce the subject with three suitcase stories, the first two of which have no direct connection with the subject a priori – but do with the period concerned. These texts are designed to serve as a bridge between present and past, to help young readers identify with the protagonists of that time and to make it tangible that yesterday and today are closely intertwined.
The next four texts were written from four testimonies published in Alain Vincenot’s Je veux revoir maman (with the kind permission of Éditions du Syrte – acknowledgements will be included in the final version).
Next comes the part devoted to the rescuers. That is where you will find the page on the Marcel network (page 22).
Suzanne Matthieu’s testimony refers to David Fuchs, while we meet Berthe again – who in the first story had no connection with Jewish children – taking a little Jewish girl on holiday to her parents’ home.
The “texts for understanding” sketch the moral environment: the discriminatory laws, the Vel d’Hiv, Monseigneur Saliège’s letter.
Éditions forêt-village offer material adapted to the needs of French lessons in Waldorf schools: a selection of readers with corresponding exercises for classes 4 to 11, as well as a grammar booklet for the middle classes and another for the upper classes. This is complemented by various teaching collections for the teacher. The texts, exercises and grammars offered here are used successfully in many Waldorf schools in Germany, England and Switzerland. These readers allow teachers to organise their lessons according to a lexical and grammatical progression suited to the pupils’ age and language level, without having to use the textbooks normally used in state schools.